Things that make you feel old

Flyaway

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The launch of the ZX81 on the 05/03/1981 was put down as historical even on my calendar now I feel incredibly old as I was hoping to get one but ended up getting a ZX Spectrum instead.

Also some younger people at work not knowing what a VCR is.
 
People on top of the "food chain" in my youth 90's, presently old or dying... Canal+ and TF1 past leadership, for example. Bernard Tapie, too (not dead yet). Chirac. Les Guignols, too.
Way too many death, aged around 70 or a bit less, from cancer. That's seemingly the tipping point in life, sometimes between 60 and 75: cancer really awaits too many people around that corner.
 
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having far too many things to answer the question. There again Waldorf and Statler from the Muppet Show (itself one of those things) have it right
 

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The Internet and social networks, and mobile phones, and the (devastating ?) combination of the three, particularly. I grew up without them in the 90's, and that wasn't exactly a bad thing, to learn about all that stuff past 20.

I just can't figure of the generation BORN in the 90's and beyond handles that at a younger age - kid, pre-teen, teenagers. Mobile phones were useful. Internet on mobile phones still had many limits. Social networks on smartphones... Yikes !
 
Thinking back to my infantry days, and watching the rise of cheap battlefield drones.
Good soldiery/field practice seems to not be as helpful now as it was then.
Also, cars that I thought were sleek looking and desirable back in the day look...dated and not so sleek now!

But the biggest thing is social media.
I hadn't realised there were so many stupid people out there.
People with huge comprehension issues.
An article is written, or a situation is revealed.... and yet many people seem to have the inability to do basic comprehension processes about what is in front of them.
I'm not talking about differences of opinion, which is to be welcomed, but the basic processing of what is in front of you.
It's mystifying.
I"ve basically culled most social media from my life as a result.
 
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I remember playing space invaders on my fathers IBM (green and white screen) back in the 80's.
The graphics and functionality of computers today are incredibly more advanced.
 
Thinking back to my infantry days, and watching the rise of cheap battlefield drones.
Good soldiery/field practice seems to not be as helpful now as it was then.
Also, cars that I thought were sleek looking and desirable back in the day look...dated and not so sleek now!

But the biggest thing is social media.
I hadn't realised there were so many stupid people out there.
People with huge comprehension issues.
An article is written, or a situation is revealed.... and yet many people seem to have the inability to do basic comprehension processes about what is in front of them.
I'm not talking about differences of opinion, which is to be welcomed, but the basic processing of what is in front of you.
It's mystifying.
I"ve basically culled most social media from my life as a result.
I stopped at Facebook in 2008. Snubbed all the other ones afterwards.
 
Hearing about lots of the people who were on TV when I was growing up dying off.
 
A lighter one: re-reading some of my early post on this very forum, back, in, 2006... not the date that is embarrassing, as much the contain (and tone at time)...
 
Makes me think about that "Senior member" thing...
Maybe it's a way for the mods to make fun at us... like :
- "Read this one posts... he's surely another of these old farts"
- "I'll put him a "Senior Sticker" ... hehehe"
- "Yeah ! Good one"
I've seen through your games Mods !
And I feel as an immature monkey as before !
 
Kylie Minogue, let's talk about her.... "I should be so lucky * rinse, repeat, 250 times per song" = 1988, I was six.
...
Fast forward, 11 years, 1999: na na na, na na na na na na ... can't get that freakkin' song out of my head... and that tiny wardrobe that clung to her body nobody knew how (later she said: transparent tape - Mark Watney would be proud)
...
1999 was 22 years ago !!! And don't start me on Jennifer Lopez... ugh...
 
And the 1998 month-long descent in craziness after a certain soccer World Cup victory.
Compared to "2 days of mayhem, then forgotten" in 2018 and then yellow jackets (oops, so that's why people didn't celebrated much this time ??!!)

France at the World Cup since I can remember it:

1994 : total shame 1.0

1998: top of the world

2002: total shame 2.0

2006: (near) top of the world

2010: ABSOLUTE shame 3.0 (the worst of all times - Knysna...)

2014: passable

2018: top of the world

Completely and totally skizophrenic.

Considering the very brutal cyclical nature of that thing since 1994, since 2018 I've been bracing myself for a major disaster in 2022. Not sure if they can get lower than 2010 but, you never know...

the list could be even longer by the way

1982 - we hate Germany

1986 - we REALLY hate Germany

1990 - wait, there was a world cup that year ? ah yes, Germany. Forget it.
 
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Having interns at work who don't remember 9/11, who were born after 2000, and who can drink.

Realizing my little baby sister is 28.

The kids at youth goup played a "recognize the celebrity" game. Out of 15, I knew Tom Brady. One other I recognized by the name after they named him, but I'd only heard about him because I worked on his airplane after an incident.

I still talk about "taping" a show.

I still drive my college car, that I bought new sophomore year. It'll be old enough to vote this year.

I came to the realization that many "old" people aren't "bad at technology" because they can't understand it; rather, they have enough else to worry about that they don't have time to learn it, and even if they did, they don't give a rat's posterior anyway. I'm turning into said "old person".

I sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies coming down the stairs in the morning, with all my joints popping.

I still think of the early 2000s as "pretty recent", and the 90s as "not that long ago"

My five year old called me "boring" ("yes, bud, I am") but still thinks I'm cool ("sorry, bud, I'm really not")
 
Interns calling you, "sir".

Finding out, "a year or two ago" was more like seven or eight years.

Getting stuff from AARP in the mail.

Replacing a wall of home theater gear and media library with a receiver and a NAS.

Downloading the latest NVIDIA driver and realizing the file wouldn't fit on the hard drives of the first two computers I owned. Doom fit on 4 1.44 Mb floppies.

DVDs?

Two engineers at work had never heard of a slide-rule. I thought they were bull--itting me. (Granted, even I've never used one of those but still knew what they were.)

Finding out there are people who can't read a dial clock.

"What's a check?"
 
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Stuff you worked on being retired.

777s? Come on, that wasn't even my first FCS, never mind my first project.
 
Knowing for sure that one of this loaded with your favourite music beats Spotify or Soundcloud any day..

200090626185405_.e0016093809.original-1920x1710.jpg
 
Knowing for sure that one of this loaded with your favourite music beats Spotify or Soundcloud any day..

Between 2002 and 2008 I crossed paths with all the past present and future multimedia supports
- my parents still have vinyls at home
- my dad had found myself a handful of second-hand cassette players like the one above (they all broke)
- Because I still had cassettes, relics of the 80's and 90's
- I used a 3-inch Disquette last time in 2004
- my sister helped me getting my first USB drive the next year (I called it an ESB drive, because ESB is the french accronym for Mad Cow Disease)
- I created my e-mail account in 2002
- I become an internet addict at the faculty circa 2002 (hasn't improved since then)
- and my Facebook in 2008
- also got a MP3 player around that time
- first mobile phone in 2004
- I started downloading the first of 1400 MP3 tracks around that time
- and aerospace pdf, same time
- first forums: 2006 (Whatif modellers and this very one, NASAspaceflight in 2008)
 
Walkman, still have mine. "Kylie Minogue, let's talk about her.... "I should be so lucky *". Yes having seen a few of her 'tracks' I can only wish too but not going to be. Damn it......

I still have an Atari 520 STFM too. The mouse went missing sadly and I wish I could get another somehow.
 
Realizing that the first hand held electronic calculators (HP-35) came out while I was a junior in college. Heck, I was in first grade when Sputnik 1 went up and I was out of high school before the first manned lunar landing. I figure I am now, at 69, a certified "Old Fart". Having said that, I quite agree with the Waldorf and Statler quote posted above.
 
Telling a former Falklands war veteran that the events so vividly impressed in his memory, was closer to WW2 than we are now to the Falklands war.

The chap initially argued no it couldn’t be, did the sums in his head and went very quite.
Reading this . . .

cheers,
Robin.
 
+ another, and thirty years since Op Granby. Those times made me feel like I was part of something bigger than I and cemented my belief that there are a great many decent people out there who deserve to be protected and be priviliged enough to be part of that. It comes across as wishy washy and almost whimsical but then perhaps that is another part of growing up knowing that a lot of our friends did not get that opportunity. Bugger, I have become one of the angry old buggers off the television programs........
 
Jesus Christ how many boomers are in this forum? I am still laughing that someone had the balls here to create an account with the username zoomer XD.
 
Jesus Christ how many boomers are in this forum? I am still laughing that someone had the balls here to create an account with the username zoomer XD.
I am quite happy to be described as a Ballistic Missile Submarine (SSBN). I am about the same shape as "Red October" when I wallow in a swimming pool.
 
Suddenly remembering when the last episode of Father Ted was produced :-(
 
I *really* felt old when, having a very bad day, I mentioned feeling like doing the "Country Joe and the Fish" cheer from Woodstock and being asked "what's that?" by a newly hired young engineer.
 

RIP

:(
 

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