Old farts (40 plus thread)

I'm one of those unfortunates who can still hear a slightly subdued version of that if there's no background or traffic noise. It's not tinnitus, but is most prevalent when I'm falling asleep or waking up. I sometimes suspect that I'm just a digital version of Mork from Ork sending information home at the end of the day, as I have also heard it in places where there is no wifi. It doesn't bother me to the point that I would start wearing tinfoil hats, but it really does make me ponder whether or not I'm living in a synthetic simulated universe.

My first dial up modem had an epic connection speed of 2400 baud. I don't even know what that means anymore, but I remember those gifs coming through one line at a time! 

It was a 486DX2 66Mhz with 8MB RAM and an 120MB HDD.   It was top of the line at that time. And let's not forget the (awesome) SB AWE32 ...

As for Monkey Island: I've started with the first two (You fight like a Dairy farmer!)  . Later, after a major hardware overhaul, I played the third and Grim Fandango when it came out (though it was exceedingly buggy...but such a wonderful game) . Lucasarts had some of the best titles in the 90s.

Of course I've also got to play the last two but somehow they did not feel the same...

I think the term GOAT (as a pun and an acronym for Greatest Of All Time) was first used in conjunction with Earl "The Goat" Manigault, the NY street basketball player. There was a 1996 biopic called "Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault". From there on it entered mainstream and you'll see a lot of debates like who is the GOAT : Jordan or LBJ?  

Everyone remembers this guy. The greatest stuntman ever?

Yeah, without a doubt. I'd already given him a mention earlier, for either playing him jumping buses on Atari, or like this...

I also remember loading jpegs on an Amiga 1200, directly from the hard drive I mentioned earlier, and actually seeing them progress down the screen in a similar fashion as they were decompressed...

I'm still a few years away from 40, but my mom is definitely over 40, and I thought some here might appreciate this anecdote:

The other day, she randomly took an interest in what game I am currently playing. So I wound up giving her a crash course in Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided...and the way she was able to understand it was by saying "oh, so it's just like the Million Dollar Man?" YES! Yes mom, it is exactly like that! I was so proud of her.

When I 1st took programming we had to use the punchcards but we could not key punch them ourselves, we had to write down the code on coding sheets and then have someone else key punch them and submit the job.  We also only had a maximum of 5 or 10 computer runs, so if the key puncher made a mistake good bye to a run.  The sheer and utter horror of the old days.  (no wonder i just made it into year two of programming and dropped it as a career after getting beaten down by advanced assembler.)

In the military, try explaining to someone you dropped the 1000 cards they had for their program.  And YOU had to put them back in order! (luckily they were numbered! )

FORTRAN and COBOL. 

Edit - Dammit! Can't link the video. It was a clip from New Jack City where Pookie was asked "Can you program PASCAL?

I'll leave in shame.