No-tech; was: Funny

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Fountain pen!??
We had monitors before anyone could afford a fountain pen. Ink monitors.
It was their job each morning for a week to fill up the inkwell on each
desk. Then we dipped our nibbed pens into the inkwells and started to
write. Nibbed pens were fun. You could use them to flick ink across the
room (the walls and ceiling bore testimony of this), or, if preferred,
onto the back of the girl in front. In combination with a strong rubber
band they also made fairly lethal weapons. Can't do any of those fun
things these days...

And I still have a Parker 61 fountain pen that was given to me in 1969,
and it still works fine.

Roger Shuttleworth
London, Ontario
Canada

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+rshuttleworth=activplant.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+rshuttleworth=activplant.com at lists.frameusers.co
m] On Behalf Of Diane Gaskill
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 6:11 AM
To: Roberts, Katie; framers at FrameUsers.com
Subject: OT: No-tech; was: Funny

Ah yes, the good old(en) days of low-tech.  Or maybe I should say
no-tech.

I wrote my first reports with a hand-held device.  Nope, not a Palm
Pilot or
a hand held PC.  This hand-held device was called a FOUNTAIN PEN.
Remember
fountain pens?  Smeary, smelly ink that got all over your fingers and
took
forever to dry.  You had to write each letter by hand.  And there was no
such thing as white-out.  Make a mistake?  Do the whooole page over.
:-(

Ball point pens came out a few years later.  And white out too.  Wheee.
Calculators did not come out 'till after I was out of college.  Changed
the
world - if you could afford one, that is.

We use CAD to design things today.  Back in college we used something
called
a drafting board.  And we used hand-held devices called PENCILS.  They
were
better than fountain pens because you could actually erase your mistakes
and
not have to do the whole page over. :-)

The first computer I ever used had tubes in it.  It cost a million
dollars
and would add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Programming was in
assembly
language.  Punch cards and green-bar printouts.  Advanced technology?
Well,
maybe.  Make mistake?  Do the whole punch card over. And watch out for
hanging chad.  Whoops, no, we didn't have hanging chad back then.  That
was
invented in the "election" of 2000.

Kids today don't know how easy they have it.  Hey, kids 10 years ago
don't
know how easy they had it, either.

The fun (and funny) thing about all this is that every generation says
the
same thing about how easy their kids have it.  And it'll probably be
true
100 years from now.

Diane Gaskill
Lockheed-Martin Space Systems

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com]On
Behalf Of Roberts, Katie
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:32 PM
To: framers at FrameUsers.com
Subject: RE: Funny

I'm 47 and have been taking on-line classes since 2002. It is great! It
is so much better to be able to attend classes in your pajamas. Way
back, in the long, long ago, I had to type my reports on a manual
typewriter and depended heavily on white out or the correction paper.
Heck, I even used a telex machine in one of my first jobs.
Thank heavens for technology.

Katie Roberts
Ohmart/VEGA Corp.
Cincinnati, OH
513-272-0524x167
"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
Albert Einstein

Vote for Char James-Tanny for STC International Secretary!


-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+kroberts=ohmartvega.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+kroberts=ohmartvega.com at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of Joe Malin
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 2:51 PM
To: Gillian Flato; framers at FrameUsers.com
Subject: RE: Funny

What really *bugs* me (and I'm *much* older than 30) is how good science
students in college got it now.

I majored in Chemistry in undergrad. I had to type science papers on a
portable typewriter, make photocopies of instrument outputs or data
plots and then do a massive paste-up job. We had primitive calculators,
but also relied on slide rules. Need something from an instrument or a
test? Get up at 2 am and *walk to the source*. Ugh.

Did computer science in grad school. On a mainframe (double ugh). No
dial-up; had ride downtown to the computer lab to get on a terminal,
then hang around until 2 AM so turnaround on jobs was less than 20
minutes. Had to wait until *3 AM* to get access to the computer graphics
equipment.

I wouldn't wish any of it on a blind dog. I'm not "better" for having
done it the hard way, just probably more burned out and less educated.
What frustrates *me* is that a modern CS student gets to have an
ultra-powerful computer *plus* the Internet, and do so many *fun
things*!!! :( Boo-hoo. I wanna be a student again! Boy, if Doom 2 had
been around when I was a college student, I'd still be in school.


	 Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin at tuvox.com
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+jmalin=tuvox.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+jmalin=tuvox.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf
Of Gillian Flato
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 11:22 AM
To: framers at FrameUsers.com
Subject: OT: Funny

Just thought you guys might enjoy this...

Hard Times related by a 30 year old.

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what
with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning... uphill BOTH
ways... through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings
on their backs... to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a
straight-A average, despite their full-time, after-school job at the
local textile mill... where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to
help keep their family from starving to death!


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