SEARCH FINESCALE.COM

Enter keywords or a search phrase below:

Signs of Getting Older

6865 views
99 replies
1 rating 2 rating 3 rating 4 rating 5 rating
  • Member since
    June 2017
Posted by Chemteacher on Monday, September 6, 2021 11:48 AM
I’ve been teaching the high-school aged kids of kids I’ve taught for 6 years now.

On the bench: Revell-USS Arizona; Airfix P-51D in 1/72

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Orlando, Florida
Posted by ikar01 on Tuesday, August 31, 2021 8:52 PM

It seems to me that whatever she was using to make copies had to be a step or two below the mimeograph machines.  The first one of those I encountered was when I was in 9th grade and it was a original placed on a metal drum and rolled.  It had the snell of alcohol.

Remember the paper towels?  The dispenser had a log cabin pressed intothe front and the paper was a sort of light brown with what looked like shaved pieces of wood scattered around.

  • Member since
    July 2019
  • From: Vancouver, British Columbia
Posted by Bobstamp on Tuesday, August 31, 2021 8:39 PM

Real G

Gamera

Someone may have mentioned it and I missed it but mimeographs in school. I remember that funky chemical smell, the weird purple ink, and the way it would come off and stain your hands.

Hey I remember those in elementary school!  The prints smelled of alcohol, and they came off the press wet and had to dry.

 
I've always been intrigued by the first "mimeographs" that I encountered, in Grade 1, or rather my second attempt at Grade 1. My teacher used what looked like baking sheets that were filled with a yellowish gelatine. She would press a master worksheet onto the gelatine to transfer the text and design elements to it, and then smooth blank sheets of paper onto the gelatine, and pull away finished worksheets. 
 
I also remember using fountain pens, very unsuccessfully for the most part. I'm semi-ambidextrous: I write with my right hand, but hold a pen or pencil like left-handed people, which meant that I normally dragged my hand across the line I had written above, which meant...mess! My Grade 3 teacher had a writing contest once. I came out in 14th place out of 15 — the boy I beat out was, I've always suspected, a Neanderthal throwback. My father, thank god, ordered me to take typing in high school.
 
And then there was the white paste we used for "art" projects. It was very tasty! Stick out tongue 
 
Bob 
 
 

On the bench: A diorama to illustrate the crash of a Beech T-34B Mentor which I survived in 1962 (I'm using Minicraft's 1/48 model of the Mentor), and a Pegasus model of the submarine Nautilus of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas fame. 

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Orlando, Florida
Posted by ikar01 on Tuesday, August 31, 2021 1:16 PM

Back then there were no commercials allowed for Lawyers.

They just started a policy that to do commercials you had to belong to the actor's guild.

Sometimes while watching a program a light would reflect of something on set and a flash or trail of light would follow the camera for a couple seconds.

The Beverly Hillbillies would do cigerette commercials at the end of the show with grannie saying that Winston tastes good like a cigerette had outta.

Darl Shadows was dopne live and sometimes things just didn't go right, like the fire on stage and you could hear teh extinguishers going off in the background while the actors did their lines.

  • Member since
    July 2009
  • From: North Carolina
Posted by Back to the bench on Friday, August 27, 2021 1:12 PM

Recalling that originally when watching my favorite TV shows all the commercials were for sports cars, beer and the Marlboro Man.

Now I watch reruns of those same shows and all the commercials are for Depends, step in bathtubs and medical alert pendantsSadWink

Sigh.

Gil

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Orlando, Florida
Posted by ikar01 on Thursday, August 26, 2021 1:38 PM

Mary Ann, deffintely better.  I never did go for the M.Monroe bit from ginger.

Going to the record store, or department store and having not only to buy needles but checking the records.  You had two choices in 33 1/3, mono or stereo.

Later it became a choice of what receiver you wanted, mono, stereo, or quadrophonic.  In a few years, we were back to two choices.

Then came video tapes, beta or vhs,  Beta had better picture quality but in the end it didn't matter, now no tapes.

  • Member since
    March 2003
  • From: Towson MD
Posted by gregbale on Thursday, August 26, 2021 9:11 AM

Real G

 

 
Gamera

Someone may have mentioned it and I missed it but mimeographs in school. I remember that funky chemical smell, the weird purple ink, and the way it would come off and stain your hands.

 

 

Hey I remember those in elementary school!  The prints smelled of alcohol, and they came off the press wet and had to dry.

 

We had one at home that Mom used to print the church bulletin every week. I have visions of my siblings and I as young'uns, gathered 'round the table watching in fascination...and probably breathing those fumes deeply, looking slightly glassy-eyed.... Stick out tongue

Greg

George Lewis:

"Every time you correct me on my grammar I love you a little fewer."
 
  • Member since
    June 2021
Posted by rocketman2000 on Thursday, August 26, 2021 8:46 AM

My first driveable car was a Crosley.  How many of you remember those?

 

Don Stauffer in Minnesota

  • Member since
    March 2015
  • From: Close to Chicago
Posted by JohnnyK on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 3:48 PM

Real G

 

 
Gamera

Someone may have mentioned it and I missed it but mimeographs in school. I remember that funky chemical smell, the weird purple ink, and the way it would come off and stain your hands.

 

 

Hey I remember those in elementary school!  The prints smelled of alcohol, and they came off the press wet and had to dry.

 

I remember smelling that stuff. The nuns would scream at us, "Stop that, stop that". I have no idea why they cared that we were smelling those papers?

Your comments and questions are always welcome.

  • Member since
    May 2011
  • From: Honolulu, Hawaii
Posted by Real G on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 12:28 PM

Gamera

Someone may have mentioned it and I missed it but mimeographs in school. I remember that funky chemical smell, the weird purple ink, and the way it would come off and stain your hands.

Hey I remember those in elementary school!  The prints smelled of alcohol, and they came off the press wet and had to dry.

“Ya ya ya, unicorn papoi!”

  • Member since
    July 2003
  • From: On my kitchen counter top somewhere in North Carolina.
Posted by disastermaster on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 12:08 PM

gregbale
Back to the bench
Wow I am an old fart. I'm sure there is more but it's almost time for a Gilligan's Island rerun.

Which of course begs the 'eternal question'...

...Ginger or Mary Ann? Wink

 

Without a doubt........

Sherman-Jumbo-1945

"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"

 

 
  • Member since
    April 2020
Posted by Eaglecash867 on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 11:49 AM

Gamera
I need to do the same, I keep hearing about disc rot.

It was a long, tedious process to get everything on there, but definitely worth it.  Now I don't have to do anything but push a button or two on the remote to watch a movie.  Also have a second 8TB drive that I mirror everything to, just in case the primary one dies.

"You can have my illegal fireworks when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers...which are...over there somewhere."

  • Member since
    November 2009
  • From: SW Virginia
Posted by Gamera on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 11:26 AM

Someone may have mentioned it and I missed it but mimeographs in school. I remember that funky chemical smell, the weird purple ink, and the way it would come off and stain your hands.

"I dream in fire but work in clay." -Arthur Machen

 

  • Member since
    November 2009
  • From: SW Virginia
Posted by Gamera on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 11:24 AM

Eaglecash867

 

 
Gamera
1). Killer backache- yeah I'm old. 2). I don't trust owning a movie on streaming, if I don't own a physical copy I don't consider it owning it- makes me old.

 

I'm definitely with you on #1.

For #2, I'm the same way, but I've done kind of a hybrid of the two.  Every DVD and Blu-Ray I own is in fully digital format on an 8TB hard drive that I can stream from with my TVs.

 

I need to do the same, I keep hearing about disc rot.

 

And with you on 'Airwolf', God I loved that show as a kid. Bought it on DVD and well it don't stand up that well today. Beautiful chopper though.

"I dream in fire but work in clay." -Arthur Machen

 

  • Member since
    April 2020
Posted by Eaglecash867 on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 7:43 AM

In Blue Thunder, at least in the movie, they were looking through closed curtains with their IR camera.  Not sure if they showed them looking through walls in the TV show.

Edit:  Nevermind.  Forgot about IIR not being able to see through glass.

"You can have my illegal fireworks when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers...which are...over there somewhere."

  • Member since
    June 2021
Posted by rocketman2000 on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 7:30 AM

ikar01

Didn't Blue Thunder have thermal capabilities as well as those weird mics on top of the canopy and silent mode?  Dana Carvey was in the back seat for teh series.

Don't forget Street Hawk and Viper.

Diver Dan

Deputy Dawg

Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Dark Shadows

 

Oh, that was the one I was thinking of, that could see through walls and windows. Thermal IR cannot do that- it is fiction.

 

Don Stauffer in Minnesota

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Orlando, Florida
Posted by ikar01 on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 5:00 AM

Didn't Blue Thunder have thermal capabilities as well as those weird mics on top of the canopy and silent mode?  Dana Carvey was in the back seat for teh series.

Don't forget Street Hawk and Viper.

Diver Dan

Deputy Dawg

Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Dark Shadows

  • Member since
    May 2011
  • From: Honolulu, Hawaii
Posted by Real G on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 12:47 AM

GMorrison

Tripping over the dog at 1.30, 3.00 and 5.30 a.m....

And getting that right away, and not finding it funny at all.  Tongue Tied

“Ya ya ya, unicorn papoi!”

  • Member since
    September 2012
Posted by GMorrison on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 11:02 PM

Tripping over the dog at 1.30, 3.00 and 5.30 a.m....

 Modeling is an excuse to buy books.

 

  • Member since
    August 2021
Posted by goldhammer88 on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 10:57 PM

wayne baker

Listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio.

Playing board games with the family.

The Korean war.

Party lines and dial telephones.

The political conventions of the 50's on television.

It"s been 52 years since I got out of the Corps.

 

Hey, you never get out of the Corp....once a Marine, always a Marine.

  • Member since
    February 2003
  • From: Medina, Ohio
Posted by wayne baker on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 9:28 PM

Listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio.

Playing board games with the family.

The Korean war.

Party lines and dial telephones.

The political conventions of the 50's on television.

It"s been 52 years since I got out of the Corps.

 I may get so drunk, I have to crawl home. But dammit, I'll crawl like a Marine.

  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Orlando, Florida
Posted by ikar01 on Saturday, August 21, 2021 2:55 PM

Being told to come home when the daily air raid siren test goes off.

Walking down to the dairy at the end of the street to pick up a extra bottle of milk, or maybe two.

My Father having the cream from the top of the bottle for his cerial.

Having the milk truck leave the new bottles in the insulated box by the fromt door.  I have a metal model of a milk truck  and oddly enough I find that it's one of the more memorable vehicles from back then.

Listening to my Father go on abouit how the new music is usually about girls crying, bad relations, or just music that wasn't all that good to begin with.

When returning home from my first tour during Vietnam, seeing the banner welcoming me home.

My parents first visit to Little Rock AFB.  They showed up at the gate in their camper and the police desk called me to clear them.  I had them get directions to the base lake  where I met them in my 1974 Chevy pickup mounting red lights and a shotgun.  My Father said he had just seen a very large black plane fly overhead.  The first time he had seen a B-52.  Sometimes I wondered if he was proud of me and This was the first time I got the feeling that he really was.

  • Member since
    July 2009
  • From: North Carolina
Posted by Back to the bench on Saturday, August 21, 2021 2:16 PM

rocketman2000

 

 

 

 
keavdog

 

 
gregbale

Which of course begs the 'eternal question'...

...Ginger or Mary Ann? Wink

 

 

Why choose?  Stick out tongue

At my first engineering job I was coding on a VAX/VMS cluster of 4 11/785s and when I would travel I would take this Silent 700 so I could check on my batch jobs

 

 

 

 

I started with mainframe.  Had to take my punch cards to the temple, then go back hours later to see if printout was there.  Then they installed a new computer with time share, and teletype terminals at nearest coatrack.  We could punch out program and data on paper tape, and if we were lucky in about 30 seconds the printer would either print out our results or the error message.  Later on, departments started getting their own VAXs and DGs.

 

 

 

Ahhh the Silent 700, I remember those! It's kind of ironic to me that things have come almost full circle. I remember much celebration when it reached the point that everyone had a workstation on their desk and didn't have to rely on mainframes and network connections to get work done. Now the push is to get everything onto "the cloud" including all of the everyday software like MS Office. The more things change the more they stay the same I guess.

I found quickly that I would starve if I had to write good software for a living and ended up more on the hardware side. I remember programming our EPROMs using a paper tape programmer. You lifted a small "gate", placed the paper tape on the toothed drive wheel and closed the gate and watched it pull the tape through while it read the codes punched into the tape and translated that to bits in the memory of your EPROM. For it to feed correctly you stacked three nickles and two pennies on top of the gate lol. The memory chips were UV erasable so we stuck a piece of lead tape over the erase window so the device wouldn't "loose it's mind" over time when exposed to light. Pretty crazy to think that we now carry phones in our pockets that have many orders of magnitude more processing power than the mainframes that were relied on "back in the day".

Maybe that's one reason I still find scale modeling to be so relaxing. Technology is making big differences in our hobby as well, but when it comes down to it our satisfaction and success with a build still usually boils down to a good set of nippers, an X-acto knife, some sandpaper, paint and brushes and probably and airbrush. The basics are still pretty much the same and I like that. And I guess I now have to include more magnifying devices since I am officially "chronologically challenged"GeekedWhistling

Gil

  • Member since
    July 2009
  • From: North Carolina
Posted by Back to the bench on Saturday, August 21, 2021 1:43 PM

gregbale
Which of course begs the 'eternal question'... ...Ginger or Mary Ann?

Hey it's a win-win Big Smile

And my wife got a big laugh out of your responseSmile

Gil

  • Member since
    June 2021
Posted by rocketman2000 on Saturday, August 21, 2021 8:53 AM

 

 

keavdog

 

 
gregbale

Which of course begs the 'eternal question'...

...Ginger or Mary Ann? Wink

 

 

Why choose?  Stick out tongue

At my first engineering job I was coding on a VAX/VMS cluster of 4 11/785s and when I would travel I would take this Silent 700 so I could check on my batch jobs

 

 

I started with mainframe.  Had to take my punch cards to the temple, then go back hours later to see if printout was there.  Then they installed a new computer with time share, and teletype terminals at nearest coatrack.  We could punch out program and data on paper tape, and if we were lucky in about 30 seconds the printer would either print out our results or the error message.  Later on, departments started getting their own VAXs and DGs.

 

Don Stauffer in Minnesota

  • Member since
    June 2021
Posted by rocketman2000 on Saturday, August 21, 2021 8:47 AM

Eaglecash867

Heh...I bought the complete series of Airwolf because of how much I loved it as a kid.  Yeah...it was really a hokey show that only a kid could get into as it turns out.

 

It was the first of the crime/police shows that implied thermal (infrared) cameras can see through walls and windows, which is fantasy.  But all sorts of shows now imitate this.

 

Don Stauffer in Minnesota

  • Member since
    April 2003
  • From: USA
Posted by keavdog on Saturday, August 21, 2021 7:55 AM

gregbale

Which of course begs the 'eternal question'...

...Ginger or Mary Ann? Wink

Why choose?  Stick out tongue

At my first engineering job I was coding on a VAX/VMS cluster of 4 11/785s and when I would travel I would take this Silent 700 so I could check on my batch jobs

 

Thanks,

John

  • Member since
    February 2003
  • From: East Bethel, MN
Posted by midnightprowler on Saturday, August 21, 2021 6:58 AM

Eaglecash867

Heh...I bought the complete series of Airwolf because of how much I loved it as a kid.  Yeah...it was really a hokey show that only a kid could get into as it turns out.

 

I am 60 and bought it and still love it. Anyone remember this

https://youtu.be/-KgPC5RkYFo

Hi, I am Lee, I am a plastiholic.

Co. A, 682 Engineers, Ltchfield, MN, 1980-1986

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 1 Corinthians 15:51-54

Ask me about Speedway Decals

  • Member since
    March 2003
  • From: Towson MD
Posted by gregbale on Saturday, August 21, 2021 1:11 AM

Back to the bench
Wow I am an old fart. I'm sure there is more but it's almost time for a Gilligan's Island rerun.

Which of course begs the 'eternal question'...

...Ginger or Mary Ann? Wink

Greg

George Lewis:

"Every time you correct me on my grammar I love you a little fewer."
 
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!

Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.

SEARCH FORUMS
FREE NEWSLETTER
By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. View our Privacy Policy.