[MarythePuppy6]

The other week I had to go to an electrical retailler (*cough* Comet *cough*) and I asked to buy a tape cassette for one of our aniquated voice recorders.

The sales chappy... a youth of about 18 or 19 years looked blankly at the small plastic cartidge in my hand when I asked for a cassette similar to the one I was holding.

He asked what it was and was it a new way of media recording, Y'know like a new mp3 player.

With shocked disgust I asked to see the manager (thinking he would be able to help me)

A Child not much older than one I was talking to earlier came out and said I had to go to one of the main branches as " we dont do old stuff anymore" and then tried to sell me a 30gb video ipod.

I feel old

[robstamps]

Being of a 1957 vintage (a very fine year apparently)... I can remember when all trolls looked like this: http://www.toyfanatic.com/images/trolls/wishnickred.jpg

I recently acquired some DVDs of my favourite programme in the late 50s... Torchy The Battery Boy.

Watch with Mother... waiting for the afternoon programmes to start and watching that interminable interlude... waiting ... waiting... for Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben or the Woodetops...

I also remember listening to 45s of my favourite pop bands... The Dave Clark Five; Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch; Freddie and the Dreamers; Adam Faith; names to conjure with...

In the 60s... Watching Pan's People dance on Top of the Pops (which one was your favourite...?). Blue Peter, Magpie, How?... The Man from Uncle... who did you want to be ...? Ilya Kuryakin or Napoleon Solo (or ... God forbid... Mr. Waverly...!). Supercar, Stingray, Thunderbirds...

The 70s... the magic of Georgie Best... the emergence of Punk... such great bands as London, Generation X, The Jam, The Clash and of course The Pistols... aaah the triumphal day when Sid Viscious (or was it Jonny Rotten) first said the 'F' word on british TV. Space 1999, UFO... that's how the future was going to be... Girls in Silver mini skirts and Purple Wigs on moonbase... Network 7, The Tube...

Funnily enough I find I can't remember very much after the start of the 1980s... when I started work full time... life's little distractions... surviving... marriage... supporting kids... battling life's vicissitudes...

Thanks Scott... you've made an old man very happy for a few minutes...!!!

[casinobonusa]

Whilst having a sort out the other week I discovered that all of my favorite old albums and compilations were stored away in my room... all on 'audio cassette'!!! I thought awesome I'll have a listen to some of the crap I used to like, I also found that there was a lot of stuff I'd actually like to listen to again I scoured the house top to bottom... in this modern age I couldn't a single tape player!!! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!?! I will now have to go out this weekend to try and find either an audio cassette walkman or a crappy old tape player to listen to my classics from a tinny little speaker!!!

[timgillmoreeztf]

aaah the triumphal day when Sid Viscious (or was it Jonny Rotten) first said the 'F' word on british TV.

Nope, it was Pistols guitarist Steve Jones who uttered the now immortal "You dirty F#&*ing bastard," addressing Bill Grundy (as chronicled in the Dan Treacy-penned TV Personalites single, "Where's Bill Grundy Now?").

[pprropeciaaa]

Ahh, nostalgia!

Being a child of '77, I remember wood veneer tv's being considered stylish, George Micheal was a fashion icon for many straight men (as was cheesy, long-haired model Fabio), the Rubiks Cube was diversifying into such toybox greats as Rubiks Snake and Rubiks Magic and the ZX Spectrum was the king of home computing.

Happy days.

[Carfanate]

Hehe, I was the Computer King of all my friends as I had a Commodore VIC-20 with 3K of RAM onboard that was expandable to 16K with a housebrick-sized module I could plug into the back...

Note: that is Kb and not Mb...

[DavidShreder]

I remeber the day my mate got the Sectrum 128k!! what a machine... only to be followed by the +3... what??? no tape player???? so whats alll this 'floppy disk none-sense???

I like my computers to go URRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNN UN UN UN EEEEEERRRRRR AAAAARRRRRRRRAAAARRRR UUUURRRRRRR...
etc...

[Zebrabitch]

i feel so young. unless crabbi is really really old

ooh, shell suits. i got a pink purple and white one for my 7 or 8th birfday

and reebok pumpswith the pump up tongue thingy, never had them-and now i cant get any-pooh
i still have a cassette deck if anyone wants it? antique like that is bound to be worth a bit

[Afigenatjola]

ah, the commodore vic-20. you lucky SOB. i had a TI 99-4A. (i should have held out). it was pretty and shinny (hehe, just noticed it is not too far off from my titanium mac).

remember how you used to connect to a modem? you took the phone itself and plugged it into one of these babies!

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/brochure/images/mus_128.jpg

[nofkayalk]

remember how you used to connect to a modem? you took the phone itself and plugged it into one of these babies!

HA! I remember that from War Games.

[illiniastibly]

Who remembers playing this and always getting stuck for ages on Tonfa?

[Amoniustauns]

Man i had a legion of those things in my bedroom when i was a kid! Most of them from scout camps

[PefeFoesk]

Sounds like Crabbi and I are about the same vintage... I remember most of the things in the links posted already... although I wasn't in to most of them (I did like some of the stuff on the marathon candy bar link)... btw I think I might still have one of those 'vintage' trolls in a box of 'keepsakes' (lol) in my attic. My older sister used to sew clothes for them. Ahhh the old days.. it's easy for geezers like me to wax philosophic about stuff like b&w tv ( I mean before there was such a thing as color tv).. old tv shows.. toys.. 15 cent a gallon gas.. 5 cent a scoop ice cream.. 10 cent comic books... etc etc. Being old has a way of creeping up on you cause I don't feel as old as I am.

[desmond001]

billy joel's 'glass house' was the first gift i got from a girl when i came to US in 1980. replaced the LP with cd last year.

pete

[foltdan]

i feel so young. unless crabbi is really really old

Rottunpunk... the sad truth is that crabbi is really, really old... and feeling older by the minute...!

[jokilewqs]

Hehe, I was the Computer King of all my friends as I had a Commodore VIC-20 with 3K of RAM onboard that was expandable to 16K with a housebrick-sized module I could plug into the back...

Note: that is Kb and not Mb...

When I went to college... we had a computer... it worked on punchcards... now that's what I call a classy machine...

[indartwm]

Sounds like Crabbi and I are about the same vintage... I remember most of the things in the links posted already... although I wasn't in to most of them (I did like some of the stuff on the marathon candy bar link)... btw I think I might still have one of those 'vintage' trolls in a box of 'keepsakes' (lol) in my attic. My older sister used to sew clothes for them. Ahhh the old days.. it's easy for geezers like me to wax philosophic about stuff like b&w tv ( I mean before there was such a thing as color tv).. old tv shows.. toys.. 15 cent a gallon gas.. 5 cent a scoop ice cream.. 10 cent comic books... etc etc. Being old has a way of creeping up on you cause I don't feel as old as I am.

Hi MikeW... you're not old... if your profiles up to date I have two years on you... (I am 49 next Thursday...).

Hang onto that troll my friend... some young fool will pay a fortune for it on eBay... {bwahahahahahaha! Oldies win again...!!!}

PS... what is a 'whippersnapper' anyway?

[golfmenorca]

Any of you old timers remember these?

Yep, most of the items you list are familiar. The other day my son ran downstairs with a cassette with about 8" of tape peeled out. He was off to throw it away because it was broken. I thought it was silly that he didn't know how to wind it back onto the spool. It was such a common thing. Then I realized, I probably didn't have a working player in the house, nor would they be easy to find anymore. I guess my ancient LP's are museum pieces.

I had a VIC-20 too, but I complained and pointed out the failures of it, and was granted an upgrade to a C-64 w/tape drive. We spent a year or two a C-64 hackers (we made small internal mods), before upgrading. I moved to the Franklin 1200 w/Z-80 card (Apple 2 competitor), while my friends moved to C-128 and Amigas. We studied 6502 ML programming using the Byte magazine book series.

The biggest threat to the kids playing outside are stupid adults. People who run stop signs, ignore traffic laws and speed through subdivisions. We let our kids walk to school (in a group), and ride bikes around the neighborhood. We've also discussed and observed the dangers--we saw a guy get run down on the sidewalk (and roll over the car hood and land on the pavement) as a driver was in too much of a hurry after getting gas to bother to look before racing out. Our kids have been nearly run down by someone flying out of their driveway. That and given the attitude these people throw. It really makes you not want to go outside.

Ah well... Once upon a time.. I remember the original Atari system, playing the Intellivision, and then the Atari 2600 when it came out. I still have my original yellow Sony sports walkman casette w/AM/FM in a box somewhere (I wonder if it works). Those were the days, riding bikes half a mile to get to the pool, the giant steel play structures with ladders and slides more than 20 feet high, and firing off model rockets in Dearborn without being suspected as terrorists. (Well, there was the time one guy got a paintball gun for his birthday, the batty neighbor called the cops, and they surrounded the house during the b-day party. Then they demanded on the loudspeaker that they throw the guns out and come out of the house, but we were 16-17 yrs old, tall, TMNT comic collecting, pale faced geeks--clearly much to be feared.) Going to arcades to play games before the zoning laws made them illegal. Cars big enough to actually put your bike in the trunk. And who could forget the high schoolers throwing firecrackers out the car windows at you at intersections or when passing you on your bike. yeah.. good times...

[FallJimerks]

[/COLOR][/SIZE][/I]PS... what is a 'whippersnapper' anyway?

whipper snapper

Read meaning 1. until you reach the first full stop. after that is childish tat made up by some imature moron. It's what old people used to call young people, see this quote from www.word-detective.com:
"Whippersnapper" is a somewhat archaic term, rarely heard today outside of movies, and then usually from the mouth of a character portrayed as chronologically-challenged and hopelessly old-fashioned to boot. A "whippersnapper" is an impertinent young person, usually a young man, whose lack of proper respect for the older generation is matched only by his laziness and lack of motivation to better himself.

One might imagine that the term derives from the understandable temptation among more productive citizens to "snap a whip" at such sullen layabouts, but the whips in question actually belonged to the whippersnappers themselves. Such ne'er-do-wells were originally known as "whip snappers" in the 17th century, after their habit of standing around on street corners all day, idly snapping whips to pass the time. The term was been based on the already-existing phrase, "snipper-snapper," also meaning a worthless young man, but in any case, "whip snapper" became "whippersnapper" fairly rapidly.

Though "whippersnapper" originally referred to a young man with no visible ambition, the term has changed somewhat over the years, and today is more likely to be applied to a youngster with an excess of both ambition and impertinence.

[astefecyAvevy]

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