I tried telling my kids about my early days in IT. You'd think I was regaling them with tales of life among the dinosaurs. 
 
"...There I was, in the middle of installing the upgrade, when the drive snapped the 9-track tape. I was stuck without an operating system and no way to restart the upgrade. IBM sent over another set of tapes, but they were 1600 tapes instead of 6250's, so I had 16 tapes instead of 4."
"Is that when you invented fire?"
"No, that was earlier. Also, I told you I didn't invent it? You're thinking of my cousin, Uh."
"Did IBM send your tape-thingies by Pteranodon?"
"No, that's how we delivered pizza."
"Why didn't you just download it?
"We didn't have the Internet."
"Was that because a T-Rex had eaten your cable guy?"
"We didn't have technology back then. We had 3 TV channels (well, 4 if you count PBS and no one did), and the TV was a 12 inch black and white one with rabbit ear antennae you had to twist and contort for 10 minutes to get a snowy picture. You had to go into town to the arcade to play a video game. There were no computers, XBoxes, Internet, or cell phones."
(Screams of Terror)

I've been pondering this a lot lately (getting old)...and we ponder more when we get old you know...more pondering and less action. It just feels better to ponder. 
 
So here I am pondering middle age....but it might not be middle age since I don't know how long I'm going to live.
I could only be at third age...but that's highly unlikely since that would put me at oh...159 years old at my full peak. At 30 a man might be middle aged and not know it.
 
But if life is only a partial trip into eternity and if I'm eternal which I think I am...then this is only a phase of the never ending journey and if I'm going to be kickin' it into the next eon..then I hope I'm at least with some good folks and in a good place....will there be a CH there? How about hot dogs with onions and chili? Cold beer? 

Dave Modisette

bapu
I still feel 29 (in my head) except when I crouch and then I try to get up.

Yeah.   Months ago, I bought a roll of speaker wire so that I could move the power amp for my passive studio monitors.  It means that I must get behind the productiom desk and squat while I hook everything up.
 
The full roll is still sitting on the Futon behind me as I type this.

Dave, the best part is that roll of wire will still be there next year.  
 
This is also known as SOS-Save Our Squats club.

I still remember how much fun it was to rubber cement two cards together about 2/3 of the way through a deck then, when it was put into the computer it would only get that far then choke.
 
I also recall that if you started your 110 Baud acoustic coupler then un-hooked the phone and whistled into it at 1,400hz that you could usually get it to jump to 300 Baud.  Ah, those were the days!

OK anyone remember when you could get a job sitting in an air conditioned room waiting for someone to call and ask you to swap a couple of these so he could run his program?

Does anyone remember if there was an SYS command which made the old Commodore PETs blow up (or something)? I'm having a vague recollection....
 
Also if you typed SCRATCH "MY BALLS"
 
...it responded with 
 
DEVICE NOT PRESENT ERROR

Oh the fun I used to have replacing the default commands on unsuspecting coworkers... 
 
One thing I am NOT old enough to remember was having to take a duster into the computer room to wipe out the moths that were attracted to and killed by the bright vacuum tubes (this is where the term "debugging" originally came from. 

I Am half blind, I can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine.  I take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts.  I have bouts with dementia.  I have poor circulation, hardly feel my hands and feet I can't remember how old I Am and I have lost all my friends.
But, thank God I still have my driver's license.