Back in the Day

[Ragnar]

Back In The Day
Started 2/9/04

This is something I wrote a while back that I was considering putting into the humour writing contest. I never got around to it, however, as I was too busy (a poor excuse, I know.)

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Back in the day, we didn't have all of this fancy-schmancy computer stuff. We didn't have all of these new terms like "digital" and "Wi-Fi." Lemme tell ya, to us, a "broad band" was something they used to whoop your butt if you got outta line. And a "cable" was whatcha used to get down a mine shaft! Those were the days, when men were men and all of you nerds woulda been left out for the wolves.

Yeah, you kids these days have it easy! We couldn't just click here and there, no sir! And if we wanted to get a new file, you think we went on the internet and searched? Hell no! If we wanted to load a new page, we had to run back and forth with them 5¼ inch floppy disks, but we didn't complain; we considered ourselves lucky! 'Cuz before that, we had to use 8 inch and 12 inch disks! You'd get a hernia runnin' around with a buncha them!

'Course, before someone invented them disks, why, I remember that we had to use a sharp stick to punch out holes on our punch cards. And if we didn't get every hole exactly perfect, the boss would make us eat 'em! He'd call us up and say "You call this a card, boy?" and I'd say "Nogh thir," because my mouth was filled with paper cuts. Then he'd say "Now you go back and do this again!" and I'd say "Yeth thir," and I'd go and do just what he said.

Now, that was when we had punch cards. For the first couple o' years, we'd have to yell "Zero zero one, one zero, one one zero one!" into one end of our "Communicator." They called it that 'cuz the boss was too cheap to admit it was just two soup cans connected by a piece a string. The other guy down the hall woulda had the other can, and he'd put it up to his ear and plug in whatever he heard you yelling. 'Course, sometimes, someone would trip over the string and break the connection, but we didn't mind. We were grateful for those cans!

And 'afore that, why, we'd use smoke signals. One short puff for '0', one long puff for '1'. Yeah, I remember those long hours you'd spend at the office just tryin' to light the kindling. Sure was warm, though. Of course, tech support was like hell. If you managed to get their attention, they'd say, "please hold!" and put you on 'steam' for forty minutes!

And there weren't nothing 'afore that. We played outside. You kids today.
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EDIT: Feedback no longer only appreciated. It is now revered.

NOTES:
-This originated from a conversation on #soulriders.
-If you didn't get the joke about the steam, I was thinking that in the smoke-signal world, it would be the equivalent of "hold", because it's transferring you to a cheap system and pretending to be the real thing.
-Feedback appreciated.

[Dracos]

Amusing.  Don't have much more to say other than that.  of course, it totally missed the vacuum tubes phase, but then it didn't really need it. ^^

Dracos