Meh. Back in my day there were two channels on the black and white tv, and one of them was French.

And you tell the kids of today that... and they won't believe you!

You younglings have it sooooo easy!

Back in my day, computer games built CHARACTER. And I do not mean RPGs...

Want to load a game? Turn on your TAPE RECORDER... which would SLOOOOOOWLY drip data into your computer, a bit at a time, while mom complained about the screeching noises inside your bedroom. It was so slow, you had time to read "War and Peace" while waiting (which was required reading in 4th grade).

Controllers? Joysticks? Mice? BAH! Want to give a command? We had to carefully punch holes in 35 cardboard cards, just to say "Pick up sword", feed them into a card reader, and then wait 3 days for the results.... we then printed them with a line printer (bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttttttt...DOOH! bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttttttttt... DOOH! bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttttttttt... DOOH!...)
only to figure out the answer was "Which sword?".

Dad would never let me borrow the car crank to turn on the computers, unless he had finished listening to the news in the radio!!

We had to fight sabertooth tigers to get "computing time share" in IBM mainframes!

We had.... wait, come back! See, THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH YOU YOUNG PEOPLE! You are not listening to me anymore! It is not a lie! I never lie! If I lied, dad would hit me with my little brother´s slide rule!! Come back!

:) :) :)

Back in my day we rocked cassettes that took several bloody minutes of screaming and stripy lines to load anything. Every pixel was precious.

Back in my day, virii could be cleaned from your system by unplugging the machine, removing the button cell and allowing the capacitors to discharge, thus purging RAM. Game manuals included such instructions as "Insert the game disk and wait 45 seconds. If the title screen does not appear after sixty seconds, shut down your machine, reboot and try again." Certain software upgrades required actual chip replacements, done by hand by the user, though the machine could be mailed or taken to a service center for a fee.

Yay! See attached.

Printers had ribbons and were loud enough to wake the slumbering dead. It was at this time that corporate offices (especially those with more than one of these printers on a single floor) saw a sharp rise in employee "disgruntlement" from their accounting departments and steno pools.

Those damn dot matrix printers are still in use in a lot of places! My job uses one for printing out receipts for customers paying for their car repairs. Yet, they have a multi-function printer/scanner thing that does laser printing just 2 steps away. I don't know why they just don't use that for receipts and stuff like that.

That's another thing: printers were made to last a lifetime in those days. Cheap to run and tough as nails.

Hehe, I still have db's online that I built in the ninties that require dot matrix with 4 part carbonless paper. It's just easier to get identical multiple copies with impact printers . . . =)

Back in my day people used to memorize things. Phone numbers, addresses, birthdays- all sorts of things.

In fact, some people were so good at remembering stuff that they could even gain the exalted status of being "The Guy".

The Guy would be called upon by both friends and family alike to settle disputes, distribute advice, or even just to satisfy someone's curiosity.

"What was that one movie where..."
"Who sang that one song with the..."
"What the heck was the name of that old cartoon that had the.."

The Guy would be called upon, often times in the middle of the night, to answer all of these questions and more. Sometimes the title of Guy came as a bit of a burden, but his words were never to be disputed and were always accepted as truth.

The glory days of The Guy have since vanished, alongside Saturday morning cartoons, lawn darts, and Chicken Shanghai McNuggets. However, there are still faint reminders of those days past on various game shows where contestants are permitted to "phone a friend" or make a "shout out" to a knowledgeable acquaintance.

Nowadays we don't have to remember much of anything at all to get through the day. Except for the occasional workplace password. I kinda miss the days when all of my keys were tangible.

Laser printers have been around since the 70's. Obviously, the first ones were "primitive" and a most "first model" high technology devices are wont to do, they were incredibly large, often taking up the space of a whole wall. It took about ten years for innovators to get around the "But we have cheaper, more reliable impact printers right here" attitude and make relatively smaller models. "Relatively" being the operative word. They were still prohibitively expensive, as most microprocessor operated machines were in the 80's and early 90's, reaching prices that in today's inflated market would equal to about $20K.

In those days, MTV was all about the music videos, rarely stopping for adverts and had only one or two "Music Video Indirectly-Related" shows, one of them being Beavis and Butthead.

Back in my days Star Wars movie were still good :)

Back in my day, action figures cost $2 from the local grocery store.

Back in my day, He-Man, Thundercats, Voltron, and She-ra (for the girls, I didn't forget you) were the absolute top of the top of the world on a Saturday morning - until Scooby came on and took the crown.

Back in my day, kids could walk to the store by themselves and there was no fear of kidnapping.

Back in my day, people had open yards and got to know their neighbors on a first name basis in a matter of about a month.

Back in my days people knew what Ridley Scott's "Alien" was...
Back in my days Arnold did not play a babysitter...
Back in my days we knew what Nexus 6 was...

Back in my day, Mexico wasn't (insert Fox News' eerily accurate description here.)