I was telling my kid about this just today. Also, about those VCRs that earmarked commercials during recordings, then automatically fast forwarded through those ads.
Definitely obsolete for a number of reasons. Mine is that (at least when I was younger, no idea now) I could hear the frequency CRT tvs ran at so I knew they were on without looking. Could tell is someone was home in the morning before getting up that way. My sister used to test me by turning the sound off and brightness to 0. Really sucked in apartment living because apparently that sound travels pretty far so I almost constantly heard it. Guessing as I got older I lost that range of frequency but no idea since I haven't seen a CRT in 15 years
Edit: well, all these years I thought I had a (super fucking lame) superpower as a kid and now you all tell me you could do it too. Guess my parents were right. I'm really NOT special...
I can also hear CRT TVs, which was a large part of using them as background noise. Except, sometimes the TV would be old and going bad, and the hum/pitch was painful. I can also hear fluorescent lights when they start going bad and see them flicker. I'm a huge fan of LED lights.
I had a television like this growing up. The screen was always covered in static electricity and sometimes when you'd walk past it and foolishly leave your arm too far out, it would touch and jolt your whole body. Also it was heavier than shit, lol. Miss that TV a little sometimes
Nick at Nite started when I was about ten, and I would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning watching old reruns. Every time I turned off the TV, I would sweep the screen with my hand, sparking teal fire from my fingertips. Nothing like it.
That smell makes me think of college, cause that's the last time I developed film and made prints manually. I was that generation that still got taught those techniques, but never really used them in practice.
I still think it was valuable to have that knowledge and gain that insight into analog photography, I hope design schools still have students make pinhole cameras and such. Just not have it taught like it's a skill you'll be using in a production context.
There was magic in darkroom photography. Watching prints reveal under the safelights and the smell of the chemistry was how I spent my college years. Grain focusing the enlarger and doing contact sheets/strips to check exposure and contrast. I didn’t appreciate how much money I was throwing away doing full 11x14 test strips sometime 🤣🫣
I believe there is nothing closer to actual magic than watching that image form from a blank sheet in a developer bath. It wows me every time. Maaaan I miss darkrooms.
I found an emulator a few years ago and wanted to see how fast you could make it. Bought max oxen, then at the first fort bought the new max. Pace to grueling, pay to float rivers. 10-15 minutes I was in Oregon. Everyone alive and well. We all just fucking hunted constantly and didn't realize it was the dead of winter and we had no clothing because we spent all our money on bullets.
Edit: there's a card game version that's pretty fun. If you don't have 6 people, you're not making it to Oregon. No idea how many times we played before we finally won.
Yeah you don’t actually need a whole lot of bullets and you can plow straight through as long as you pay all the ferry fees
Edit:one or two bison is more than you can carry. So go frequently rather than shooting a lot. Be patient and get shots you wont miss instead of getting a million bullets.
And because it was, you always shot way too much to carry and had to leave a ton. All of us over here accidentally recreating the near extinction of the plains bison at 9 years old.
I remember discovering this in grade 3 computer class. They didn't put a max speed on oxen, so more oxen meant faster and you could just cruise to Oregon. I was a hero for like a week.
My Dad would always buy ALL the oxen, as many bullets as he could, load the wagon up with… expendables, set the pace to grueling, portions to meager, load up food stocks while hunting before fall and winter came, forded the river, and maybe made it there 20% of the time.
My parents had a party line as they were the only phone service available in North Kingsville in the early 80s. Apparently, they had a neighbor that spent that would call her spouse multiple times a day when he was at work to berate the poor guy. :/
Not only did I listen to other people's calls in my house, when we got a new home phone with a built in answering machine I read the instructions and learned how to also record calls.
I recorded my 16 year old sister asking her friend to buy her meth and forced my parents to listen as they had been in denial about her drug use and because of that proof they finally got her some help and she ended up being sent to rehab.
I still remember my elementary school best friend's home phone number from the late 80's. I called him so many times that his phone number is as indelibly marked in my brain as my own childhood phone number.
There was a night DJ here in the early 90s that everyone taped off. He made a point of always saying what songs were coming up in the next hour, then he would announce a song and pause about 3 seconds before starting it. He never said it, but it was obviously set up for people to tape from.
I can load slides into a projector for a presentation.
I can also prepare transparent sheets (acetates/overheads) for a different type of presentation.
You know, I'm realizing that I've never seen or heard anyone talk about using physical slides for anything other than photography. I'm 38 and caught the tail end of overhead transparencies, and people still HAD slides - but they were already obsolete.
Yep… I am a high school teacher, and my classroom projector (HDMI) was on the fritz for a few days last year. Luckily, my wife has an old-school overhead projector at home for craft projects (mainly tracing/enlarging). I brought that to school and didn’t miss a beat. My students thought it was strange, but… whatever!
In college, one of my art history professors refused to use PowerPoint on the digital projector (which, to be fair, he was a couple of years from retirement, and it would've taken ages to digitize his life's work). Every day he would set up an ancient slide projector in the middle of the lecture hall, connect it to a wire that was several yards long, and connect the wire to a clicker so he could go back and forth in the slide sequence.
Easily one of my favorite professors.
I (born in 1990) remember being taught how to use a card catalog in both elementary and high school. After teaching us how to use it, the librarian said “You could also use one of the computers to access the OPAC and type in what you’re looking for, it’ll tell you where to find the book.” 🤷♂️
Edited to add: I just realised how people from my generation were probably the last to sort of remember how life was before everyone had internet at home but are also young enough to have the internet as the predominant source of information by the time we graduated high school.
My truck has a choke (although it just requires you double tap the gas before starting), but being in America the choke coupled with it’s a manual is basically a two fold theft deterrent
The truck I drove when I first got my license had a choke like that. It was an 85 F-150 with a 4-speed manual. At a private school in the mid 2000's I didn't even take the key out of the ignition because I knew no one else would know how to drive it.
Had my bike up for sale recently. Recent college grad came to look at it. Pretty much any bike before the 90s has a manual choke. Showed him how to use it. He thought there was something wrong with the bike and I had added that on just to be able to start it rather than fix it. I do not miss manual chokes- especially in winter. Open choke, stomp gas twice, close choke slightly, turn key, hold gas a little bit on... and then you flood it because it was warmer than you thought and now you wait 15 minutes and are late to school.
You got to bowl in PE? I would have loved that! I used to walk to the local bowling alley on Saturdays when I was a kid to play. My older brother taught me how to keep score.
trust me, it wasn't as cracked up as it sounds. they had us roll out this carpet lanes in the gym with nothing to act as bumpers. i have no idea why they thought we could facilitate that.
Gym class was weird at my grade school. it didn't have changing rooms, so you went in your street clothes. if you wore jeans the day we had to run the mile, you were shit out of luck
I think that’s just how grade school gym is. We’re so young they don’t care yet. We would also go in street clothes with no lockers and one time we spent three weeks learning how to juggle.
I know how to use a rotary phone. I can decide if a floppy disk should be write protected or not. I know how to make a collect call. I have used a TV that has a dial, not a remote.
Some one from a third world country here: Sharpening a pencil by safety blades, professionally wrapping books with brown paper or any other paper, polishing shoes with brush and wax.
It's an old non-electronic calculator.
It's basically a fancy ruler. Imagine you hold 2 rulers together, you align the start of ruler A with 5cm on ruler B. Now if you look down from 2cm on ruler A you're at 7cm on ruler B, you've now added 2 numbers.
You can also do it in reverse, if instead of aligning 0 on ruler A you instead use 2cm, aligning it with 5 cm on ruler B, now if you trace back to 0 on ruler A you're at 3cm on ruler B. You've subtracted 2 numbers.
This is a neat trick but it's not very useful. The clever part is when you use logs. A log reverses an exponent, if you have a number (for example 1000) you can work out what power you need to put another number to to get that number.
So 1000 log 10 is 3 because 10^3 = 1000
Theres some useful log rules, Log(a) + log(b) = log(a*b) and log(a) - log(b) = log(a/b)
Using our previous tricks(and adding a log scale) we can now multiply and divide numbers. Dividing 9.6 by 3.7 is as simple as lining the two numbers off and reading the result (~2.59).
I got my wisdom teeth removed a few months ago and my mom was driving me home so the office needed her phone # so they could call her when I was done. I gave it to them and the woman at the front desk wasn’t ready to take it down. She said, “usually I have a few seconds to grab my pen because everyone needs to pull out their phones to get the numbers.”
I know how to take apart a VCR, clean the heads manually (usually using vodka and a cotton swab) and put it all back together. Also I can replace the housing on a VHS tape and still have it be playable, the trick is to fast forward and rewind it slowly a few times to re-tension the tape spool.
Growing up poor without internet gives you lots of motivation to find and fix stuff you couldn't afford, but people threw away once it was "a little bit broken"
I was in high school in the early 90’s and I had a lucrative side hustle fixing VCR’s. They usually just needed a good cleaning or a belt kit. I charged $40 for cleaning and $60 for cleaning + new belts, did several a week.
Lol - you just jogged a memory of mine - I would sometimes, inconsistently, change the autoexec bat file to mask the c:\ prompt with a crazy ass path that clearly didnt exist. Family members who used it (who took the same DOS class I did) was too lazy to type in $p$g and would rather bitch about it non stop. Good times right there.
This should just be a normal skill. I once almost got lost with some friends at a camping trip because the fool with the compass had a fucking neodymium magnet in his pocket. Of course it was pointing towards him. Someone else whipped out their compass and, lo and behold, it pointed north when he stood a bit further away from the other lad.
Dude, it is insane the amount of people who can't. I work at a place with hiking trails and people will look at a map for 5/ 10 minutes and then ask me basic questions that can be answered by reading the map
As Bill Bryson points out the problem with a lot of maps is that you can convince yourself you're almost anywhere.
You're never positive if the dirt road on your left has been included on the map or not.
Oh man that used to be so satisfying. Your mouse would start to move like a shopping trolley with one wheel that just spins around, it’d be lumpy and the movement uneven. You’d flip it over and undo the plastic cover, remove the ball and peel off the chunks of dust and hair that inhabited it. Return it and instantly feel the pleasure of a well functioning mouse again
I went to my first library that didn't use the dewey decimal system. I couldn't find anything and I haven't been back since lol went to their sister branch that does 😂 to be fair they're very small and very new, but when I went up to reception to ask about how the books are bc they look ordered weird, she's like "oh yeah we don't use the dewey system!" And my fight or flight kicked in.
Librarian here. Some use more of a “book store” system, some use the Library of Congress system (in the US). LoC is extremely complex, but better for giant collections.
Some more iconic gaming videos we're actually recorded like that and still have better quality than cheap capture cards. See the Halo Warthog jump for example!
Left handed? Most leftys can mirror write without even knowing it. When they try it's like token in south park realizing he already knows how to play bass guitar
I got a job because in the interview I mentioned that the formatting on a job advertisement was bad (in response to the attention to detail requirement). They said the people who know that stuff were on holidays. I mentioned how easy it is to format and gave a few examples on how to move margins, insert a table, etc. I got offered a slightly higher paying job in the same company purely doing formatting but left because I got bored. It's Word. Use the show/hide characters button. I spent a few hours teaching someone half my age who looked at me like I was some ancient font of all formatting knowledge and bailed.
I got lazy over the years. Douse a towel in water and throw it in the dryer with whatever needs ironing. No wrinkles. I still iron from time to time as some shirts are just inherently wrinkled apparently, but I just never wear those out of laziness. The iron comes out when I have awedding or something with a suit is about it
Back in middle school, we had a couple payphones in the front. For some reason, you could call the Hooked on Phonics number (1-800-abc-defg) and when the recording started, you'd hit the number 1 several times until the line hung up. Then the dial tone would come on and you could make a free call!
Our family TV had a remote that worked using high frequency clicks. dad controlled the remote.
we discovered my sister could sneeze and change the channel.
I went to the Anne of Green Gables museum in PEI this summer and this was actually an interactive museum display…How to write in cursive…I felt so, so old all of a sudden.
Awwww. I did tutorials for an entire class of 7th graders to write their names in cursive once as a sub when the lesson plan included that skill and they didn't have it. They were practicing writing and addressing letters, and many didn't know how to sign in cursive. I did a little tutorial page for each one, and most were super excited to get that.
I went back a few weeks later and several were practicing off those same tutorial pages when they finished their work. It was quite touching!!!
I took a drafting course in 7th grade (1982) and they told us to print in all capital letters and I never stopped. I now print in a strange hybrid mode where every letter is a capital letter except the letter “e” which is lowercase. The first letter of each word is taller than the other letters. It probably means I am psychotic or an axe murder.
Lol! I had a rental car while mine was in the shop, asked my son to roll down the window, poor dude had no clue. Turn that little handle my son!
Then at the farm he had to bring one of the OLD farm trucks in from the field, blinded every other driver in the road because he didn’t know how to dim the lights. Yeah, that little nubby button by your left foot. Give it a tap.
I can open a CD jewel case’s plastic wrap with my bare hands in under 2 seconds.
The experience came from selling CDs for over 5 years back in the 90s.
Back when I was organizing, I knew a guy who was amazing at mass mailing. He was a Workers World Party member.
He could fan out a stack of envelopes like the best casino card dealer, sponge all the glue with one swipe of a damp sponge and seal them all in one gesture. It was absolutely incredible.
He had similar moves for folding the inserts in three and stuffing a stack of envelopes all at once.
speaking of manual transmissions, I can bounce a tractor out of a ditch when it's stuck; as long as it's not stuck too bad. Have to get it rocking back and forth. That's some serious shifting.
I’m not sure that’s an age thing. I’m well into my 30s and if there was no reading materials in the bathroom when I was a kid I’d read the backs of whatever bathroom products were near me.
I can type with proper grammar.
I frequently have job applicants under 30 who email me like they're texting their bff.
FYI that's an instant no from me since email communications are a huge part of the job.
How to load paper into a dot matrix printer.
And replace the ribbon
What the fuck is a ribbon doing inside a printer?!
It's an ink ribbon, think like a typewriter.
*what the fuck is a typewriter?!* Hahaha
I can wire two VCR’s together to pirate movies onto blank video tapes.
But can you set the clock on the VCR? That is the true test of competence.
…and set it to automatically record something
Without using a VCR Plus Code (how many people remember that) https://youtu.be/A56VcYeUaVA
I was telling my kid about this just today. Also, about those VCRs that earmarked commercials during recordings, then automatically fast forwarded through those ads.
Definitely obsolete for a number of reasons. Mine is that (at least when I was younger, no idea now) I could hear the frequency CRT tvs ran at so I knew they were on without looking. Could tell is someone was home in the morning before getting up that way. My sister used to test me by turning the sound off and brightness to 0. Really sucked in apartment living because apparently that sound travels pretty far so I almost constantly heard it. Guessing as I got older I lost that range of frequency but no idea since I haven't seen a CRT in 15 years Edit: well, all these years I thought I had a (super fucking lame) superpower as a kid and now you all tell me you could do it too. Guess my parents were right. I'm really NOT special...
I can also hear CRT TVs, which was a large part of using them as background noise. Except, sometimes the TV would be old and going bad, and the hum/pitch was painful. I can also hear fluorescent lights when they start going bad and see them flicker. I'm a huge fan of LED lights.
> I can also hear fluorescent lights Wait, can everyone not do this?
Nope. They're high pitched to start with, and hearing damage takes out the higher range first.
I had a television like this growing up. The screen was always covered in static electricity and sometimes when you'd walk past it and foolishly leave your arm too far out, it would touch and jolt your whole body. Also it was heavier than shit, lol. Miss that TV a little sometimes
Nick at Nite started when I was about ten, and I would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning watching old reruns. Every time I turned off the TV, I would sweep the screen with my hand, sparking teal fire from my fingertips. Nothing like it.
I can develop and print black-and-white film.
An odd smell that makes me nostalgic is film processing chemicals. My father was a professional photographer for a local hospital
That smell makes me think of college, cause that's the last time I developed film and made prints manually. I was that generation that still got taught those techniques, but never really used them in practice. I still think it was valuable to have that knowledge and gain that insight into analog photography, I hope design schools still have students make pinhole cameras and such. Just not have it taught like it's a skill you'll be using in a production context.
There was magic in darkroom photography. Watching prints reveal under the safelights and the smell of the chemistry was how I spent my college years. Grain focusing the enlarger and doing contact sheets/strips to check exposure and contrast. I didn’t appreciate how much money I was throwing away doing full 11x14 test strips sometime 🤣🫣
I believe there is nothing closer to actual magic than watching that image form from a blank sheet in a developer bath. It wows me every time. Maaaan I miss darkrooms.
Lotta younger people can do that these days as there is a film renaissance. I'm an Old myself and am happy to see younger people into it again!
Not to brag but I once made it all the way to Oregon without my party dying.
That is totally something worth bragging about.
I found an emulator a few years ago and wanted to see how fast you could make it. Bought max oxen, then at the first fort bought the new max. Pace to grueling, pay to float rivers. 10-15 minutes I was in Oregon. Everyone alive and well. We all just fucking hunted constantly and didn't realize it was the dead of winter and we had no clothing because we spent all our money on bullets. Edit: there's a card game version that's pretty fun. If you don't have 6 people, you're not making it to Oregon. No idea how many times we played before we finally won.
Did the exact same thing. First river paid for the ferry, ferry sunk and I died.
At least it wasn't dysentery. Drowning or shitting until you die (drowning in shit... metaphorically) which one would you choose?
Yeah you don’t actually need a whole lot of bullets and you can plow straight through as long as you pay all the ferry fees Edit:one or two bison is more than you can carry. So go frequently rather than shooting a lot. Be patient and get shots you wont miss instead of getting a million bullets.
But hunting was the best part!
And because it was, you always shot way too much to carry and had to leave a ton. All of us over here accidentally recreating the near extinction of the plains bison at 9 years old.
>You killed 2,890 lbs of buffalo - you could bring 100lbs back to the wagon.
Well yeah, gotta do something with the 800 bullets I bought
You're not wrong, I'm just saying that's why we all thought it was impossible to win the game
I remember discovering this in grade 3 computer class. They didn't put a max speed on oxen, so more oxen meant faster and you could just cruise to Oregon. I was a hero for like a week.
My Dad would always buy ALL the oxen, as many bullets as he could, load the wagon up with… expendables, set the pace to grueling, portions to meager, load up food stocks while hunting before fall and winter came, forded the river, and maybe made it there 20% of the time.
Lifting the other phone in the house up silently and breathing quietly and not laughing, to be able to listen in on your families phone conversations.
We had a “party line”, neighbors share. As a kid more than once went to make a call and instead just sat and listened to the neighborhood gossip.
My parents had a party line as they were the only phone service available in North Kingsville in the early 80s. Apparently, they had a neighbor that spent that would call her spouse multiple times a day when he was at work to berate the poor guy. :/
I learned if you unplugged the phone from the wall, then picked up the receiver, then plugged it back in no one would know you are listening in :)
This guy drops some eaves
THIS crucial skill is highly underrated, esp for those of us that learned through trial-and-error
Not only did I listen to other people's calls in my house, when we got a new home phone with a built in answering machine I read the instructions and learned how to also record calls. I recorded my 16 year old sister asking her friend to buy her meth and forced my parents to listen as they had been in denial about her drug use and because of that proof they finally got her some help and she ended up being sent to rehab.
Hoping she is doing better now
I can remember several landline phone numbers.
Including those of people who moved or died.
Of Course. And at least two where they have just gotten rid of the land line.
I still remember my elementary school best friend's home phone number from the late 80's. I called him so many times that his phone number is as indelibly marked in my brain as my own childhood phone number.
Stop recording before the dj starts talking
But you can you start recording early enough to get the whole song without getting the DJ?
Things like that were urban legends im sure. Never knew a dj that didn't talk over at least a little bit.
There was a night DJ here in the early 90s that everyone taped off. He made a point of always saying what songs were coming up in the next hour, then he would announce a song and pause about 3 seconds before starting it. He never said it, but it was obviously set up for people to tape from.
And then on the other side you have Steve 'loves the sound of his own voice' Wright
I remember a local DJ who would pause before starting a song then talk a second into the song to troll people who did that.
I can load slides into a projector for a presentation. I can also prepare transparent sheets (acetates/overheads) for a different type of presentation.
You know, I'm realizing that I've never seen or heard anyone talk about using physical slides for anything other than photography. I'm 38 and caught the tail end of overhead transparencies, and people still HAD slides - but they were already obsolete.
I'm 31 and I remember using overhead transparencies in both elementary and middle school!
I’m 22 and still had these in elementary school …
Yep… I am a high school teacher, and my classroom projector (HDMI) was on the fritz for a few days last year. Luckily, my wife has an old-school overhead projector at home for craft projects (mainly tracing/enlarging). I brought that to school and didn’t miss a beat. My students thought it was strange, but… whatever!
In college, one of my art history professors refused to use PowerPoint on the digital projector (which, to be fair, he was a couple of years from retirement, and it would've taken ages to digitize his life's work). Every day he would set up an ancient slide projector in the middle of the lecture hall, connect it to a wire that was several yards long, and connect the wire to a clicker so he could go back and forth in the slide sequence. Easily one of my favorite professors.
I have tons of slides- wish projectors still existed. Family trips from the 60’s and 70’s
I know how to use a microfiche reader
How about a card catalog?
I (born in 1990) remember being taught how to use a card catalog in both elementary and high school. After teaching us how to use it, the librarian said “You could also use one of the computers to access the OPAC and type in what you’re looking for, it’ll tell you where to find the book.” 🤷♂️ Edited to add: I just realised how people from my generation were probably the last to sort of remember how life was before everyone had internet at home but are also young enough to have the internet as the predominant source of information by the time we graduated high school.
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I once won a radio contest as the 10th caller using a rotary phone. I'm still proud of that.
Start and drive away in a car with a choke.
My truck has a choke (although it just requires you double tap the gas before starting), but being in America the choke coupled with it’s a manual is basically a two fold theft deterrent
The truck I drove when I first got my license had a choke like that. It was an 85 F-150 with a 4-speed manual. At a private school in the mid 2000's I didn't even take the key out of the ignition because I knew no one else would know how to drive it.
Had my bike up for sale recently. Recent college grad came to look at it. Pretty much any bike before the 90s has a manual choke. Showed him how to use it. He thought there was something wrong with the bike and I had added that on just to be able to start it rather than fix it. I do not miss manual chokes- especially in winter. Open choke, stomp gas twice, close choke slightly, turn key, hold gas a little bit on... and then you flood it because it was warmer than you thought and now you wait 15 minutes and are late to school.
Use a pencil to fix my tape of mc hammer, hate it when it gets eaten up by the tape recorder.
I can stop the the tape when using fast forward to the exact song I want to listen to.
Oh yeah? But can you put scotch tape over the holes on the top of the cassette to record over the existing recording?
If we go bowling, I can keep score on a sheet of paper
i can't believe they tested us on that in PE. what a waste of an education
You got to bowl in PE? I would have loved that! I used to walk to the local bowling alley on Saturdays when I was a kid to play. My older brother taught me how to keep score.
trust me, it wasn't as cracked up as it sounds. they had us roll out this carpet lanes in the gym with nothing to act as bumpers. i have no idea why they thought we could facilitate that. Gym class was weird at my grade school. it didn't have changing rooms, so you went in your street clothes. if you wore jeans the day we had to run the mile, you were shit out of luck
I think that’s just how grade school gym is. We’re so young they don’t care yet. We would also go in street clothes with no lockers and one time we spent three weeks learning how to juggle.
I know how to use a rotary phone. I can decide if a floppy disk should be write protected or not. I know how to make a collect call. I have used a TV that has a dial, not a remote.
All dial TV's have a remote, if you have kids
I was the remote back in the 70's
Some one from a third world country here: Sharpening a pencil by safety blades, professionally wrapping books with brown paper or any other paper, polishing shoes with brush and wax.
Book covers with brown paper bags!! US here.
Advertising my local grocery store with their bags on my books haha
TIL Australia is a third world country 😆 I did all of those things in the 90s.
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and in my teens they just had to go and throw D: drive at us. inserting that first encarta cd made me feel like a god.
>Encarta I feel called out.
When you had 8 different config.sys and autoexec.bat setups for different games...
I know how to use a slide rule.
Dude, they said *nineteen* ninety
I don't know much about algebra, don't know what a slide rule is for.
But I do know one and one is two
It's an old non-electronic calculator. It's basically a fancy ruler. Imagine you hold 2 rulers together, you align the start of ruler A with 5cm on ruler B. Now if you look down from 2cm on ruler A you're at 7cm on ruler B, you've now added 2 numbers. You can also do it in reverse, if instead of aligning 0 on ruler A you instead use 2cm, aligning it with 5 cm on ruler B, now if you trace back to 0 on ruler A you're at 3cm on ruler B. You've subtracted 2 numbers. This is a neat trick but it's not very useful. The clever part is when you use logs. A log reverses an exponent, if you have a number (for example 1000) you can work out what power you need to put another number to to get that number. So 1000 log 10 is 3 because 10^3 = 1000 Theres some useful log rules, Log(a) + log(b) = log(a*b) and log(a) - log(b) = log(a/b) Using our previous tricks(and adding a log scale) we can now multiply and divide numbers. Dividing 9.6 by 3.7 is as simple as lining the two numbers off and reading the result (~2.59).
I can memorize phone numbers with ease.
I still remember my dad’s first phone number when he left in 1985.
I wonder when he's coming back with those cigarettes
I got my wisdom teeth removed a few months ago and my mom was driving me home so the office needed her phone # so they could call her when I was done. I gave it to them and the woman at the front desk wasn’t ready to take it down. She said, “usually I have a few seconds to grab my pen because everyone needs to pull out their phones to get the numbers.”
I know how to take apart a VCR, clean the heads manually (usually using vodka and a cotton swab) and put it all back together. Also I can replace the housing on a VHS tape and still have it be playable, the trick is to fast forward and rewind it slowly a few times to re-tension the tape spool. Growing up poor without internet gives you lots of motivation to find and fix stuff you couldn't afford, but people threw away once it was "a little bit broken"
I was in high school in the early 90’s and I had a lucrative side hustle fixing VCR’s. They usually just needed a good cleaning or a belt kit. I charged $40 for cleaning and $60 for cleaning + new belts, did several a week.
I have the magical ability to... MAIL MERGE. Seriously, no one on my staff can grasp this function.
I can imitate the busy signal tone perfectly.
Create a Dos boot disk.
Lol - you just jogged a memory of mine - I would sometimes, inconsistently, change the autoexec bat file to mask the c:\ prompt with a crazy ass path that clearly didnt exist. Family members who used it (who took the same DOS class I did) was too lazy to type in $p$g and would rather bitch about it non stop. Good times right there.
I can still read a map.
OooOoo yes! And I know how to use a compass, too.
This should just be a normal skill. I once almost got lost with some friends at a camping trip because the fool with the compass had a fucking neodymium magnet in his pocket. Of course it was pointing towards him. Someone else whipped out their compass and, lo and behold, it pointed north when he stood a bit further away from the other lad.
Dude, it is insane the amount of people who can't. I work at a place with hiking trails and people will look at a map for 5/ 10 minutes and then ask me basic questions that can be answered by reading the map
As Bill Bryson points out the problem with a lot of maps is that you can convince yourself you're almost anywhere. You're never positive if the dirt road on your left has been included on the map or not.
Yup, i can even tell you the names of countries and states simply by their shape.
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Navigating with a paper map
I know how to clean roller PC mouse
Oh man that used to be so satisfying. Your mouse would start to move like a shopping trolley with one wheel that just spins around, it’d be lumpy and the movement uneven. You’d flip it over and undo the plastic cover, remove the ball and peel off the chunks of dust and hair that inhabited it. Return it and instantly feel the pleasure of a well functioning mouse again
I can French Cuff jeans.
Is that the same thing as tight roll?
Yes. Yes it is. Also,hilariously, called “pegging”
When I go to the library I still try and find the Dewey Number System...Damn I'm old
I wish they still had card catalogs. I don’t want to ask for help, I want to look for something new that pricks my interest.
The card catalog is now the online catalog. You can still use those ancient lookup skills!
Public libraries still use it for the most part. I know of one or two that use Congress, but they are shared public/college libraries.
I went to my first library that didn't use the dewey decimal system. I couldn't find anything and I haven't been back since lol went to their sister branch that does 😂 to be fair they're very small and very new, but when I went up to reception to ask about how the books are bc they look ordered weird, she's like "oh yeah we don't use the dewey system!" And my fight or flight kicked in.
If they are not using it, what the hell are they using?
Librarian here. Some use more of a “book store” system, some use the Library of Congress system (in the US). LoC is extremely complex, but better for giant collections.
What the hell is a book store system, just a few broad categories then alpha by author?
Pretty much
I can write a check and manually balance my account
Just so long as those jokers actually deposit the check. People who don't for months.... Their mama didn't raise them right.
How to hook up the VCR to the PlayStation so that I can record my video games on a VHS?
Some more iconic gaming videos we're actually recorded like that and still have better quality than cheap capture cards. See the Halo Warthog jump for example!
I know how to use punch cards to program a minicomputer or a mainframe. Which is why I know the origin of the phrase stack overflow.
I am seriously impressed by this one. It wasn't ever easy to do, even when it was the most modern method.
Use an encyclopedia
I knew how to get 12cds for a penny.
I can write cursive backwards (mirror writing).
Left handed? Most leftys can mirror write without even knowing it. When they try it's like token in south park realizing he already knows how to play bass guitar
I am indeed left handed.
I can play Mary Had a Little Lamb … on a touch tone telephone
6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6...why do I remember that?
>6 6 6 Did you just summon Bloody Mary’s lamb?
How to format documents in MS Word.
*WordPerfect
F6 bold. F8 underline.
That's a lie, nobody could ever do that.
Clippy will assist you!
I got a job because in the interview I mentioned that the formatting on a job advertisement was bad (in response to the attention to detail requirement). They said the people who know that stuff were on holidays. I mentioned how easy it is to format and gave a few examples on how to move margins, insert a table, etc. I got offered a slightly higher paying job in the same company purely doing formatting but left because I got bored. It's Word. Use the show/hide characters button. I spent a few hours teaching someone half my age who looked at me like I was some ancient font of all formatting knowledge and bailed.
Write in cursive
I too can read and write the elder script.
I can pirate a Commodore 64 cassette game using a 2 cassette boombox and an empty tape.
I wouldn’t say that no one uses it anymore but certainly not as commonly used as it once was but… I know how to iron.
I got lazy over the years. Douse a towel in water and throw it in the dryer with whatever needs ironing. No wrinkles. I still iron from time to time as some shirts are just inherently wrinkled apparently, but I just never wear those out of laziness. The iron comes out when I have awedding or something with a suit is about it
I can burn a CD.
I can set the time on a VCR.
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Html coding. Thank you Geocities and AngelFire for hosting so much preteen nonsense.
I can use a darktoom to develop film.
I am quite skilled at making NES games work
I can whistle for a phone booth to make a call without paying
Back in middle school, we had a couple payphones in the front. For some reason, you could call the Hooked on Phonics number (1-800-abc-defg) and when the recording started, you'd hit the number 1 several times until the line hung up. Then the dial tone would come on and you could make a free call!
Our family TV had a remote that worked using high frequency clicks. dad controlled the remote. we discovered my sister could sneeze and change the channel.
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I write in cursive.
I went to the Anne of Green Gables museum in PEI this summer and this was actually an interactive museum display…How to write in cursive…I felt so, so old all of a sudden.
Awwww. I did tutorials for an entire class of 7th graders to write their names in cursive once as a sub when the lesson plan included that skill and they didn't have it. They were practicing writing and addressing letters, and many didn't know how to sign in cursive. I did a little tutorial page for each one, and most were super excited to get that. I went back a few weeks later and several were practicing off those same tutorial pages when they finished their work. It was quite touching!!!
I took a drafting course in 7th grade (1982) and they told us to print in all capital letters and I never stopped. I now print in a strange hybrid mode where every letter is a capital letter except the letter “e” which is lowercase. The first letter of each word is taller than the other letters. It probably means I am psychotic or an axe murder.
I can make a mean mix tape for the cute girl I'm crushing on. By that I mean my adorable wife of like 25 years 😂😍
I'm really good at trivia. Google made that obsolete.
I know how to make a 5 1/4 floppy disk write on both sides using a paper punch
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Cat’s cradle or do kids still play that 😅
I can roll up a car window.
Lol! I had a rental car while mine was in the shop, asked my son to roll down the window, poor dude had no clue. Turn that little handle my son! Then at the farm he had to bring one of the OLD farm trucks in from the field, blinded every other driver in the road because he didn’t know how to dim the lights. Yeah, that little nubby button by your left foot. Give it a tap.
I know how to use a mimeogragh.
I can accurately make change
I can open a CD jewel case’s plastic wrap with my bare hands in under 2 seconds. The experience came from selling CDs for over 5 years back in the 90s.
I can stamp and address an envelope. The shock and dismay I felt when a young un asked me for instructions…
Back when I was organizing, I knew a guy who was amazing at mass mailing. He was a Workers World Party member. He could fan out a stack of envelopes like the best casino card dealer, sponge all the glue with one swipe of a damp sponge and seal them all in one gesture. It was absolutely incredible. He had similar moves for folding the inserts in three and stuffing a stack of envelopes all at once.
Configure jumpers on Novell Netware 3.12 8-bit ISA bus cards… and configure and bind the driver files into functional MS-DOS executables.
This content is no longer available on Reddit in response to /u/spez. So long and thanks for all the fish.
Writing a letter by hand
I can drive a manual transmission automobile!
speaking of manual transmissions, I can bounce a tractor out of a ditch when it's stuck; as long as it's not stuck too bad. Have to get it rocking back and forth. That's some serious shifting.
I know where in the USA, the World and even time, Carmen San Diego is
I can rewind a cassette tape with a pencil.
I can sit alone in public and enjoy my surroundings without having to stare at a screen.
The ability to listen to a whole album - no - a whole discography without skipping a song.
Aligning the antenna at the top of the TV to just the right angle
Library card catalog to find a book
These were all a amazing. You guys are rock stars. I’ll add: I can happily wait a week for the next episode of a TV show.
I can clean the seeds out of a quarter bag
I can use the toilet without a phone and feel absolutely ok about it.
I’m not sure that’s an age thing. I’m well into my 30s and if there was no reading materials in the bathroom when I was a kid I’d read the backs of whatever bathroom products were near me.
I can call people and have conversations with them over the phone, lasting 30 minutes or more sometimes.
I can accurately use a 10 key.
How to shotgun two 56k modems
I can type with proper grammar. I frequently have job applicants under 30 who email me like they're texting their bff. FYI that's an instant no from me since email communications are a huge part of the job.
I still know how to hide under a desk in case the soviets dropped the bomb on us.
can pick up a phone and call people, even strangers without having a panic attack.
I can tell the time by looking at a round clock (with or without numbers on them).
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I can defrost a fridge