Age of the FC Community plus a lot of nostalgia

[vapviking]

This is a fun survey. Hope more members will participate. So us 2%ers--aka: The Elderly!!!!!!!--won't feel so alone.

"The Elders" has a much nicer ring to it...?

I'm 24 days from turning 71, the year I graduated from High School.

Please hurry back and change your vote when you get there! We are actively recruiting.
Last week I turned 73, the year I would have graduated college had I not dropped out in 72.

But I want to know, who is that lone soul in the .1%, the 80+ category?

 

[Bologna]

But I want to know, who is that lone soul in the .1%, the 80+ category?

What I really wanna know is, who that 1 (out of 797 of us) 80+, quite possibly 90+ yo is....? Talk about "stoner wisdom".... it'd prolly be pretty f'n cool to "peel that onion", so to speak....

 

[macbill]

If I had to guess, I'd say @lwien might be 80 +.

 

[Polarbearboy]

If I had to guess, I'd say @lwien might be 80 +.

Just to show how old I am: I remember Oh No! Mr. Bill! puppet videos from the late 70s early 80s Sat Nite Live. And I remember in spite of ALWAYS getting high before I watched.

 

[Okla68]

Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody, Twight Zone, Price is Right, the Indian on the screen when they turned TV Off at Midnight, All 3 channels !...74 + here.....started Cannabis in 1969 !

 

[jbm]

If I had to guess, I’d say that I’m old. Not older than dirt, but old enough to not know better.

 

[TigoleBitties]

Wow, just saw this thread for the first time. I was pretty surprised that my category 49-60 (I'm 53 so born in 1970) is only the fourth most common category

Some things I thought about that are cool about being my age:

• I witnessed the birth of the computer age and was the perfect age to embrace it. The first personal computers appeared right during the decade where I was 10-20 years old.
• I was a young adult when the internet was born so I escaped a childhood polluted by social media. I feel people my age benefited from just enough pre-internet memories to appreciate what the world is like pre and post internet. It's nigh impossible to really understand the world before the internet, or even the microprocessor if you never lived it.
• Saw the turn of the millenium.

A ton of political stuff also happened (berlin wall comes down, apartheid gone etc...) but I'm in tech so I'm more in tune with how some of these tech changes shaped us.

After I got into weed in my 20s, it was only natural to marry it with tech... and here I am!

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

I remember when the high beam switch used to be on the floor.

 

[coolbreeze]

Haven't used one of these in awhile:

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

These days, you'd probably break a flatscreen TV if you slammed the back of it with your fist.

I remember when that's how we used to fix a television set.

 

[TigoleBitties]

How many people know how these were used I wonder?

I've talked with kids who don't recognize that CDs are used for music having streamed every song they've ever heard. I think even vinyl might be more widely recognized as it's making a comeback.

 

[vapviking]

We had a tag sale 10 years ago and a boy about 12 asked, "What is that?"

It was the Smith Corona SCM portable typewriter I trucked off to college with in 1969...

 

[Sandrider1962]

Fun thread.... I remember when Cutting Edge Rock and Roll was only on AM radio in Southern New Mexico.... KOMA/Oklahoma City.... 8 tracks, Columbia Music club, lol.... A love that never dies....
61yrs.... smoking since '74. FC since '19
FC site has been an education... conversing with like minded folks in Europe, Australia, Canada & any of the other 49 states outside of Tejas....

 

[Canna Chameleon]

My Dad was a computer guy in the late 60’s. In the early 70s he’d bring home used Hollerith cards which we used for grocery lists and phone messages.

 

[budski]

LOL! Great read, "I'm so old our computer had a hand crank for cold start."

 

[Okla68]

In 1970 I worked for the Payroll Dept of a major Hospital in St. Louis. It was the transition time from hand manipulated checks to PunchCard driven checks. Data would be entered onto 2.5x6 inch cards. Then, these card results were Reentered to confirm the proper data...talk about a CLUSTERFUCK....the ONLY job I have ever had that I Hated Payday !!! People get really Upset when there is a mistake on their paycheck. They want their money NOW, Not the week it takes to Find and Reenter the correct data. And when you are talking about 1200+ employees, it dosen't take much of an error to cause FUBAR !!!

 

[Perfect_Speed4069]

At the risk of being accused trolling, I remember exactly where I was (in 1992) when I realised that nostalgia (based on mistaken/selective remembrance) would be the death of us all.

Depressingly, I've not shifted my view since then: the politics of nostalgia ("simpler times") have poisoned our politics and left many of us incapable of imagining a better tomorrow that is neither now nor then.

 

[coolbreeze]

At the risk of being accused trolling, I remember exactly where I was (in 1992) when I realised that nostalgia (based on mistaken/selective remembrance) would be the death of us all.

Depressingly, I've not shifted my view since then: the politics of nostalgia ("simpler times") have poisoned our politics and left many of us incapable of imagining a better tomorrow that is neither now nor then.

That assumes we're living in the past, but I'm not. I just have a long line of fond memories. It's hard to look forward to the future when your natural limit looms, and worse, the mess ahead seems formidable. But many of us are doing a bit of what we can there, and trust that if there's any hope it lies in the people who are coming into their own and their kids. I look forward to knowing we've changed our path.

 

[Perfect_Speed4069]

If there's any hope it lies in the people who are coming into their own and their kids.

Totally agree. I guess my point was not that nostalgia is problematic per se, but a future that takes its inspiration from (or aspires to recreate) a misremembered past is not a viable future. And however comforting it is, focusing on past achievements seems to restrict our ability to think of new ways to address difficulties, old and new. Not trying to harsh anyone's mellow btw. Always good to discuss

 

[coolbreeze]

a future that takes its inspiration from (or aspires to recreate) a misremembered past is not a viable future.

I completely agree with this, though I'll add that some of the past, both myth and reality, will always be helpful. I think it's in teaching people to discern that the answer lies.

And however comforting it is, focusing on past achievements seems to restrict our ability to think of new ways to address difficulties, old and new.

This can certainly be true, but I think our main longstanding crises are ones that requires us to stand up and face it, and I think understanding that we have made huge changes when we needed to, or have addressed technological challenges spectacularly should also inspire a little hope. Going to the moon, it turns out, isn't as hard as surviving the machinery we used to get there. But we can look at it and say, "some of that confidence or even driving fear would help." And knowing the cost in blood, lives, and fortunes--and crucially for us, time--we should take wisdom from the past and prevent the anti-democratic swing to the degree possible.

Not trying to harsh anyone's mellow btw. Always good to discuss

Absolutely. It's a good thing to consider, esp for some of us. ; )

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

My mother was an accountant all her life before retiring. She said the day she felt the most old is when she saw her first adding machine on display in the Smithsonian museum.

 

[Hippie Dickie]

LOL! Great read, "I'm so old our computer had a hand crank for cold start."

funny you should mention that - i lived inside a PDP-11 for a couple of years trying to launch my own business computer software company back in 1976. the boot loader to read the initialization sector from the hard drive was a 3 instruction sequence - using front panel switches to set the binary for the load instructions, toggle the load switch, then toggle the run switch. kind of like a hand crank.

that PDP-11 had 56 kbytes of ram and 10 MB of hard drive - 5 fixed, 5 removable. 14" platter.

 

[NYC_Frank]

Well .... made it to 68 and now officially in the final two years of the 61-70 percentile ... does it show?

 

[vapviking]

Well .... made it to 68 and now officially in the final two years of the 61-70 percentile ... does it show?

It may only show in your math skills.
I think you have 3 yrs yet to go in this boring category, you gotta break into 71 to level up.
Happy Birthday, young man!
We'll leave the light on for you.

 

[budski]

nostalgic! I had a power hitter back in the day! saw one at a buddy's house last month, he tried to give it to me but I just don't do joints any more.