Source Signs You’re an Old Geek
This is way to good not to pass on to those of us that Do and Don’t remember yesterdays life changing technologies. Geek Things! 10 Geek Things
I found this on Fox News website. It has been edited by me.
It is authored by Steve Tobak a management consultant, former senior executive, columnist and author.
You still say “dial” the phone. That, incidentally, is a reference to a rotary telephone. What you did was stick your index finger in one of ten numbered holes on a clear piece of plastic attached to the phone and rotated it, generating electrical pulses. Yes, I know that sounds dumb. No, there was no * or # symbol. They hadn’t been invented yet.
You remember when state-of-the-art chips had dozens of transistors. Yes, I can. The first chips I designed at Texas Instruments had hundreds and that was very exciting. For the record, Apple’s A8 processor has 2 billion transistors.
You still consider “geek” to be an insult. You cringe when you hear the term that now in fact refers to tech entrepreneurs with enormous egos, bad hair and more money than God. Also Jesus actually misspoke. What he meant to say was, “The geek shall inherit the Earth.”
You had a slide rule. Slide rules were how we solved math problems in ancient times. Some of my rich college friends sported Texas Instruments SR-10 calculators but, being on a macaroni-and-cheese budget, I didn’t have $150 to spring for a gadget that just did arithmetic. SR was actually short for “slide rule.”
You owned a $5 digital watch. Come on, tell the truth; you actually thought it was cool and that analog watches were doomed.
You used punch cards. Back in the day before CRTs and keyboards we used decks of cards with holes punched in them (just like the name) to command and input data to mainframe computers. Punch card readers actually looked a little like the dealing shoes croupiers use in Las Vegas.
You remember when: bubble memories, home computers, superconductivity, pen computing, PDAs, Betamax, heads-up displays and Gallium Arsenide were all going to be the next big thing. And you probably played with Tinker Toys, Erector Sets and wooden blocks growing up and you still spin vinyl in your basement when nobody’s around.
You got a few years on me. We had a Commodore 128, and the first Atari system. Might have had a Tandy after the Commodore, can’t recall. I did learn Basic at one point, does that give me any cred?
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Grin …. dial phones bolted to the wall, AM radio, punch cards, 8 inch floppy disk, 6 ounce coke bottles, penny candy, 5 cent coke.
Things my grand kids have never seen and they think I have lost my mind if I tell them about my life as a young kid living 7 miles down a dirt road. Swimming in a dirt tank(pond) on a hot summer day.
Happy gardening
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Wow, I am an old Geek. Ahhhhh
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Grin … welcome to the ‘Old Geek’ squad!
Happy gardening
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Man…that hits you in the “old” age heart pretty hard. I’m only 48 and I did punch cards for my uncle, played with those toys (still have tinker toys), loved our dial up telephone in my parents bedroom as it had the extra long cord and I could drag it into my room and close the door to talk all night, and of course bought that digital watch even though it was “manly” looking. I remember in my typing class in 1980 learning to type and seeing a movie that showed the future being able to see someone when you talked to them on the phone and my teacher saying we would not see that in our lifetimes probably!!!
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🙂 telephones bolted to the wall.
When was the last time you saw someone ‘using’ a type writer?
Happy gardening
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Brings it all back, happy memories, thanks.
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Did we grow up together!?
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Grin … I’m was to young to serve in Kora’s war and to old to serve in Iraq I, GHW Bush’s war
Happy gardening
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