A Long Time Ago . . .

Currently Reading: Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa

I've been working with computer for a long time. I know this is true because I keep coming across these little lists and human interest stories about old computers and programs and I think to myself, "hey, I had one of those!"

Over on VH1 they run shows dedicated to making me feel old. The "I love the " shows are really the ones that hit the hardest. Those ones deal with pop culture and fads. Some of them are pretty damn funny. Remember Slime? It came in a little plastic garbage can. Didn't really have a purpose. It just felt like snot. I had some of that :-)

I love watching shows where they're trying to be cutting edge. You look at the cell phone and it's about the size of a hand iron. They have remote controls that actually make a clicking noise when the button is pushed. And the televistions. HUGE cabinet TV with a 24 inch screen. Big box, small picture.

We still don't have our flying cars though. We were promised flying cars. Remember? Flying cars and flying motorcycles were supposed to be a staple of everyday life. Robots were supposed to be everywhere by now and there was supposed to be a space station on the moon. That's where you'd always stop over on your way to other places like Mars or some science station in orbit around Jupiter.

Yeah, they got it wrong. No moon base, no flying cars, and the only thing we do in space is haul stuff. Let's face it, the whole space shuttle thing is really just a flying U-Haul these days. They carry stuff to the space station or maybe haul something up and fling it into orbit. They run some experiments too I suppose but they always seem like the kind of thing you'd see at the science fair in high school.



Well at least we're doing a little better in some areas than we thought. See that picture there? That's what a home computer was predicted to look like in the year 2004. Pretty impressive isn't it?

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Speaking of old things, I came across a list of computer fads over on MSN. Yeah, another sign I'm old. I remeber all of them. Actually, pretty funny, BLOGGER is listed as one of the fads. Maybe they should revise that list. If a site is still going strong after this long, maybe it's not such a fad afterall.

Three good ones popped up that had me laughing again. The first one is the All Your Base video. There was a computer game way back in the way-back and, well the programmers were Japanese and the didn't do the best job translating the text from Japanese to English. The result is too damn funny for words. You can find it here.

Then there's that dancing hamster. I'm sure you remember it. Everyone was sending it or the link. It's still around. You can find it here.

And of course, no list like this would be complete without the Star Wars kid. It's a home movie really, of some kid pretending to be Darth Maul from the first Star Wars prequel. Seriously folks, be careful what you put on video. Good or bad, naughty or nice, there's always a chance it's going to end up being sent out around the world and end up here.

I think I'll add these links to the sidebar in case anyone wants a little reminder.

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