over 30

[{TNP}Dukie]

If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears
with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning



Uphill... barefoot...



BOTH ways

Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up,
there was no way in heck I was going to lay 

a bunch of crap like that o n kids about how hard I had it 

and how easy they've got it!



But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of
thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my
childhood, you live in a darn Utopia!



And I hate to say it but you kids today you
don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the darn library and
look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!



There was no email!! We had to actually write
somebody a letter, with a pen!



Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!



Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our butts! No where was safe!

There were no MP3' s or Napsters! You wanted to
steal music, you had to hitchhike to the darn record store and shoplift it yourself!



Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!



There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and 'eject' it when finished and the tape would come undone.cause that's how we rolled dig?


We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you
were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either!
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school,
your mom, your boss,20your Bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you
just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video
games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games
like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You
actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or
screens, it was just one screen
0Aforever!

And you could never win. The game just kept getting
harder and harder and
faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!


You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was
on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off
your tails and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no
Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoo ns
on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK
for cartoons, you spoiled
little rats!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat
something up we had to use the stove ... Imagine that!



That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids
today have got it too easy.
You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted
five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

[The Happy Friar]

...

there was internet when I was a kid & i'm 28. 

[peewee_RotA]

There was no email!! We had to actually write
somebody a letter, with a pen!



Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

I'm waiting for a real old fart to come by and say "boo hoo, you had to walk accross the street." Heck, my parents had to collect beer bottles on the side of the road and get the deposits just to have money for candy.

[|iR|Focalor]

...

there was internet when I was a kid & i'm 28. 

I didn't have any internet at home until I was probably 18, and I'm 28 also.

I definitely remember the Atari though. I still have one. I have 3 actually. I have 2 of the old Atari 2600's and 1 Atari 5200. I still play the 2600 every once in a while, with about 30 different game cartridges to choose from. I've only got maybe 4 or 5 for the 5200, I doubt it even works anymore. 

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

When I was around about 14 1vs1 dueling consisted of who could roll over the score on whatever random Atari 2600 game we we're playing at the time.

[adz1La]

sounds like a whine

[lidz]

Commodore 64 was my poisen as a kid.  Hours in front of that thing.  I still have all the old discs and tapes, yet nothing to play them on.

Then I went years with not playing a single game, nor touching a puter. Then got in a car wreck, broke both my legs.  Then started playing a game my gf at the time bought me on discount.  It was, this weird one called q2?  Anyone here of it?  Hence my first nick was WrEcK. She bought it for me, when q3 was already out.  Q3 wtf is that?

[|iR|Focalor]

Commodore 64 was my poisen as a kid.  Hours in front of that thing.  I still have all the old discs and tapes, yet nothing to play them on.

Yep. Had one of those too. Wasn't good for much besides games. It was kinda like an overpriced Atari, lol. I had maybe 15 or 20 games for it. Got that little Top 20 Solid Gold Games pack. My favorites were always High Noon (a wild west shooter kinda similar to Berzerker), Caverns of Khafka (basically a Pitfall ripoff) and Richard Petty's Talladega.

[ReCycled]

When I was 10, my options for entertainment were:

Black and white TV. Channels 2--->13. Maybe 6 were clear because they came via "rabbit ears".
Go outside and play. Or the small park next street over. Always busy.
Read a book, comic, magazine. Play inside with whatever stuff I had. Certainly nothing electronic other than a small transistor radio.
Get on my bike and ride somewhere. Or walk. Longer trips (with Mom) were streetcar or bus. No one had cars.

I also remember my childhood as being happy. Lots of friends, fun and always something new to discover. Common sense seemed to be pervasive. And the times were more stable, less frantic and calmer.

I recently went back to my old street where I grew up just to see the changes. While some of the homes had facelifts, it was more or less the same. A few lawns had disappeared - replaced by a parking spot. But what struck me was the lack of "sound". There was no sound of children anywhere. The street was deserted and sterile. I guess they were inside playing Wii or spirited off by minivan to somewhere.

I ask myself if times were so warm and wonderful, would you go back and give up everything you have today? Tough question. It would be giving up a lot of great technology and "things" in favor of a simpler life more geared to family and social infrastructure.

You can never go back, I guess.

[{TNP}Dukie]

thats how you summarize a report!

well put!

[[BTF]Gator]

Great post recycled.

i was born in 1970.  i was one of the last generations to run somewhat free, and that time was cut short during my childhood.  It is the sexual predators that have driven the young inside.  Hidden away safely by their fearing parents.

My first game was an Pong followed shortly by atari 2600.  i barely remember any consoles after that, although they quickly passed through the house but suffered some violent fate brought on by their lack of soul or a sense of worth.  The atari was never really replaced, not in heart.  A Commodore 64 was my first PC.  Tape Drive FTW.  Something about the PC.  i could play Atari and leave it when dinner was ready.  The Commodore was probably the first time i was drawn in so deeply to gaming that the real world around me would go silent and time would stop.

But i did have the freedom of childhood yet.  And in that time, very similar to as recycled described, i had bicycles.  Ten Speed, then BMX, eventually becoming skateboards, freestyle bmx, and moutain biking with age, maturity, and sense of self preservation.  i was born into a rabbit eared, UHF world, but was the first generation fed cable tv.  i remember the thought of being able to see Bo Derek in Ten on TV.  Sex, delivered to the home tv, blew my mind.

But like i say, i had a unique experience where-in i was one of the last to run free in youth only to see the world close itself off, day by day, year by year, to what it has become now.  By the time i was a teenager, the world had become a place where the threat of danger seemed to lurk near every turn, or so i was warned by parents, teachers, and the older folks.

[[BTF] Reflex]

born 1975

Dad had one of the first atari 2600's

my fav was a tank battle game,  earliest one on one shooter I can think of

pc and modem in the house by 1984,  we ran a wildcat bbs for friends. 
Was actually a large community of BBS's around the area.


Ahhh, the day we went from 1200 baud to 2400

and the day we went from 33kps to cable.. few weeks after q1 came out


Holy crap,  this is my 3000th post

ironic

Where the $%^ is my "celebrated forums whore" can o spam thingy? 

[Admin]

Where the $%^ is my "celebrated forums whore" can o spam thingy? 

Only happens at 2000, sorry

[jägermonsta]

Dad had one of the first atari 2600's

my fav was a tank battle game,  earliest one on one shooter I can think of

  That game was AWESOME!

Yeah we had computers in my home relatively early. Shit, my father doesn't even know how to use a computer now since the old Radio Shack Tandy. Use to play the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games and Sierra's Quest games till I took them over. Computers are waaay to complicated now for him.  

[RRBM [NL]]

I was also hooked up with commodore 64 when I was a kid. First with tapes and after that I had floppy disks. Played a lots of games on this computer. I still have my commodore 64 computers with everything related.

My first game console was a snes. I still have the snes with everything related too. And I have a xbox and a playstation 2.

My first personal ibm clone computer was a XT (20mhz in turbo mode) with a 40mb hard disk drive and 2mb memory. Played a lot of wolfenstein, testdrive and street rod on that. After that I had a 486 66mhz 8mb , pentium 1 200mhz 64mb, pentium 3 667mhz 500mb and now I have a pentium 4 HT 3ghz 1gb

The first tv we had was a colour tv with a big antenna connected to the wall of our house. We could receive 7 channels. 3 dutch channels and 4 german channels. And thats it.

I entered the internet for the first time at the year 2000 with a telephone modem and had to pay for every second. it costed 1 euro pro hour. It was very expensive.

In 2002 I entered the internet with a internet connection through cable (optical glass fiber) from a broadband cable company and still have my broadband cable internet connection today. 

In 2005 I discovered the TS servers (google -> http://www.gameaholic.com/servers/quake2/  ). The first time I played quake 2 online and the first game I played online. I was searching for a nice game to play on breaktime at work. Now I play it sometimes at home too. I have a onboard video card at work and thats why I choose quake 2. And because I played quake 2 single player and lan before 2005 and I like the game. Too bad Duke Nukem 3D dont have good online multiplayer code because I played Duke Nukem 3D single player and lan before 2005 too and i like that game too. 

   

In 2006 I discovered the TS forums. I registered a account back then because I had problems with quake 2 at that time. I find the ts forum usefull for configs, binds, news and helping people if I can. I learned from the ts forum how to tweak quake 2 to my taste.   

And im 27.