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How young is everyone?
- Thread starter sam_dean
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In the 90s my great grandma and her sisters died in their 90s.
Her daughter died at 90 last December. I then realized that WW2 started when she was 9.
Ended when she was 13. 1st moon landing occurred when she was 37.
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Actually in a way I did answer.
I am not sure what were you are trying to say with your "if you don't like iPhone buy Android" type comment.
It’s funny but I have increasingly felt like the oddball for not wanting to share every aspect of my life publicly. I’ve had to ask friends not to post pictures of me on social media. I have nothing to hide, but it seemed like bragging to post vacation photos. I completely dropped Facebook because I never had anything I thought was worth sharing.
But in no way did I consider a post asking age ranges any violation of privacy or consider it was for nefarious purposes. This is a pretty interesting thread to me.
In a reversal of age stereotypes, my Dad and I commonly get into arguments about this when it comes to my 2 year old daughter. My wife and I generally keep her off all social media, and instead have a shared album that family is welcome to subscribe to instead. Drives my Dad nuts - calls us a bunch of luddites and can't believe we haven't set up a TikTok channel for her yet.
I’m 56. My first computer was a TRS-80 too! Bought it in 1978. Well, my Dad bought it and I paid him back at a glacially slow pace. Started with 4K of memory and eventually worked up to a whopping 48K with a floppy disk. I still have it and it still “boots up” but my media is shot sadly.
When I was a little kid my neighbor called me the 40 year old midget. I was usually more interested in sitting around talking to adults than I was playing. I think he called it. I always felt around 40.
(Sorry for the midget term. Not sure if it’s offensive but it does seem dated)
Ugh, so typical from someone of your generation.
Hehe just kidding. Couldn’t resist 🤭
You’re not alone. I got rid of all my albums (mostly soundtracks to sci-fi movies) thinking I was modernizing. Still feel like an idiot and my gut hurts whenever I think about it. On the plus side that experience made me hold on to my Laserdiscs with both hands. 🤓I liked to think I was smarter than the average kid back in the 80s. Given that so many of the kids I went to school with never really got past highschool in their development I had some justification.
But, with certain things it turns out I was pretty much an idiot. When I was 16 I had my driver's license and a car. I let my Diamond Back bicycle go to kids down the street - a regret I have to this day. That brand of bike was king in BMX then (along with Redline and Oakley).
I also let my C64 and C128 go in the mid-90s because I had a PC!
I used to joke that I have nothing in common with anyone born after Star Wars. (1977)
I’m glad that was only a joke because my best friend was born after Star Wars.
My dad simply brought home the TRS-80. We were not expecting it. My sister messed with it a bit then went back to her own things. It was interesting for a while, but ultimately I wasn't into learning BASIC or sitting there typing code in from magazines - so I moved on too.
It's only when the C64 allowed me to play already created games that I got serious.
I still have mine thankfully! My nephew will sometimes snicker at my old tech as if he personally developed the iPhone. I try to explain that to understand tech from previous eras you have to compare it to what was available previously rather than to what we have today. VCRs had terrible picture quality but they were far better than not recording anything and missing a show. Early cell phones were terrible compared to iPhones but they were infinitely better than getting stuck along the road without any phone.
I actually had a used Betamax machine that I bought from my Dad’s coworker. I paid $275 in 1980 for that. According to the inflation calculator that’s about $1000 today. 😳
It was worth it. I was able to record all of the Star Trek episodes available at that time. Bwahahaha 🤓
It’s funny that most of my friends are Apple nuts and yet they seem oblivious to what Apple has released. When the new iOS releases they’ll ask me what’s in it. When the iPhone releases they’ll ask me about it. I’m dumbfounded that they won’t, at a minimum, go to the Apple site to check it out.
Oh I spent many hours with my best friend at the time typing in games from magazines. I did a lot in BASIC and later went to the university to become a software engineer. The TRS-80 was a huge influence on me. At 12 years old when I got it I finally felt like I was out of the dark ages. The C64 looked really nice but my finances wouldn’t support both.
If you already know how to pick the right people to be around you are doing great. Because picking the right people is the key and the hardest thing to accomplish. Unless your approach is very superficial gold-digger like.
The problem with the smart people is that 100% of the time they will use you for their own gain. In order to achieve that they will even pretend and make you believe that you are "one of the boys". You know there are plenty of people who are very proud of being invited to the dinner without realizing that they are actually in fact "the dinner".
My Dad brought home a CoCo when I was little - I remember playing Sands of Egypt on it. My nerdy side sometimes wishes I was born about 10 years earlier, as I was too young to really appreciate the era of hobbyist computing in the late 70s and early 80s.
I still have thsoe Betamax tapes and 2 players today. I just fear that playing it would result in a stuck tape that either melted over time or spread fungus due to humidity.
What's important in the collection though is that there are some home movies I'd love to show off after half a century has passed. I remembered my dad transferring footage from a Video8 to Betamax. That same Video8 tape is compatible with Digital8 camcorder with FW400. So in theory I could easily move them to any old PPC or early Mac with FW that I still have.
The reason we went Mac in 2000 was because of iMovie. At first I thought... "no more games!"We made a cost analysis and it came out it was cheaper to buy a 2000 iMac G3 DV SE 200nm + Sony Digital8 camcorder than to hire someone to do video for us.
Doing so taught us a valuable skill that very few had a time. There was Adobe Premier for Windows 98SE back then but the software itself cost nearly that of an iMac and was more complicated/buggy.
This was months before OS9.2.2 was about to transition to OS X.
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A balance would be good and a good head to know you're being taken for a ride.
I have suffered friendship where in it led to unpaid loans then the person hides or unfinished projects. I'd want to distance myself from such bad decisions.
Just know when to exit or else you've wasted time you may not have much anymore.
What I wish I pursued were instances where in financial literacy improved beyond savings account. Such as when I had money during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and then buying into telco stocks at their all time low. This was at a time when prepaid SIMs was about to be introduced months later. I'd be enjoying >$200k annual div for the last 2 decades. The purpose of which is for peace of mind if ever something catastrophic occurs like losing work/business.
I could point to a few points in time I made a bad decision that I could have avoided if I was a bit more critical with what sort of mindset or habits the person I was looking at had.
Use knowing your worth and the worth of your time and I would think it would lead to better choices in life.
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Yea that was what so fun back then was the social aspect. I loved to help the ones who wanted help, and people could learn by watching me.
Can you expand on how you decide somebody is one of the "smart people"? Is it their behavior? Or how much formal education they have? Or their job? Or something else? I'm just wondering, my intent isn't to question your post.