You know you are getting old when:

[Lean'n'mean]

I just noticed an interesting thing about the Monkee's. It appears that a lot of their fans were either to young or not born while their show was new. Most of the people I know who were around during first run, either hate them, or like my self, are just not fans. I wounder why? Were we just spoiled with so many top groups that they just got lost in the shuffle? Did we all buy into the "Prefab Four" line? Just curious what others think?

I used to watch the show but it was probably reruns as I remember it in color & we didn't get a color TV until '72. ......without being a fan I have fond memories of them & I still consider ' I'm a believer ' to be a great song.
I never really listened to the beatles until the early 80's when a girl I knew, introduced them into my life.

 

[BobHufford]

I'm a Monkees fan and enjoyed the show in small doses. Loved the Dean Jeffries' car.

I still consider ' I'm a believer ' to be a great song.

Me too...

 

[Fading Fast]

Did the vendor say something to you? If not, I wouldn't necessarily think the vendor thought that of you. Dogs can't regulate heat the way we do, and they can get dehydrated in a hurry. I'd have thought "now there's a guy who's taking care of his dog." Of course, I have soft spot for animals, and for dogs in particular. It breaks my heart to see people who can't recognize a dog's needs.

He did not, but he wasn't smiling or showing upbeat or empathetic body english, but to your point, I did assume the scowl was meant for me.

That aside, I'm with you in that one has to be very tuned into their dogs needs as (1) they can't talk, (2) some have been bred in a way that almost requires human care and (3) they are (at least in NYC away from a few designated areas) on a lead and lacking in a lot of freedom.

To compensate, we try to be very attentive to and know our guy's wants and needs really well and we remind ourselves that, while fun, it is a responsibility. The little guy can get overheated so fast that we know all the fountain spots along our usual paths - the day I referenced was just a quirky early spring day where the temperatures shot up unexpectedly and the fountains hadn't been turned on yet.

On the flip side, some water to drink and some more poured on his head, body and belly and he is so happy it just makes you smile.

 

[tonyb]

I just noticed an interesting thing about the Monkee's. It appears that a lot of their fans were either to young or not born while their show was new. Most of the people I know who were around during first run, either hate them, or like my self, are just not fans. I wounder why? Were we just spoiled with so many top groups that they just got lost in the shuffle? Did we all buy into the "Prefab Four" line? Just curious what others think?

With songwriters such as Carole King and Neil Diamond and Boyce & Hart and session players from the Wrecking Crew on the records you might not always go right, but it makes it a helluva lot more likely. The faces of the show themselves weren't without talent, and being in the company of those other lights, at those young ages, has a way of bringing that talent to the fore.

 

[Stearmen]

One thing I never thought about, and makes me take great pity on the Monkee's is, they had just finished recording an album and working on the show, when they were tossed out on stage and told to perform, with very little practice! Most bands have several years to jell before they hit the big time, and they usually get along, at least in the beginning, not so with the poor Monkees. Plus, they did bring Jimi Hendrix back to the States!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Now, I'm some years older than my female class-teacher at our starting into secondary-school, in 1995. She was 28, then. I'm 32, now.

 

[scottyrocks]

I reached a ponit a couple of years ago where I no longer felt the need to be in with "the latest" tehnology, just aslnog as what I have fits the task I need. Interestingly, I've found a sense of calm in that. I'm by no means luddite, but there's a certain sense of being free in not feeling the need to have the latest whatsit. But then for about thirty years now I've often taken a perverse delight in my own ignorance of a lot of the mainstream, so I guess technologies of various sorts are just part of that.

I'm pretty much the same way. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix (or replace) it.' I didn't get a smart phone until some of the keys on my previous qwerty flip phone began to wear out. And the only reason I didn't replace it with the same type was that, at the time, anything that was available was smaller than what I had, and I couldn't manage the keypad.

The machine I am typing on right now (HP with Windows Vista) is a hand-me-down (up?) from my daughter, who had clogged it up with so much crap that it didn't run anymore, and she wanted a Mac, anyway. I re-imaged it and voila, like new. And as long as I maintain it, iow, stay on top of what goes into it, and clean out the crap programs occasionally with good software, it continues to run well.

And in a few minutes, I'm going to look at, and hopefully purchase, a 49 year old car.

It's amazing how quickly it's moved on. In 2000, a laptop with desktop-spec, more or less, was around GBP2,000.00. Last year I bought Herself a laptop for her birthday that is a very capable machine - just under GBP200, and that's with a 2 or 4 GB memory and a 500GB HD. Recently, they seem to have started issuing even our desk-based admin people with laptops plugged into a workstation rather than a traditional tower-based desktop PC. It's fascinating seeing the norms of what we think of as a computer change so radically. Of course, as of 2013, more people now access the internet with a phone more regularly than with a "computer"....

Our first computer, purchased around 1995, was an IBM-clone made by Tandy, a company that was owned, and products distributed, by a chain of stores called Radio Shack, now all but gone. It was a DOS machine, had 20 MB total memory, and cost US$3,000.

 

[Fading Fast]

I bought my first computer in either '96 or '97 and have bought one every 4-6 years since because by (about) then, they seem to no longer harmonize with the newer software or, in one case, the hard drive died.

Each one has had incredibly more power, speed, storage and did more things, but each one cost +/- $2000 bucks. Economists call this hedonic deflation - getting more for the same price is, economically, similar to / the same as getting the same for less - and there's something there, but I still spent about the same dollars each time.

Until last year. We've evolved to being a two computer family - evolved by keeping an older one going after we bought a new one and now we "need" two. When the older one really died last year, I bought a MacBook Air for about $900 - felt great. I thought I would be in for another $2000 hit and, so far, other than one hiccup, it has worked as well or better than my usual $2000 computer. That's good old fashion deflation - I like it better than the "hedonic" kind.

 

[Fading Fast]

Now, I'm some years older than my female class-teacher at our starting into secondary-school, in 1995. She was 28, then. I'm 32, now.

You are too young my friend to worry / think about this stuff. Live life and you'll have all the time you want in your 50s and beyond to look back.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've never bought a new computer in my life. I've bought them second-hand for pennies, had them issued to me by jobs -- invariably old models that had already been knocking around for years -- or I've just picked them out of dump swap shops or at the side of the road. My laptop was five years old when I got it, and that was eleven years ago. My desktop machine is fourteen years old, and I've replaced the hard drive twice with units I've picked up for cheap on eBay.

All I use a computer for is writing, remastering radio transcriptions and 78rpm records -- for which I use a sound platform introduced in the mid-1990s -- and messing around on the internet. If a site won't load on whatever computer I'm using, I just don't bother to go to it. When new software comes out that won't run on the old machines, I don't use it.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@LizzieMaine

Did you mainly use smaller travel-typewriters?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have an old Underwood portable from the late '20s I used all thru high school, the kind with the wooden board attached to the bottom so you can rest it on your lap. Still ready to go if I need it for anything.

All the years I worked in radio, I used manual typewriters, the last being a Royal from the early 1950s. Wrote many thousands of pages of crap about sewer committee debates and city council arguments on that machine, and I gave it to my niece when I was done with it. She proceeded to demolish it in the space of about two weeks.

 

[Fading Fast]

I learned on a Royal form the 1920s that was scripted out of central casting to look like a 1920s typewriter. I used it all through high school and college - it was as reliable and heavy as a Sherman Tank.

Then I started working for a financial company in '85 and for the next six years hardly typed at all and really didn't start typing again until '96 when the internet made it to the office.

Typing is like riding a bicycle as I was immediately able to pick it right back up. Transitioning to a computer keyboard was marginally annoying - but it is the screen only (what are they really called?) ones today that I struggle with. My hands don't know where to rest / how to establish "home" on them.

My real regret is I gave my mom her typewriter back after college to hold for me (it was hers in theory, but had become mine, but that isn't the real point) which she threw away when she moved in '93. "Why didn't you ask if I wanted it?" "You left it with me in '85 and never mentioned it since." "Fair point."

 

[Trenchfriend]

I have an old Underwood portable from the late '20s I used all thru high school, the kind with the wooden board attached to the bottom so you can rest it on your lap. Still ready to go if I need it for anything.

All the years I worked in radio, I used manual typewriters, the last being a Royal from the early 1950s. Wrote many thousands of pages of crap about sewer committee debates and city council arguments on that machine, and I gave it to my niece when I was done with it. She proceeded to demolish it in the space of about two weeks.

Yeah, my 1931/32's portable Kappel (same standard portable-design) from Chemnitz/Saxony got still it's original base-plate. And the 1983's Erika from Dresden/Saxony, too.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The smell of a portable typewriter when you open the case is a wonderful thing.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The smell is ok...

 

[scottyrocks]

Space saver spare tires, space saver jacks. Are people really carrying so much junk around in their trunks that a few square inches are going to make a difference?

It has to do with weight and fuel economy.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Toronto Blue Jays closer, Roberto Osuna, was born in 1995. Two years after they won their last World Series and three after their first.

Events I recall as if they happened last week.

 

[scottyrocks]

It was originally a trash food -- the dregs of the ocean, eaten only by the poorest of the poor. To this day I have very little use for lobster because it was so often the meal of last resort for us: everybody here knows somebody who lobsters, and you can get the stuff right off the boat for much less than a pound of hamburger. I snicker to myself every time I see a tourist shell out $20 for two dollars worth of lobster meat and a cup of mayonnaise.

And yes, a lobster is nothing more than a big ocean-dwelling bug. It's an arthropod, closer in evolutionary terms to a spider, a centipede, or a cockroach than it is to any kind of a fish. Lobstermen themselves know this -- their working term for the product they catch is "bugs."

I eat lobster and love it. I'd probably try a bug but I don't think I could find a fork small enough to scrape the meat out of the shell.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is grilled lobster common, in Maine?