heh

I have just discovered I am not the oldest person here quite. In the way my Father taught me to calculate my age I will be 40 and a half next b'day, but my son says I grow older but refuse to grow up.

Most of me is 37.... except for my right ankle which is currently thinking its about 60.

Born in July 1963....

49 next birthday Mar 26 and DEFINITELY growing old disgracefully!!

My god half of you people i actually thought you were young and very mature for your ages. The young ones i have to honestly say you are mature young people. LordOfAcid (Twice dracs age)

39 now, 40 in July. That is going to be one hell of a party. Can't wait :o)

I'm 33 going on 100.

Wait, that is how I feel after just finishing a Microsoft software beta test. ;)

-Chris

you mean micrsoft do beta testing? I thought that was the time between release and service pack 1 ;)

40 and counting. Cannot wait until senility sets in and I will have an excuse for my attitiude.

Might as well jump on the bandwagon ... 37 here. Mentally I think I'm still stuck in the 80's.

I can't believe I'm the oldest here! WooHoo!! Boy, the things I could tell you, you wouldn't believe. ;)

Born on the Planet 70s. I'll be 50 in June.

WoooHooo! Lindins-my birthday is Mar 26 also!
I'll be 43 then. I like 42, not as much as 25 but 43 is not a nice sounding number.
The worse part about the late 30's into the 40's is the weight gain, memory loss and ummm I can't remember the other stuff. ps sorry for that nickname Moonie. Hope it doesn't end up sticking. ;P

Message edited on: 02/25/2005 11:35

Ang, I can still sneer at you as a youngster, for being almost three months younger. :-))

Year of the Dragon for me (1964, and a Leo as well ^___^)

I was born on Friday the thirteenth. The world's lucky day. Thirteen is my lucky number. On my thirteenth birthday I dropped a thirteen pound bowling ball on my face.

1962 year of the tiger and Aries a Ram! Don't get in my way, lol, if my claws and fangs don't do the trick I'll head butt ya!

When I first came to work for the company where I'm currently employed I was in my 20's and was constantly badgered for my "bad attitude" every time I expressed an opinion about things that weren't fair or honest. I noticed some of the older guys bitched and moaned loudly about anything they wanted to and never were lectured about their "bad attitude". When I asked why that was, people would say, "That's just the way they are." Although I haven't changed my attitude one iota in almost 30 years, nobody has lectured me in about 10 years. I suspect that people are saying, "That's just the way John is" behind my back, LOL. I suppose some things do improve with age.

I am a totally immature 45. Its fun, try it.

I was born 3 years after WWII in Brooklyn New York. The same year the Israelis were given their promised land through UN resolution in compliance of the British Balfour agreement. I remember Black & White TV. I vaguely remember seeing President Truman, and then President Eisenhower on TV. I remember thereafter a short period of tranquility and peace. Then, in elementary school, taking fallout shelter procedures against an atomic War. Nowadays we know its bend over and kiss your ass goodbye! I remember the assassination of our beloved President Kennedy in 63 and how utterly shocked I was, I was in High School then. I was utterly as shocked when Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in April of 68, five years later. Then a couple months later, Bobby Kennedy was killed in June of 68. I bare witness to the civil rights movement era of this great country. I remember tricky Dick. I was 20 when man first landed on the Moon. I was there to see the beginning and the end of the Vietnam War and was a college activist against it and remember many friends in flights to Canada over the Peace Bridge. Got my degree in 72. Joined the United Federation of Teachers Union and tutored High School programs for a while (namely High School math, English comprehension, and Spanish) but found myself being cautioned by the school dean (an older female) against the young girls that might think me attractive and therefore, I needed to take special precautions, I was very young still you see. I remember the early rock era, groups like the Harptones, Flamingos, The Cleftones, Little Richie, The Capris, The Marcels, Fats Domino. Later the Temptations, the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye. I remember seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show for the first time. I remember seeing the Fab Four Beatles on the same show and the Rolling Stones when I was in High School. Later I worked there, in the underground building bridges in the Ed Sullivan theater, the narrow passage straights that all performers took to traverse between dressing rooms and stage, and in my bones I couldnt help but feel the presences of greatness, thereafter it became the David Letterman Show. I tried but didnt make my way to the original Woodstock, the highways were backed up for many miles. I remember Hendricks fabulous rendition of the American National Anthem. I was a martial arts expert at 22, Shodan in Tae Kwan Do, Shotokan and Goyu Ryu Karete. The police department would come to my free classes. I was taught boxing at the age of 9 and Judo at 12, at a time when martial arts was not known in the populace USA. And way before it became an assembly line, cash in hand business. I was there and waiting when the first home computer came to bare. Graphics were nil! Ive worked in, and supplied the largest skyscrapers in New York City. And I was there on 9/11 when the great Towers fell to terrorist attacks. I ran for my life and sucked down the ash and dust, and felt the Earth tremble and day turn to night. I saw, first hand, Tower two go down and my belief in humanity had never been lower. I lost both friends and family there that day. Im 56 years old and have a tale to tell. What Ive exposed now is nothing to my real life experience. But if I could relive it all, in two wordsI would.

I just turned 44 three weeks ago and I'm coming up for 14. 8P Although my body thinks it's coming up for 100, but I'm definately coming up for 14 on my next birthday. 8) Catlin

Quest: Thank you! You've reminded me of so many things I've done and seen, even though they are not the same things as you. I'm often staggered at what the 'youth of today' DON'T know and what they haven't seen though that is no fault of theirs. The first time I came to NY, the 1st thing I saw was the Twin Towers. I always wanted to go there but never got the time. I DID go up the Empire State building and that was one of my greatest experiances. I went to Isreal with 2000 Jews mainly from the USA, to celebrate the 25th Anniversery of that county's independance/birth of a nation, only to discover on my return to the UK that the ship I was crew on, the QE2, was being shadowed by an arab submarine rumoured to have nuclear torpedos on board. We wouldn't have even seen the flash! I've circumnavigated the globe 3 times. Been most every where. Done lots of things that nearly got me killed and had adventures and done stuff that other people only get to dream about. But as I grow older and as we have done here, start to look back on life, I realise that the greatest thing I've seen was the birth of my first child. And after that, becoming a Grandparent - five times! I've seen people suffer and die and like the rest of us, stood witness to some of the worst humanity can offer. But even now I think 'Earth - It's a wonderful world' - even if I do live in Mars.

I'll be 42 on the seventh of next month. After a week of training and PT with folks half my age, I feel about sixty. I've got aches in places I never knew I had! Considering I've been in this profession for half my life, it was kind of depressing to find out I'm not as fast, strong or tough as I was when I started. Oh well. One thing that does amaze me about today's "youth" (at least here in the US) is not that they never knew a time without computers, never saw a rotory dial phone, have a bizzilion channels to surf, it's their lack of even knowing about the past. I was talking with a coworker the other day about "Check Point Charlie" in East Berlin. One of the newer officers asked, "What's that?" He didn't know about East Germany, the Berlin Wall or even the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe -- all things that happened in his life time. Don't they teach history anymore?

Nukeboy: I think they teach it, but only a select few actually are paying attention. (Of course, I'm sure all our bright young Bryce Forum members have been among those who ARE paying attention - judging by their messages here, very little escapes their attention). :^)

The gripe in the UK is that in schools nowadays they are only teaching "Modern History" and not bothering about anything much before the 20th century. Basically that means that people who are the age of Ardiva, Sambucus, myself, Quest and even Bryster are now "historical" characters......sobering thought that, what!

Chohole: Shouldn't that be 'hysterical' characters?

Hysterical...who's hysterical, I'm not hysterical, I'm not. I am not hysterical,how can you say that, how can you I mean how can you say that, I am not hysterical, not, not not, I mean I am not hysterical, no I'm not. I mean I AM NOT SCREAMING AND YELLING AM I, WELL AM I?....... Umm.......You could be right Bryster! :-)

LOL and chohole. When I were a lad (longer ago than some, not as long as others) we started learning history from the stone age and worked our way forward, but over 4 years didn't even get as far as the tudors. It was incredibly dull though. And has the honour of being the lowest score I ever got in an exam (35%) (I think I got my name right and that helped)

aarrg, I turn 48 tomorrow (Feb 28) gawd, do rock really live that long ? :-) used to post here and lurking frotm time to time, since getting Cinema I've spent most of my time learning that. hafta play with Bryce again since Daz is breathing life back into it.

Well I have to admit Drawbridge that History was my fav subject. Perhaps I went to a good school, one which actually got some pupils interested in the subject, but in "O" level (and thats old style GCE O level, not the modern gcse, where 50% is a pass mark) I got not only a grade 1, but also a distinction. In our "O" level class we got 13 grade 1 passes and 5 at distinction level. I don't think they do things like that nowadays. We had an absolutely brill teacher, His name was Mr Levi, and, yes you've guessed it, he was a nationalised jew. He was the sort of teacher who, when teaching about deprivation in some ages/countries, was not ashamed to stand on his desk and pull up his trouser legs to show us the effects of a poor diet and rickets. Say no more.

I actually got to visit the Twin Towers the weekend before they went down. Been to the offices of Cantor/Fitzgerald, guess I am glad I did not get that job working for the consultants working with Cantor/Fitzgerald. Miss the time before 9/11, wake call is a bit too harsh. I remember seeing the vietnam war on tv when I was a kid way back when. Went to college and got to mess with computers, networked and not. Remember when bulletin boards like Bix were the thing. Personal computers weighed 50 pounds and had teeny tiney monitors (Pet computers). Played Dark castle on macs, Apple panic on apple II machines and castle wolfenstien on pcs. Did do Cobol, PL/1, Apple (6502) and Pc (8088,8086) assembly languages and Basic. "C" was the hot new language and I jumped on the bandwagon because basic was too slow and assembly language was a pain to work with. Can't really write anything big with it, had to write my own linker so I could finish my games. You could get a "C" compiler on 2 floppy discs back then. Eventually got a job from a newspaper ad to work at a small multimedia company. Got introduced to macs and 3d apps like Strata 3d, Bryce and Photoshop. Its sad when people do not care or are uninterested in the past, that means that they will be doomed to repeat it.

OK,.......memory lane ? I was born BC(before computers) I was a hippie, have seen Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Led Zepplin(first american tour, opened for The Who) and numerous others live on stage. Grew up during the 1960's. I remember when the Radio Shack TRS 80 was a big deal, my first computer was a Pentium 133 with a 4GB HD and a whopping 16MB's of RAM. I had 2 very close friends who died in Vietnam, an uncle I never met who died at Omaha Beach on D-Day 6 June 1944, My father served in both WWI and WWII(95th Areo squadron USAAF-WW1, 8th Air Force USAAF-WWII), yes, WWI, he was born 2, December 1898. I had 2 uncles who served in the Pacific theater during WWII and one who served with General Patton's 3rd Army. I am a child of history. As far as history, my favorite author is the late Barbara Tuchman.

Sackrat, if you were born before computers, that certainly makes you one of the oldest persons here (even if you limit that to electronic ones):-))

(1st electronic computer was ENIAC, 1943)

I was born 4 years later, so missed the event....

Cheers,
Diolma :-)
(Edited to add): My 1st computer was an Apple II, with 16K mem (IIRC - might have been less), and tape-drive storeage...

Message edited on: 02/27/2005 16:06

OK,.......AC(after computers) 9 years,........1952.

First computer that I had access to was a PET, my first was a Z80... Bad ol' days of machine code. Of course, COBAL, BASIC, FORTRAN were required courses. Plus the five hour wait to get to the card puncher...

ok .. ok ... I'm dating myself but ... show of hands that KNOW the Hollerith code ? umm .. show of hands that know what the code was used for ? errr .. how about, how many have seen and IBM punch card ? When I took data processing in high school (mid 70's), I had to be able to read a punch card using the Hollerith code, not using a machine mind you, look at it, read the holes and translate.

Reading punched cards and tape, well i never got that far, being able to read punched tape, but i know people who probably still can do that. Until 1983 the banks in the Netherlands still used punched cards for money-transfers and bank-cheques. My first computer was a ZX81, 3.25 Mhz, 1 kilobyte of memory, no color, no hi-res graphics, no sound, program loading from tape or typing from listings (big fun, 7k of hexadecimal codes for example ^___^). It took some time before i could afford a 16KB memory. This was a time that 8" disks where still widely in use and a 5MB Harddisk was something you could not imagine how much it was.

I used to use a ledger posting machine that made the punch tapes to be fed into the big computer bank at the NCR Place. First job I had when I left school.

And our first pc was a ZX81 as well, bought for my eldest who was 14 at the time, and studying for "0" level in computer studies.

Message edited on: 02/28/2005 08:58

so i guess that i bieth the youngest, at 15

My first computer was a Amiga2000 which could multitask, but you still had to boot every time from floppy. When I got it I was in heaven 'cos when I was at school the teachers said personal computing would never happen 'cos a computer took up and entire office block. 8P I also had one of those things you plugged into the Tv, it ran from cassette tapes and was oh,so,slow, it played that stupid table tennis thing and not much else. As for history I was pretty good when it came to exams but was almost frozen rigid in the class by boredom, so I'd go to the library to educate myself. I didn't tell any of my class mates that's what I was doing 'cos that would have made me a swat and at my school swats got a beating. 8) That was so good finally telling how I got good grades. 8D Catlin

I remember punch cards, keep the JCL cards and throw everything else away when the program was done. They were into flow charting too, remember seeing the plastic templates. Remember when I had to take Cobol and PL/1, PL/J. Had to get to the computer room early so I could get a punchcard machine. Was so happy when I got a Wylbur account so I could use a terminal. The good terminals were in the front and you had to get in early for those. During winter, the crap terminals were static electricity sensitive, touch them the wrong way and the cursor would jump up the screen. Can end up with an unprintable char in your code and that would mess up the printout and maybe the code may not run. Don't think about deleting the char because the cursor would jump away.

my first computer was a jupiter ace - looked like a white xz81, shipped with a version of forth rather then basic. followed that with a zx81 and started learning z80, then followed with 6502, 6809, 68000 (and 68030), switched to a combination of x86 and PASCAL, the switch to C was like an event horizon for me!

I started with a ZX81. I was so excited, but my mum looked at it and thought it looked like a calculator without a display. Then I got a VIC 20 3.5k RAM! Then an Atari 512, which I bluetacked another 512k to get a 1024k RAM (I kid you not, the bluetack would melt and it would jump back to 512k after a while). Then got my first PC. A 286 I think. As for PASCAL. I did my A-Level in PASCAL. It was the first and last program I ever wrote in it. A simulation of a eco-system. Had Carnivores, herbivores, plants, all of which you had to balance over years (numbers wise) to keep the system going. Also had random things like fires, droughts and rain and even programmed a flood which would sometimes kill everything. I failed anyway, but I liked it. The bigger blow was the other guy in my class (there were only two) was an exchange student and couldn't speak English and he PASSED. His program worked out the refection of lenses or something dull. I mean, my program killed things, what more could you want?! OK, sorry, got OT a bit there, I'm still sore.

As to judge age. I don't remember punch cards. But I do remember 8inch floppies that stored something like 64k.

34 years old. I remember seeing Bryce 4 on the shelf at "Best Buy" for $269.00 It as sitting next to Play's "Amorphium" 1.0 for $100..... Lol.... AS

Cool. AS is my age. Well, until I turn 35 next month.

Used to have a Bryce3d and Bryce 4 disks before I tossed them.