Conference thebay::joyoflex

... when a coin minted the year you were born is worth more than face value.

... when *all* of the coins in your pocket were minted after you hit puberty.

... when the oldest coin in your pocket was minted *after* you were born.

... when you can remember spending a Mercury dime. [I can't. - WL]

It was while I was counting my change that I came up with the topic.  I'm not
yet that old chronologically, but lately I've been creeping toward mental
decrepitude.  The fact that I even started this topic is evidence of that!

Wook (@ 27)

... when your back goes out more often than you do

    shop assistants offer to help you carry a small package to your car!

    
    ...everyone refers to you as "youngster".
    
    

Re several previous

numismatics
-----------

When you remember spending a Mercury dime, and remember thinking about
the fact that it was in good condition, and thinking, what the hell,
their as common as buffalo nickels!

aching backs
------------

I heard that phrased as  "... when your back peters out, and vice versa."


And now some new stuff.

When you realize that most people around you weren't yet born when your
favorite music was first popular.   (For me, that's early-to-mid-60s
bubble gum and rock and roll.)

When you realize that it isn't common any more for people in our
industry to know how to read a punched tab card.

When your hair stylist says she's going to her tenth high school
reunion, and you realize that you've been out of high school longer
than she's been alive.

Dave C.

	Re: 725.5
    
    >>	You know you're getting old ...

	>>	When you realize that it isn't common any more
    	>>	for people in our industry to know how to read
    	>>	a punched tab card.
    
    When there are people in our industry who don't know what
    a punched tab card is!

    You know you're getting old when someone mentions "...doing THE
    THANG" and your first though is of bowel habits.
    

    From a song by the Weavers....
    
    
    "How do I know that my youth is all spent,
    my get up and go, has got up and went.
    But inspite of it all I'm able to grin,
    when I think of the places my get up has been!"
    
    
    Bonnie

    Or the similar lyric I think from Tom Paxton which I've forgotten
    but went something to the effect
    
    "I get up each morning and read the obits 
    and if my names not there ......"
    
    
    Stuart
    
    

    When your kiddy does a somersault as easy as pie, but when you just
    put your head down, you wonder how the hell you EVER could do this!

I had my appendix out last April and my surgeon had braces on his teeth.

Larry

    in re .9
    
    That's a verse from the same song...
    
    "I get up each morning and dust off my wits
    open the paper and read the obits,
    and if I'm not there I know I'm not dead,
    so I eat a good breakfast and roll back to bed."
    
    Bonnie

    
    ...when you look in your medicine cabinet and find Maalox, Dentugrip,
    and Preparation-H!

... when you remember the Stones the *first* time around

... when someone puts up a poster of James Dean and everyone except
    you says, "Who's that".

... you watch professional athletes and remember watching their fathers


Hey! Whatzis gotta do with Joyoflex any way?  So in the spirit of the 
notesfile


... when you remember when "awesome" was a respectable word, reserved for
    unusual situations

... when "wicked" referred to bad witches who dispensed poison apples and
    cast evil spells.



Clay

    
    ...when you can remember wiring a plug-board for an IBM 402, et al.
    
    ...when you can remember sitting around the radio on Sunday evening
    listening to Jack Benny,  Fred Allen, and Charlie Macarthy (and his
    friend Mortimer Snerd).  [Ten points to anyone who can remember
    the name of Charlie's other friend (Effie _____).]

    [Ten points to anyone who can remember
    the name of Charlie's other friend (Effie _____).]
    
    Clinker (Klinker?).  That's from hearing re-runs not the original.

    More meaning shift examples:
    
    ... when gay meant carefree
    
    ... when stoned meant drunk -- and you realized that Dylan didn't
        mean alcohol in "Rainy Day Women 12 and 35"
                                                             
    And:
    
    ... when you listen to sixteen year olds and realize that they've
        developed a generational slang to confuse YOU!

    
       When you remember at 16 thinking everyone over 25 looked like
       a senior citizen and now you think everyone under 25 looks 16.
    
    
    
    (And they do too!!!)
    
    

    I'ma amazed no-one has rattled-off the Fred Wedlock classic yet; well,
    I don't want to excite you to death, so here are a few snippets ...
    
    "When you're feeling as stiff as a skinhead's boot,
     Rub on Vick where you use to splash Brut,
     And when the latest punk fashion is your wedding suit...."
    
    and of course....
    
    "When it takes you all night to do what you used to do all night...."
    
    R|tch^d

    When I started in this business, many moons ago, air hostesses were
    sophisticated older women, full of mystery.  Nowadays, they are
    young girls.  Have the airlines changed their recuitment policies?
    
    IJH.

    Re: .20  [air hostesses]
    
    You really have a few years on if you remember flying when they had
    stewardesses instead of "cabin attendents", and that all stewardesses
    had to be unmarried (which by default meant childless).
    
    

    Re .17:
    
    >... when stoned meant drunk ...
    
    And before that, when "stoned" meant being the target of hurled
    rocks, either physical or figurative.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re .21
    
    And when the 'Stews were all registered nurses?  and when the drinks
    were free?  and when they gave you a complimentary pack of cigarettes
    as you boarded?  and  when the "Super D Constellation" was king of the
    sky!  t'was another world, and it long dead.

    seems to me the term for drunk once upno a time was "plastered" ..
    used rarely now ...

    .....you have a different doctor for every body part!!
    
    					;-)
    
    MWR
    

    ...when your narrow waist and your broad mind begin to change places
    
    when you remember the original Rupert, Phantom. Batman comics and
    movies
    
    When you remember that movies required you to be able to read ;-)
    
    and quickly
    
    
    when your PC stood 8 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 30 feet long (mine was
    a Ferranti 'Pegasus')
    
    
    When radios had LETs (light emitting transistors = valves)
    
    When you had 5 hole paper tape as input and output....
    
    
    derek
    Who is about to celebrate another birthday 8-( and is still accused of
    being a 'kidult' by his son. 
    
    

>   <<< Note 725.26 by LAMHRA::WHORLOW "Venturers do it in the bush" >>>
                      -< Someone over 21, going on 16.. >-

>   when your PC stood 8 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 30 feet long (mine was
>   a Ferranti 'Pegasus')
    
    When the first project that you ever managed as a young engineer shows up 
    as an item in a "You know you are getting old" topic ...
    
    Jim

    
    
    G'day,
    
    >>   When the first project that you ever managed as a young engineer
    >>   shows up as an item in a "You know you are getting old" topic ...
     
    
    
     I'm proud and honoured to make your aquaintance.
    
    Pegasus was a _fine_ machine. 39 bit words and a clock so you could see
    when your time on the machine was over.  Wonderful!
    
    Pegasus was my first machine........ There have been many since, but
    none are the same as the first ;-)
    
    
    derek
    
    
    ps
    
    I used it in 1965 when the design was already 11? years old.  First on
    the drawing board in 1954??
    
    
    
    

    
    .... when your son comes home from school and shows you a picture
    of your first computer - in a history book !!!
    
    (Honest !  It was an Elliott (later ICL) 920A, and it was featured
    as a museum piece in a "History of Technology" article.) 
                
    .... when you proudly mention that you went to Jimi Hendrix' last
    concert, and everybody around you says "Jimi who ?"
    
    Ian

Re:    <<< Note 725.28 by LAMHRA::WHORLOW "Venturers do it in the bush" >>>
    
>   Pegasus was a _fine_ machine. 39 bit words and a clock so you could see
>   when your time on the machine was over.  Wonderful!
    :    
    :    
>   ps
>   
>   I used it in 1965 when the design was already 11? years old.  First on
>   the drawing board in 1954??
    
    You are probably correct. I joined Ferranti in 1953 and worked for 18
    months or so on the old Mk 1* machines (Williams' Tube CRTs for "fast" 
    memory, but they also had drums with a guaranteed access time of 20 msec 
    ... not much progress in that department!).
    
    Meantime the Pegasus design was being worked on by a joint development team 
    that was led by people from the government-backed NRDC. As a consequence, 
    it was probably the first machine whose instruction set was designed by a 
    programmer, rather than a hardware type. The designer is no longer alive, 
    sadly, but given time I might remember his name.
    
    Another interesting oddity of Pegasus arose from the fact that computers 
    were so rare at that time that most companies/organizations owning one (!) 
    would put it in a "fish-bowl" enclosure and show it off to VIP visitors.
    As a Sales gimmick Ferranti had Van den Plas (the specialist coachwork 
    people for Rolls Royce and Bentley) design and produce the outer skins ... 
    they had a mirror finish and 17 coats of paint.
    
    I think I saw the prototype Pegasus in London in 1954, and took over
    the development project for the production version when it started up 
    (in Manchester) around the end of '55 or the beginning of '56.
    
    -Jim

    Re .30:

>   ...
>   it was probably the first machine whose instruction set was designed by a 
>   programmer, rather than a hardware type. The designer is no longer alive, 
>   sadly, but given time I might remember his name.

    I just remembered ... it was Chris Strachey.

   -Jim

    I know I am old when the photograph of me at Woodstock in Life magazine
    was re-published in a 20TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE!
    
    "When Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."
    
                                                    -Tom Lehrer
    
    -roger 
    
    

    G'day,...
    
    
     Remember Initial Orders? an operating system in uder 2k words! There
    were about 3 blocks left, as I recall and someone where I worked (Road
    Research Lab, MoT) doctored them to punch out "Happy Christmas" if the
    debug switch?? was on!
    
    We also doctored the tube display so it drove a tv, and a Decca tape
    drive so that it read a special tape and sent the output to a speaker.
    The TV showed a traffic simulation - a big blob in the centre of the
    top half of the (round) crt was a slow truck, random moving bits from
    the left on the top line were faster cars, and random bits moving right
    on the bottom half of the display were cars goingthe other way. Every
    now and then a car would overtake the truck..... and if it collided
    with bits going the other way, the tape would start up and spin along.
    The speaker would  announce "You _really_ must be careful when trying
    to overtake!"  Ahhh computing was _fun_ in those days....
    
    Oh yes remember STORE USE? 16 instructions that went through the (drum)
    memory and determined how many negative words(instructions) there were,
    formatted the output and punched it. I remember the middle instruction
    went   16 0 10 4   or something like that
    
    16 0 10 punched the contents of the register 0, modified by the top
    part of register 4 to a tape. At some point, however, register 4
    pointed to this instruction and the pattern 16 0 10 came out as
    <cr><lf>.  
    
    Wonderful.....
    
    
    
    Telling of this machine recently, to a young bloke, I talked of
    swapping the contents of two locations without using a third location
    (or register or anything). Blew him away, it did.... had some mental
    block that said it couldn't be done...
    
    
    such were the tricks? of the time.
    
    
    See ya
    
    derek
    
    

    Re: .33, an "exchange" instruction
    
    Some PDP-1s had a "SWP" instruction which exchanged the contents
    of the AC and IO registers.
    
    The PDP-6 and PDP-10 had an EXCH instruction which exchanged the
    contents of a register with any memory location.
    
    Then there are the algorithms to do the same thing without using
    a third register:  to exchange A and B
    
    	A  <==  A .xor. B
    	B  <==  A .xor. B
    	A  <==  A .xor. B
    
    The same instruction repeated three times; very unusual, and it works
    on any VAX machine.  I don't think your young bloke was up on his
    algorithms.

    	The PDP-8 has a "swap byte" instruction which exchanges the two
    halves of the 12 bit accumulator. I wonder if he would have been happy
    with 6 bit bytes? Incidentally, the French for "byte" is "octet", and
    the idea of a 6 bit "octet" would probably boggle a lot of the new
    generation of French computer scientists.
    
    	Anyone remember about 17 years ago there were strong rumours in the
    computer press that IBM was going to introduce the 9 bit byte in its
    "next range"? The proposed motive was to handle all the extra
    characters in European languages.

RE last ten or so.

You know you're getting old when you read those entries and actually
*understand* them......

;-)
Arie
(who once wrote an INTCODE interpreter for the PDP8 -- in 2K of memory!)

(.... and who was proud to say that he had forgotten all of it, until you guys
came..... ;-);-))

    
    ...when you can recall seeing Whirlwind I in operation in MIT's Barter
    Building (1955).
    
    ...when you can recall working with 90-column, round holed punched
    cards (used in Burroughs punched cards systems).

When a kid you know exclaims: 

"You were alive before there were calculators???"

or says to you,

"You're pretty cool for an old guy."

You know you're getting old ...
	when you feel the irresistable urge to reminisce 
	about the "Good Ole Days".

    G'day
    
    
    >When a kid you know exclaims:
    >
    >"You were alive before there were calculators???"
     
    
    
    in my case...
    "You were in computers before I was alive!" and he now works for
    Digital!
    
    ...When you used to check the results of your pegasus program by
    tabulating the results using a Hollerith card sorter/counter using the
    cards of data that were used to create the magtapes that the Pegasus
    used....
    
    When you can still remember rationing....
    and London trams.....
    and wooden seats in 3rd class carriages on God's Wonderful Railway
    (GWR)
    
    derek
    
    
    
    

    When you meet an old girlfriend from high school, and you think
    it's her mother!
    
    Lee

. . . when a couple of folks who died recently are real, not historical,
figures to you.


________[forget his name], creator of Rocket J. [Rocky] Squirrel, Bullwinkel
	Moose, Boris Badinov, and Natasha Fatale

Joe Foy, from the 1967 Red Sox "Impossible Dream Team"

    
    ...when you can remember all of your school desks had ink wells (with
    ink in them) and you learned penmanship with a wooden pen with a 
    replaceable metal nib.
    
    ...when you can remember seeing your brothers go off to serve in WW-II.

    re .41:  
    
    
    			Jay Ward, RIP

    
    When you can remember...
    
    	_BEING_ on Dick Clark's Bandstand out of Philly
    
    	The universal panic following Sputnik I
    
    	Programming a PDP-12 in the DIAL monitor
    
    	EE curricula where they taught only analog electronics
    
    	78 RPM records
    
    	Joe McCarthy's hearing on TV
    
    	Houses that had no TV, and _not_ by choice.
    
    	Amos and Andy on Radio (they were on before Bob and Ray)
    
    	-- Glinch (who'd better stop before he gets depressed)

        Elizabeth and Phil's wedding...

        California air raid drills...

    How about school fire escapes consisting of 4-foot diameter tubular
    slides to get you from the top floor down to ground level. The first
    two guys down would slide on a burlap bag to polish the metal so
    everyone following would slide faster.  Fire drill were GREAT fun!

        Geez, some of you are OLD!  :-)
        
        Dan

    Re: .44
    
    >  78 RPM Records
    
       ...played on an old Victor phonograph with a steel stylus and no 
       electronic amplification!   (Remember the "His Masters Voice"
       trademark.)
    
    
       Going back a little further...listening to cylindrical records on
       the old Edison phonograph in the attic.

    Watching film strips and reel-to-reel movies in high school (now
    everything is shown on VCRs).
    
    Not knowing that the "Wizard of Oz" changed from black and white
    to color (the parents couldn't afford a color TV)

    listening to the magical wire recorder

    ...When you start coughing up dust.....

Having dance lessons in grade school with the music coming from a crank Victrola

    �>  78 RPM Records
    �
    �   ...played on an old Victor phonograph with a steel stylus and no 
    �   electronic amplification!   (Remember the "His Masters Voice"
    �   trademark.)
    
    Steel stylus? Arriviste nonsense.  Next you know they'll be bringing in
    Dansettes. Everyone knows that a proper stylus is just a chip of wood
    that you have to sharpen every time you use it (I've still got an HMV
    tin that contained them).

    
    ...if you can remember your family being issued ration coupons to buy
       food and gasoline.  (With a sticker on the car windshield to
       indicate which ration category was authorized for that vehicle.)
    

    I don't recall where I saw this...could have been in this conference.
    
    First you forget names.
    
    
    
    Then you forget faces.
    
    
    
    Then you forget to pull your fly up.
    
    
    
    Then you forget to pull your fly down.

        ...when sex goes from tri-weekly, to try weekly, to try weakly.

    Re: <<< Note 725.57 by NHASAD::KRINER "tanstaafl" >>>

    A spaceship lands in the Belgian Congo. A Little Green Man gets out
    and walks up to the nearest person and says, "Take me to your
    leader!" The individual replies, "Lamumba, Mobutu, or Casavubu?"
    The L.G.M. says,
    
    "I will dance with you later. First take me to your leader."
    
    Bill