Yes, and the curmudgeon conversations about how remotes were the epitome of laziness because how hard was it to just get up and turn the knob? But if that was the case, why was it always you (the kid) that had to do the getting up?

Does anyone else miss the old tube sets, because they were a nice warm perch for the cat to sit on?

Naw! I too had typing for a trimester in ninth grade and glad I did. With college and then working in IT it was beneficial. I don't feel too old!

Typing classes are akin to required slide rule classes for engineering students, I managed to test out of that one since I had to do a 6 week slide rule module, for physics class, in high school.

And, now they are having some high school, and even college classes for slide rule, because the students seem to get a better grasp of mathematical functions by using a rule. Must be why I still use, and collect, slides, perhaps I am just ahead of the curve for once in my life.

Bill

That's amazing. I would have guessed that they were anachronisms by now, a curiosity on display beside the Babbage difference engine. But you're right, I got the basic trig from just using the trig scales.

We used to have slide rule competitions, all the way up to the State level. Just a timed list of computations, progressively harder, and some of those kids were machines with eye-blink speed. I had no chance; I thought they were obsolete even then and refused to practice. Except I won second at District by putting the slide rule aside and doing it mentally using the Trachtenberg System that I'd modified for three significant digits. Might have been first had not the test monitor interrupted to accuse me of cheating

Do anyone but engineers use electronic calculators any more? Other than cell phones ... we'll soon be three generations behind: slide rule, calculator, desktop computer ...

You know you're old when you sign up for a keyboarding class and when you get there you find out it's typing not a music keyboard.

Don't woorry about old age, it doesn't last.

I remember when 'Word Processor' was a title for the secretary cleared to operate the Wang machine!

I still have the slide rule I bought as a freshman and I learned to operate one of these:

I pretty much stopped using calculators when my HP 11c died... I can't think in anything but RPN. I got an app for my phone but it's not the same.

At the age of 102 years young my grandfather was still saving up for his old Age.

Cheers

A major advantage to the slide rule is that you really must set up the problem in a mathematically correct manner before you even pick up the slide rule, and estimate your result so you at least get the decimal point in the right place. With calculators, it's too easy to just start pressing buttons and blindly accept whatever number it spits out at the end.

I am young and don't know about the slide rule but I am intrigued. The same goes for RPN, I had to look that up.

Agreed, so when I use a new calculator I always run a few test equations to ensure I know how to use it.

Yes, the advantage of a slide rule is it imposes the need to understand what you're doing and what the numbers actually mean. That's very different from entering some data points and getting an answer.

They were like tuning forks. We also discovered the doppler effect allowed you to use the volume button to change the channel by moving the whole device quickly towards the receiver.

I feel like there is a corollary with reading maps ...versus just trusting a GPS device to hand you an accurate route.

Oh man, that really gets to me. Here in Manhattan, we have our own north, south, east, and west, since the island is tipped slightly east (at the north end). But disregarding that, everyone knows which way north is, because the avenues go north-south, and the streets go east-west. You can say, "I'll meet you on the northeast corner of 53rd St and 10th Ave," because it is so precise. My 24-year-old daughter can do this, but she says her peers can't because they use smartphone apps to get where they are going. Argh! The city is so well laid out, learn a thing or two!

Nobody would expect someone who was laid up in bed for 6 months to be able to ride a bike 50 miles. However people forget that we need to maintain basic mental skills through regular use (exercise) or they go away. I never cease to be amazed (just an figure of speech, actually I'm used to it) by how dependent on their gadgets people have gotten.

See you're active on several threads, always enjoy the comments on whatever the subject. Never been to Long Island, doesn't Bill O'Reilly live there?

Yes, so does Hanity. Long Island has had its share of A$$holes.

One of the fun parts of being old was handing my 20 year old daughter a Rand-McNally paper map when Google Maps let her down on a trip.

You know you're old when you get excited about a new BF thread on bunions, and you respond to it, and tell your wife about it, and order a bunion-gadget your learned about in the thread...

I was on Craigslist earlier looking for Univegas,

Does that make me old or just a renaissance man...?

My dog could change stations simply by the clinkng of the tags in his collar. I always thought that he was smarter than the average GSD.

This may have been posted elsewhere, but you know that you are getting old when you watch re-runs of your favorite childhood shows and the "mature" women in the show now look young and oh so hot.

Mrs. Brown, of My Favorite Martian fame, now looks positively yummy. Oh my!

Along the same vein ... you know you're getting old when every other commercial you see on the channels you watch is a new pill of some sort.