Falling Off the Learning Curve

 It's important to keep your mind active and nimble as you grow older, according to the experts.  Sometimes, I can feel the concrete settling around my mind, especially when I'm trying to learn something new.

Especially if it involves technology.

My last iPhone, a iPhone SE first edition, was purchased in early August, 2016.  With the September, 2022 introduction of the latest operating system, the phone became obsolete.  It doesn't accept the new operating system.  It was time for a new phone.

Ah, planned obsolesce.  Everything still worked, although I suspected the battery was starting to go.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.  Walking in the mall, we passed the Verizon store and it didn't look busy  Now was our chance.

Bottom line, I got a new phone (well, last year's model, but new), an iPhone 13 min.  I also ended up, thanks to an extended Black Friday special, with a new (last year's model) iPad, an Apple Watch SE2, and a pair of Beats bluetooth buds. The ad on TV might lead you to believe these bonus devices are free.  Well, they are not quite free, because free in the technology world is never free.  But I (I think) came out ahead, especially as my eight year old iPad mini was already obsolete.  Some apps would no longer work on it and I was mainly using it as an e-reader.

Good times.  Call these early Happy Holiday gifts.

My happiness ended when it was time to get the new devices set up.  Did I mention that someone at work who had gotten a new phone the week before warned me that the iPhone 13's don't have physical SIM cards, and her eSIM card didn't work? Well, mine didn't work, either.

The Verizon store helped me with the phone problem.  My son helped me with a problem getting cellular service on the Apple Watch which saved me a trip to the mall Verizon store (by then, busy with pre-Christmas shoppers).  

And the Beats buds? I wanted to use with with my laptop so I could listen to music while spouse watched TV.  The only problem was my laptop is 10 years old (do you see a pattern here with me and old devices?) and didn't have Bluetooth.  Nor did it have USB-C ports.  The buds use a case which a USB-C charger plugs into.  If you have the plug (not included), that is.

Fortunately, my son to the rescue, again.  I am up and running - I think.

Watching my son and his ease with this technology gave me a little pang of pride (and a feeling of being a piece of obsolute technology, too).

Now I have to learn to use the features of these updated devices, and I already feel like I've fallen off the learning curve.

I know I can do it.

I'll just have to take it a little slower than I would have at one time.

These past almost thirty years now since I first heard of a new technology called the Internet, have been one (to paraphrase the Grateful Dead) long, strange trip.

How Many People Does it Take to Change A Light Bulb The Conclusion

Last Thursday, I published a blog post about a little bulb that burnt out in the inside of our freezer.  Trying to find a replacement bulb for a "12 V E14" LED sent us on an hours long hunt where I learned more than I want to know about LED light bulbs and technology that goes obsolete between the time you buy something and the time something needs replacement.

This is a too-familiar story for many of us, and I thought that the commenters on that post might want to know what finally happened.  What we encountered was an odyssey of customer service (or lack of it), which seems to be normal for these times.

When I last left you, dear reader...

... I was exhausted from a long, fruitless Internet research. We used to have a couple of appliance parts places in this area, but we knew they were no more.  The manufacturer of the freezer had nothing at all about freezers on their website. They had a customer service number that actually had Saturday hours, but spouse didn't want to try it. Amazon didn't seem to have anything that looked anything like this little light bulb.  Finally, we gave up for the day.

The next day, our son came over for lunch and he tried to help us. He discovered our particular bulb had been discontinued.   Finally, he came up with a possibility, on Amazon (a site I try not to order from, but it was looking like we had no choice).  The bulbs (we had to buy two) came last Tuesday.  They didn't fit.

He thought he found a possibility at a big box store locally, and that's where my post Thursday ended.  So let's join our story, already in progress.

We have two of those stores locally and I'm not going to name the chain.

Store #1: spouse went by himself.  There was no one around the department to help him.  He couldn't find it although the website said it was in stock.

Store #2 (both spouse and I) couldn't find the bulb and, again, there was no employee around.  We asked the customer service desk person and she looked annoyed (OK, maybe my take on her facial expression, but I also know she has a thankless job and may have just been having a bad day, especially if the store was understaffed).  She paged someone to come to that department. No one came.

We then went to the next aisle (a different department) and there was an employee there.  This young woman helped us.  The bulbs son had found (I had a screenshot on my phone, thankfully) were another size: E-12.  E-14s apparently are no longer made. She knew very little about the light bulb department, so our thanks go doubly to her.

This E-12 was the size of the bulbs we got from Amazon.  I got to thinking, was there such a thing as a E-14 to E-12 adapter.  Turns out Amazon sold one, through an Amazon storefront (I think that's the right term) on the West Coast.  I emailed them to see if it would be suitable for use in a freezer lid.

I never got a response after some 24 hours but the adapter was so inexpensive I decided to order it anyway.  It came yesterday.

The adapter worked.

So, how many people does it take to change a light bulb?  The modern answer: Too, too many.

Have you ever had a planned obsolescence experience?

How Many People Does It Take to Buy a Light Bulb?

It started with a burnt out little lightbulb.

We bought our chest freezer back in 2012. It has a light in the inside of the lid which turns on when you lift the lid.

Recently, the light started to flicker.  My spouse, who knows a little bit about electronics thanks to military training from years ago, tried various things but nothing seemed to eliminate the flicker.  On Saturday, the light stopped working.

Spouse took the lightbulb out of the lighting compartment.  It was a small thing, an LED bulb that said only "12V E14".  

Now, keep in mind that spouse and I are senior citizens, meaning that most of our lives were spent with the old incandescent light bulbs that have since been replaced by newer, more energy efficient technologies (such as LED bulbs).

My education on LED bulbs, just coincidentally, had begun a couple of days before, when we had to buy light bulbs for my home office fixture.  We hadn't bought light bulbs in a while, and the choices for modern LEDs absolutely overwhelmed me. Warm bulbs. Cool bulbs. Color changing bulbs. Dimmable bulbs.  Non dimmable bulbs.

Now, another project.

So E14, I found,  means a small screw socket. The "E" means an Edison socket, in other words, the socket looking like an old incandescent light bulb, and, indeed, that is what our small freezer bulb looked like.

But this is where the fun (and I use that term loosely) began.  The owners manual for the freezer said that if the bulb burnt out, we were to contact a service technician to replace.

Umm, no.

But, an hour or so later,  I was exhausted from fruitless Internet research. We used to have a couple of appliance parts places in this area, but we knew they were no more.  The manufacturer of the freezer had nothing at all about freezers on their website. They had a customer service number that actually had Saturday hours, but spouse didn't want to try it.  Amazon didn't seem to have anything that looked anything like this little light bulb.  Finally, we gave up for the day.

Sunday, our son came over for lunch and he tried to help us. He discovered our particular bulb had been discontinued, after visiting several more websites.   Finally, he came up with a possibility, on Amazon (a site I try not to order from, but it was looking like we had no choice).  The bulbs (we had to buy two) came Tuesday.  They didn't fit.

So son did a lot more research (after asking us for certain measurements) and he thinks he found a replacement bulb locally. Several hours of research and hair pulling have already been invested in this quest.

So something 11 years old is obsolete.  That's nice to know.

Later today, we will go to that store.

Finally, to answer my blog post title's question:  How many people does it take to buy a light bulb?  

Answer:  at least three.  Maybe more.

Songs from Movies of the 80's #MusicMovesMe

Welcome to the Betamax edition of Music Moves Me!

Who are the #MusicMovesMe bloggers? We are bloggers who blog about music each Monday and if you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join! (Music Posts Only , please!)   First, there is XmasDolly, who has a brand new blogging home (applause!)  Her co-hosts are: Stacy of Stacy Uncorked, Cathy from Curious as a Cathy, and me. Each month we have a guest conductor. This month we again welcome John from The Sound of One Hand Typing.

John's theme for today is:  "In honor of the 1975 Debut of the Sony Betamax recorder, songs from movies of the 1980s and 1990's."

Got Betamax?  Do you even know what it is?  Well, if you remember video cassette recorders, you definitely remember a format called VHS.  But, at one time, there was another format, which some considered superior to VHS, called Betamax.

My son, although he is in his 30's, loves the technology of the 70's and 80's.  He owns several Betamax tapes but never has been able to get hold of a Betamax machine.  I love my son dearly, but I also wrote this blog post years back about his love of obsolete technology.

Anyway, I digress.  For this theme, I'm going to concentrate on movies of the 1980's because...1980's.

 I will start out with 1985 (a great year for movie songs) one of my favorite 1980's songs, Simple Minds and "Don't You Forget About Me", from the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club.

Tina Turner and "We Don't Need Another Hero" from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" ( also 1985).

Duran Duran and "A View to a Kill", also from 1985's movie of the same name.  Time for some James Bond!

1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off featured this 1985 song from the Swiss group Yello, which, for some reason, I absolutely love.  Oh Yeah! (maybe this isn't what John meant, but I'm going with it.)

From the movie "The Lost Boys", Gerald McMahon and Cry Little Sister.  For some reason, as weird as this song (and the movie, which I've never seen but have heard about) are, I love this song.  Maybe it's the spooky organ in the middle.

And now, for my last selection, a bit of an escape.

In 1988 the Beach Boys ended a long (22 years) #1 drought with this song: "Kokomo" from the movie "Cocktail".  Too bad there's no such place as Kokomo.

 There are so many other good 1980's movie songs - these will have to do.

So that's a wrap!

See you again next Monday for another episode of Music Moves Me. Same time, same place!

 

The Reel to Reel Tapes

This is part of a post originally made on Christmas Day, 2013, with an update. We were together with my grown son, and my mother in law, for Christmas.

My son has been interested for years in obsolete technology, as I've blogged about before.

Years ago we had told him of how I purchased a Sony reel-to-reel recorder back around 1971, when I was in college. We left it behind in Arkansas moved to upstate New York in the mid 1980's. The tapes, though, recorded from about 1971 to 1974 and even later, had been in storage at my mother in law's house for years.

He wanted them, and he volunteered to go into the attic to get them.

We had sent them from our apartment in Florida to his mother shortly before my spouse joined the Air Force in 1976.  All these years, we had the tapes back.

My son, who is in his mid 20's, got such a kick out of the box. Black and white television. Imagine!

We opened the box, and this is what we saw.  After all these years, the tapes looked like they were still in good condition.  (If they are playable, though, it might be a minor miracle.)

I had forgotten how meticulously I typed up lists of each song - name, artist and year.  He got a true Christmas Eve gift. It's fine with me if he keeps the tapes, and he did.

Now, after all these years, my son is looking for a tape player or another way to test one of the tapes.

Another activity for staying at home?

Life in 1969

Maybe I should have been a sociologist or a cultural anthropologist (sometimes they look at the same thing from different angles) .  Many times, when I learn about a historical event, I tend to be more interested in how people lived back then.

This year, there are many anniversaries of historical events.  Next up - the moon landing and astronauts walking on the moon.

1969.  50 years ago.

There is some nostalgia in this video for me, as I was close to the (pretend) age of the person who made this video.

It seems so simple.  The teens in the video weren't bullying each other on social media.  They weren't texting or using a chat app.  The Internet (actually ARPANET) had just come into being.
The world was different, all right.

You might not want to eat all the popular foods.

There were almost no handheld calculators owned by the general public.  They were invented around 1966 but didn't really catch on until around 1974.  So scientists and mathematicians used slide rules for their space flight calculations.  Slide rules didn't need batteries and worked in power failures, too.

Long distance phone calls could cost a fortune depending on where you were calling. Forget about video. There weren't answering machines, but then again, there weren't robocalls, either.

There were telex machines.

Microwaves? Well they existed but few owned them.

There was a lot more smoking of cigarettes and cigarette ads had not yet been banned on television.

The Vietnam War was on the minds of any.  We were a split country, People who cried "love it or leave it", some who did leave it for Canada, others who fought and lost their lives, still others who burned the flag or draft cards in protests.  The nightly news brought the headcount of deaths on both sides.

So, that was the world that launched the first mission to the moon on July 16, 1969.  A world where each space launch was covered by each of the three networks.  Many people didn't have cable.  There were no 24 hour news channels. 

Simpler times, perhaps.  Maybe better, but that depended on your nationality, religion, and other factors.  Prejudice was alive and well,  and discrimination was more open.  It still is today, of course.

I'm also finding out that people I know on Facebook had parents or other relatives working in the space program or in related industries.  Perhaps you do know people in your lives, too, who were involved.

I would love to hear your stories.

Back in the Day #WordlessWednesday

While we are on the topic of the 1969 moon landing, the part of New York State I live in had a role in creating some of the technology used by NASA (such as the flight simulator the Apollo 11 astronauts trained on).  If I have time tomorrow, I will blog about that simulator.

Recently, I visited an organization called TechWorks near downtown Binghamton, New York, which is a combination museum and educational center.   Because today is a Wordless Wednesday, I will just show you some vintage computer equipment from the early 1960's.  This may have been equipment similar to that used in early space programs.

IBM 1440 computer. This ran some $90,000 (in 1962 dollars!) and up and wasn't too powerful by today's standards.

Something powered by vacumn tubes (top of item), which predate transistors and the modern technology of today.

Just imagine, humankind went to the moon using equipment not too far advanced from these items.  Now, we hold more power in the palm of our hands, but we make other choices.

The moon awaits.  Will we choose it again one day?  Wil this anniversary respark interest?

Join Esha and Natasha for #WordlessWednesday.

The Suddenly Unknown Address

Sunday night, I was (unexpectedly) online, ordering various computer parts.  My desktop had been giving me trouble for several months.  My son had done some temporary short term fixes, but, Saturday morning, I turned my computer on - and, several minutes later, the computer turned itself off.

Long story short, my computer, which dates from the big "Windows XP Support is Ending" era, died.  Son thinks it's the motherboard.  Because of its age, it isn't worth fixing.

So, there I was, ordering parts son would use to build me a new computer.

To my great surprise, two of the sites said the postal service could not validate my address.  That was news to me. I've lived at my current address for longer than some of my blog readers have been alive.  I do not live out in the country.  I am puzzled.

I found shippers such as UPS have "address validators" and, at least according to UPS, I exist.  That's reassuring- I think.  So, maybe I can face this upcoming April challenge with a new computer, if my address is indeed valid.

But why would my address become invalid?  That still is making me wonder.

There's one additional challenge,once I get my new computer - learning Windows 10, which I have never used.

It will keep my mind young, at least.

Are you participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge?

A Technology Mystery

Have you ever heard of a wire recorder?

I have a little family mystery I've never been able to solve, and I'm curious to know if any of my readers have ever heard of this technology.

A while back, I blogged about the Air King wire recorder my son (a lover of old technology) bought out of the bargain bin in the local electronics store.  For those of you who have never heard of these....they are a technology that peaked in the late 40's and early 50's....recording sound on very thin wires.

The recorder came with a wire spool.

The recorder works, sort of (as far as playback) but needs work. It has an arm apparently to play records, but it is broken.  Lights are burnt out.

My son, who loves to fix things, managed to clean the heads so the wire recording that came with this plays.  I sure wish I could identify what is on it.  Son did record this (via a microphone) onto his computer, just in case.

There is, first, something sounding like a late 40's music piece, which I suspect may have recorded off the radio.  Jazz?  Have to admit ignorance.

The next thing on the spool is a live reading of a satire of "The Night Before Christmas" that may have been done by some drunken fraternity brothers-or people playing drunken fraternity brothers.  As a history buff this one interests me.  I wonder if we could do some detective work to find the former owner of this recorder-although I don't have the time to do this.

The third (and apparently, last) thing is a recording of a woman singing, accompanied by a band, again might be a recording off the radio.

Unfortunately neither of us are up on the music of that era.

For now, the contents will have to be a mystery, but the recorder is a valued addition to my son's Museum of Obsolete Technology. 

Day 20 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost

A Dying Breed

Do you ever think your life has turned into a museum exhibit?

On December 23-26 my spouse, son and I spent time in Brooklyn, one of the boroughs of New York City.  I have never lived in Brooklyn (I was born in Queens and grew up in The Bronx, two other boroughs), but my father was a native of Brooklyn and I still have some family there.

What I was doing in Brooklyn during Christmastime is a long story.  I am debating whether to tell it now, or wait for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

For now, I am going to tease you with this picture taken at Coney Island.  I took this picture on Christmas Eve.  It's a picture of a dying breed.

The pay phone.  Perhaps almost the last of a dying breed.  Years ago, they were everywhere.

Now, they aren't.  More often or not I'll find the housing but not the phone.  These had phones.  And, wonder of wonders:  These actually worked.

I was unable to find out how many pay phones are left in Brooklyn, but I have to think "not too many".

Pay phones were a staple of my childhood, growing up in the 50's and 60's.  In those days, we had phone booths where you could take refuge from the weather, and where Superman could change into his superhero clothes. 

Now, so many of us have cell phones, I'm surprised there are any pay phones left at all.

When is the last time you used a pay phone?  For me, it's so long ago I can't even remember.


Day 8 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost.

Throwback Thursday - Texting in the 1930's

At some point in your life, you realize that the technology of your youth is sitting in a museum somewhere. 

I first published the following post in April of 2012.  To my delight, a quick Internet search revealed that this technology still exists.  But, finding this page about it made me chuckle, because it has such an old-school Internet look to it.  I wonder how old the page is.  It was last revised in 2005.

And am I the only one who remembers the following technology?

Texting in the 1930's

It wasn't that long ago that my (then) teenage son asked me how I had gone online in 1958. He was imaging my bedroom filled with a huge UNIVAC computer.  He just couldn't imagine a world without the Internet.

His generation probably can not imagine a world without texting, either. But, unlike the Internet, texting did exist in the 1950's.  But we didn't know it as texting.

More to the point - does anyone out there remember Telex?

I do.  In 1981, I (living in the United States) got a job with a company that did business with several companies in England.  We needed a way to communicate fairly quickly with them for confirmation of certain transactions.  Quickly, that is, for the early 1980's.

Keep in mind, there was no Internet, no email (well, there was email even as far back as the late 1960's, but it wasn't accessible for the majority of us).  We did have telephones but trans-Atlantic service was still expensive.  And fax?  This was just starting out.  We didn't have a fax machine.  What we did have was....

Telex.

Our company had a Telex machine and a trained operator.  A Telex machine (and yes, they still exist) is basically a telephone that doesn't use speech.  It has a keyboard and a printer, and the owner subscribed to a Telex network.  You could "call" anyone who had a Telex machine (they each had a number assigned to them) and type out a message.  The recipient would print out the message, and could then respond back in kind.

The service was enabled across both sides of the Atlantic back in the 1930's and still exists today.

These operators didn't know it, but they were texting, 1930's style.

I never did have to learn to use the Telex. But I bet it would have been fun.  And you know what?  Nothing in those days was instantaneous, but I don't think we were any the worse off for it.

Am I the only one to remember this original form of texting?  And, does anyone else think things were just a little "saner" back before we could do things instantaneously?

Throwback Thursday - An Ordinary Day in 1986

 Sometimes, we don't realize how much things have changed over the years until we remember a day long ago.

Things have changed so much even since April of 2009, when I first started my blog.  I communicated primarily by email, rather than through social media, just as one example.

Now, think back to 1986 and this post from years ago.  It started as just another ordinary day, this day in January, 1986.  But something happened that evening that froze that day in memory.

And what a memory it is, of technology now obsolete, of actions I would never take today.  A world before the Internet.

For Day 3 of the September Blogging challenge on Everyday Gyaan, I present....

An Ordinary Day in 1986

Could I ever live a day like January 21, 1986 again?

I remember so many details of that day because my father died suddenly that evening.  When bad things happen, small details stick in your mind, never to vanish.

It was an unusually warm day.  The high temperature where I lived in Arkansas for the month of January, 1986 was 75.  It may not have been on January 21 but it may have been.  It was sunny, and wonderfully warm.

At lunch, I sat outside, near the office where I worked, and - wrote a letter.

Such an ordinary thing.  This was before the age of the Internet.  People wrote letters to each other  As I recall, the letter was to an aunt, an aunt who never did buy a computer, and who wrote letters to the last day of her life in 2003.

That evening, I got a phone call from my aunt back in Brooklyn that my Dad had been brought to a hospital, he had died in the emergency room and "no one knew why".

That's how you got hold of someone in a hurry in those days. No cell phones, no texting.  You picked up a landline, wired to your home, and called.  In those days, long distance wasn't cheap, either, but it was cheaper than when I was growing up in the 50's and 60's.

I called the airline I knew served our area - on a landline, of course-and booked the next flight to New York City.  I got the number from something called The Yellow Pages.

There was no other way to book a flight, short of turning up at the ticket counter at the airport.

In those days, there was little security on airlines.  You packed your bag, not worried about the contents, got a paper ticket, maybe went through a metal detector after emptying your pockets, and boarded.  I packed, numbly, after calling my boss.  The next day, I flew from Arkansas to New York.

It was such an ordinary day, January 21, 1986.

Today, it would be extraordinary.

The Shack That Lost Its Way

Once upon a time, there was a store called Radio Shack.  They had been in business for something like 90 years.

You could buy so many things there.  One nice thing about Radio Shack was that it was a chain, but they had local neighborhood stores.  You could find one close to your house, and get supplies you needed for hobbies and more.  My father was an electronics hobbyist when he was young.  My son, who never knew his grandfather, followed in granddad's footsteps.  Radio Shack sold educational kits, amateur radio supplies, solder, transistors, and more.

My son played with a primitive educational device I bought there.  He played with their RC cars.  He built a crystal radio from one of their kits.

Their commercials are part of our living history.  Have a listen.

Cell phones, 1985 - only $1,399. ($3,078 in 2015 dollars).

The cell phone, circa 1990.  Things had gotten a little better, it would seem.  

Home computers from the 1980's.

So many historic commercials and catalogs to learn from.

I used to be one of their customers, many years ago.  But, somewhere along the line, they lost their way. They stopped doing what they did well, and became indifferent to their customers.

I haven't been in one of their stores for years, except to buy specialty batteries.

Earlier this month, Radio Shack declared bankruptcy.

Several days later, most of our local stores were closed.

Another "icon" of my childhood, lost forever.  Except, it's been gone for years.

This just made it official.

Civil War Sunday - The Refrigerator

Everyone loves nostalgia.

When nostalgia ties into the Civil War, and local history, it becomes perfect nostalgia.

Consider this refrigerator.  Have you ever seen anything like it?

No, it isn't from the United States Civil War (1861-1865).  It is from either the late 1920's or early 1930's.  It is called a Monitor Top refrigerator, and, when it came out, you could buy it from your local utility company.  They used one of two refrigerants, sulfur dioxide or methyl formate, and there are still monitor tops working today, almost 100 years later.  (The way modern refrigerators are made, maybe I should consider buying a monitor top.)

 This model was displayed at Olums back in June. Olums is a local appliance store celebrating its 100th year in business.

The monitor top refrigerator was, I understand, the first affordable refrigerator on the market.  The first ones, in U.S. Dollars, cost $300 - about $4,000. in today's money.  It was a lot of money back then, too, so people paid them off in monthly payments to the utility company.

But what is the link to the Civil War and to local history?

When I was growing up in New York City in the late 1950's and early 1960's, one of the few things I remember about my elementary school studies on the U.S. Civil War was a battle.  It was the Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia, where, for the first time in history, two ironclad vessels fought each other.  One of these vessels, the U.S.S Monitor, was built partially from wood that came from an area just a couple of miles from where I live.

This refrigerator also reminded me of a small local mystery (mystery to me, anyway) surrounding a missing historical marker. I blogged about it back in 2011.  With some edits, that post follows.

And the refrigerator?  See that refrigeration unit on top of that refrigerator? It reminded so many people of the turret of the U.S.S. Monitor. So it became the "monitor top refrigerator", named after a Civil War vessel.

That vessel, by the way, can be viewed (what is left of it, that is) at a museum in Virginia, where I hope to visit next spring.

Now, today's mystery, which I still haven't solved.

Civil War Sunday-The Mystery of the Monitor Marker

I am trying to solve the mystery of the Missing U.S.S. Monitor Marker.

The 150th anniversary of the battle, off the coast of Virginia of the Union ironclad U.S.S. Monitor vs. the Confederate ironclad Merrimack (not the Merrimac, which was another ship put into service around 1864) won't be until next March.  But I am hoping to solve this mystery before then.

The wood from which the keel of the Monitor was cut came from this area, now occupied partially by a site called Finch Hollow.

The site of the sawmill where the keel of the U.S.S.Monitor was milled is in walking distance of my home near Johnson City, in upstate New York.  The site is, in the present day, occupied by an enclosed shopping mall, the Oakdale Mall.

Apparently, back around 1998, there was a historical marker in the Oakdale Mall commemorating the history of the Monitor.

I have no idea what has happened to the marker.  My spouse, who has a very good memory, doesn't remember ever seeing the marker.  So now I have a little mystery on my hands.

Re Finch Hollow, it still exists.  If you drive north on Oakdale Road (which runs north and south, just to the west of the mall)  from the mall, you will find a  nature center. I haven't been there in many years, but I remember going there with my then young son.  I don't remember any commemoration of its role in the Civil War on the site, however.

The Monitor (what is left of it) was discovered in 1973 and parts have been brought to The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA.  The keel, I am sure, is long gone.  Restorers are in a race against time to preserve the remaining metal parts and guns.  I hope to visit the museum sometime before the end of the Civil War 150th anniversary commemorations.

I could have solved the mystery of the marker (perhaps) last Wednesday, as I was given a brochure inviting people to the opening of a new Civil War exhibition at a local Binghamton museum, Roberson Center.  Broome County historian Gerald Smith was supposed to be there at a small reception.  I wasn't able to make it, although I do hope to get to the museum next weekend for the official grand opening.

Or, I could email Mr. Smith.  But that wouldn't be as much fun as trying to research this out now, would it?

Do you own an appliance from years ago that is still working? (I do - a waffle iron that is older than I am.)

How Did the Baby Boomers Get Online in 1958?

A "personal favorite" posts from the first years of my blog, edited a little.

My son is no longer a teenager.  And he never did locate a Betamax player. But we have enjoyed obsolete technology together - such as my old reel to reel recorder from when I was a teenager.  I'm still a bit surprised that my son never decided to open a Museum of Obsolete Technology.

No, wait, there is one - his room. (Only kidding, dear son, especially as you live on your own now).

Still, don't you think this Betamax commercial is just a little touching, even if it is obsolete?

Next, let's consider my iPhone 4S. With the release of iOS8, which I dare not install, my phone would become (if I did install it) what young people call "a brick".  When I got my first computer, in 1996, would I ever have imagined that one day my phone would have more capabilities than that computer? Or that I would use my phone to go online?   No.

Hence this post:

So How Did The Baby Boomers Get Online in 1958?

First, I am not trying to mock my teenage son. But it shows how, in some ways, the mindset of the present generation is so much different from those of us born only 35 or 40 years earlier.

My son knows about what the computers of the 1950's looked like. People of my baby-boomer generation, do you remember the UNIVAC?

Do you remember the famous "hoax" picture of the 1954 RAND prototype of the first home computer? Maybe that was what son was thinking about when he asked his question.

One evening my son asked me "how did you get online when you were growing up? Did you have one of those huge computers in your bedroom?" I thought he was pulling my leg.

He wasn't.

Although he intellectually knew there was no "internet" as he knows it back in the 1950's or 1960's, he had to believe that there was something out there, just something very clunky, probably in black and white, and using technology full of vacuum tubes.

No.

Interestingly, son is also very interested in "old technology". For example, he is looking for a good Betamax player (and has several Betamax tapes). He just couldn't make that intellectual leap of people living before certain technology existed..

 Let's think about this a minute. I bought my first home computer (a bit later than other people, I admit) in 1996 and went online in January of 1997. So my son was in early elementary school at the time.

From his viewpoint, there was a computer in his life "forever".

By the way, when did the Internet start? The answer is complicated. This link has quite the discussion and the answer is..."it depends".

Do you remember life before "online"? Or, has there been a computer in your life "forever"?

Best of AM - Texting in the 1930's

This post is from May of 2012.  It was prompted by a conversation with a co-worker a handful of years older than my son.

Texting in the 1930's

It wasn't that long ago that my (then) teenage son asked me how I had gone online in 1958. He was imaging my bedroom filled with a huge UNIVAC computer.  He just couldn't imagine a world without the Internet.

His generation probably can not imagine a world without texting, either. But, unlike the Internet, texting did exist in the 1950's.  But we didn't know it as texting.

More to the point - does anyone out there remember Telex?

I do.  In 1981, I (living in the United States) got a job with a company that did business with several companies in England.  We needed a way to communicate fairly quickly with them for confirmation of certain transactions.  Quickly, that is, for the early 1980's.

Keep in mind, there was no Internet, no email (well, there was email even as far back as the late 1960's, but it wasn't accessible for the majority of us).  We did have telephones but trans-Atlantic service was still expensive.  And fax?  This was just starting out.  We didn't have a fax machine.  What we did have was....

Telex.

Our company had a Telex machine and a trained operator.  A Telex machine (and yes, they still exist) is basically a telephone that doesn't use speech.  It has a keyboard and a printer, and the owner subscribed to a Telex network.  You could "call" anyone who had a Telex machine (they each had a number assigned to them) and type out a message.  The recipient would print out the message, and could then respond back in kind.

The service was enabled across both sides of the Atlantic back in the 1930's and still exists today.

These operators didn't know it, but they were texting, 1930's style.

I never did have to learn to use the Telex. But I bet it would have been fun.  And you know what?  Nothing in those days was instantaneous, but I don't think we were any the worse off for it.

Am I the only one to remember this original form of texting?  And, does anyone else think things were just a little "saner" back before we could do things instantaneously?

Best of AM - My Childhood and Young Adulthod Considered as a Museum Piece

I will be running some "best of" here and there over the next couple of weeks.  This first blog post, from 2009, is one of my personal favorites.  As I look at this post in 2014:

I am 61, have been blogging for five years now, and am still blogging.

The woman in the first paragraph is still alive, and thriving.  She travels across the country several times a year by plane, and texts with her grandchildren.  She even set up a Twitter account, although I don't think she uses it.

I am still amazed when I am interacting with people my son's age (mid 20's) and even a little older, at how far removed so much of their everyday life is from what I experienced when I was (wince) "their age".

If you are older than, say, 35, do you feel the same way as I do-that your childhood belongs in a museum? And what about if you are younger? Do you feel the elders in your life are obsolete?

Herewith:

My Childhood and Young Adulthood Considered as a Museum Piece

I thought about a woman who has been my mother in law's neighbor for many years. The neighbor is in her 70's.

We both grew up in the Bronx, 2 miles and some 20 plus years apart.

We can reminisce about a major shopping area in the Bronx off Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, shopping at the same stores, going to the same movie houses and even eating at the same restaurants. We read the same magazines (including Life and Look). We used pay phones. We drank the same brand of soda (in 7 oz green bottles). We remember the same shows, although it is true that she heard a lot of them on radio and I watched them on T.V. We even remember when TV had steady schedules and seasons that always began the same week each year. We played potsy on the sidewalks. (I'll stop now before I sound like one of those "I love the 50's" emails that circulate.)

There were many differences (popular music, fashions, hair styles, to name three) but we have so much in common that we've had several nice chats about our respective childhoods.

Now think of someone 26 years younger than me. Or, put it this way. My sister in law is 12 years younger than me and there is so much we don't have in common (not that she grew up in my neighborhood, but just in general).

And the 38 years between me and my son? It's sometimes like trying to build a bridge across the Grand Canyon.

Never mind how I accessed the Internet in my childhood or if I played video games during a teacher's strike in 1968.

Let's see some of the things I've had to explain to him: For starters: typewriters. Record players. Rotary phones. Carbon paper. Mimeograph machines. Telegrams. The Space Race. Communism. The Soviet Union. Hollerith cards (OK, I am being technical here, but my son did dream of majoring in computer science at one time in his life.)

I've had some surprises in my career as a parent but having my childhood and young adulthood considered a musty museum piece was a big surprise.

I will, however, have my revenge. Just wait until he has kids.

The Obsolete Christmas Eve Surprise and the Wreaths of Christmas

We are together with my grown son, and my mother in law, for Christmas.

My son has been interested for years in obsolete technology. Years ago we had told him of how I purchased a Sony reel-to-reel recorder back around 1971. We left it behind in Arkansas when we moved in the mid 1980's. The tapes, though, recorded from about 1971 to 1974 and even later, had been in storage at my mother in law's house for years.

He wanted them, and he volunteered to go into the attic to get them.

We had sent them from our apartment in Tampa, FL shortly before my spouse joined the Air Force in 1976 . In 2006 we had returned to Tampa for the first time since then and had tried to remember the address - we couldn't. But now, here it was on the return label.

My son, who is in his mid 20's, got such a kick out of the box. Black and white television. Imagine!

We opened the box, and this is what we saw.  After all these years, the tapes looked like they were still in good condition.  (If they are playable, though, it might be a minor miracle.)

I had forgotten how meticulously I typed up lists of each song - name, artist and year.  He got a true Christmas Eve gift. It's fine with me if he keeps the tapes.

Now my son is looking for a reel to reel tape recorder to buy, or another way to test one of the tapes.

Today it is Christmas and, to get readers who celebrate this holiday into the spirit, here are some wreaths made locally in upstate New York.  Many of these pictures were taken in Owego, New York during the annual November O Tannenbaum fundraiser in The Coolest Small Town in America, Owego, New York.

This was one of my favorites - dried fruit, perhaps on a grapevine?

Cardinals (no, not real ones).

A snowman.

And, pink and white poinsettias.

And a final collection of wreaths at Country Wagon Produce in Maine, New York.

A Merry Christmas to my Christian readers.  And to all, a good day.

Sustainable Saturday- I'm Falling Apart-Are You?

No, it really isn't me falling apart (although my back, which suddenly has decided to trouble me again, might make me change my mind), but, rather, my laptop.

I cracked the lid and epoxy didn't work.  The crack got bigger and bigger.  Now I can barely move the thing without the lid separating from the screen.  I am going to have to make a decision - try to get fixed (I am not sure ducttape will work) or get a new laptop.  Or a tablet.  Or something. 

This laptop is practically the most important thing I own.  It's my communication device with people all over the world.  I blog.  I play FarmVille (again, with an international cast). I write.  I buy things. I email.  I tweet.  If I could, I would cook on it.

When did we get out of the habit of fixing things? Or, for that matter, making appliances or devices that aren't junk?  Not having to fill our landfills with stuff is part of sustainability, after all.

For example:

We own a waffle iron.  It was given to us by my mother in law.  It was made in the 1950's.  Still works fine.

How many people own refrigerators from the 1950's that still work?  Maybe you keep one in your garage, or your basement, as a 2nd refrigerator for party supplies or extra food for company.  They still work.  Or an old toaster?  OK, I know waffle irons and toasters are relatively simple. But still.  They were metal, they didn't melt, and they kept working and working.

Does anybody reading this have an old telephone affixed to their wall?  Still makes calls, doesn't it?

No, instead, we are stuck with examples like this:

Exhibit 1 is our refrigerator, which we have limped along for some 6 years.  A tiny part in the freezer kept breaking.  We would come home from work or wherever to discover that our no-frost freezer had turned into an Arctic ice cave.  We had bought an extended warranty (I love Consumer Reports, but totally disagree with their stance concerning extended warranties) and for the first 3 years got free repairs.  And then the same part would go out, over and over. 

Once it was out of warranty, we paid money for a local repairman to come out.  He said, for some extra money, we could get said part in metal instead of the plastic the extended warranty people were using.  We took his advice.  No more problems.  (Now, if only we could get decent crispers instead of the worthless ones that came with the fridge.  They keep cracking.  I refuse to pay the price Sears wants to charge.

Exhibit 2- we had a similar problem (plastic part, kept breaking, but in this case no metal available) with a dryer.  Our flood last September finally put that appliance out of its misery.

Exhibit 3 - now our phone (yes, we have a landline)  is malfunctioning.  Sometimes it makes calls.  Sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes weird things happen when you think it is making a call.

Almost makes you want to go back to the days of Ma Bell black rotary phones  doesn't it?

Exhibit 4:  a beautiful pot we bought years ago, again from Sears.  (I'm not putting Sears down.  Just saying....) The handle broke.  No way we could get a new handle. Why?  Sears didn't make them.  No one made them.  We ended up giving the pot to someone with welding skills.  I hope he was able to fix it for his own use.

Look, I am realistic.  I know that old isn't always better. I enjoy having a phone with caller ID (this minute, I am ignoring a junk phone call.  Nice to be able to do that.) and a built in answering machine. But I can also remember a time when quality mattered. Now, I think, manufacturers are in a race to produce products they should be ashamed of.  Where is our pride?

This isn't good for our wallets.  That isn't good for the environment, or the landfills.  It isn't good for repairmen (they deserve to be able to make a living, too.).  It isn't good for any of us.

Do you have stories to tell about devices that died before their time; ones you wish you could have gotten repaired?  Or, do you think this modern trend is good?

Will Your Blog Be Obsolete Tomorrow?

We put so much time into our blogs, many of us. 

But will anyone be able to read them in 20 years?  (or, even sooner?)

If you think this is a ridiculous question, answer this question:  Do you have something in your house that can play any of the following, all of which existed as "modern technology" during my lifetime:
-a wire recording (OK, I'm dating myself here);
-an 8 track tape;

-a cassette tape;
-an 8 inch floppy disc;
-a 5 1/4 inch floppy disc or a 3 1/4 inch floppy disk;
-a plastic digital audio tape?
-a VHS tape?

The problem is (except maybe for the cassette and VHS tapes), not many people have these playback devices, either.  So, the history recorded on these devices may well be lost forever.

And what happens when the devices we use today become obsolete?

Consider these facts:
-The Rosetta Stone, recording a decree issued by an Egyptian king in 196 BCE, is still quite readable and the only barrier to reading it was not knowing two of the three scripts the decree was inscribed in;
I can read the Lliad and the Odyssey, although they were first composed (most likely) in the 8th century BCE;
I can admire cave paintings in France first created around 35,000 years ago.

But I can't read floppy discs I created with my first computer, purchased in 1996.

If this doesn't concern you, consider this essay written back in 2002 written about our National Archives called "Are We Losing our Memory?"

So what happens when the Internet evolves, or even becomes obsolete?  What will happen to all the data on it?  True, we have the Wayback Machine, but I have tried to use that on a number of occasions and have found it is not easy, or reliable, to use.

So, short of printing out our blogs periodically (probably killing a forest each time), what can we do?

Will your blog be obsolete tomorrow?  Probably not, but wait 20 years.

We know the Middle Ages but will we know the early 2000's?