So i wanted to let everyone know that im not leaving the forums....but sadly my internet is getting shut off and will be off for about 3 weeks while the cable company works on the lines here in town. They are upgrading the entire system and we were told to expect daily blackouts in service. Ill miss everyone and will be back soon.

Kari.

ARRGGHHH!!!! 3 whole weeks without the Interwebz??

What will you do...? There's nothing on TV, even less on the radio...nobody answers the phone anymore...if you go outside the entire town looks (mostly) deserted...it's like...like...a Zombie non-apocalypse!

Seriously, I've noticed that if people aren't online, they're texting or playing games on the phone...and I lament that there's so little human interaction...

But then I started thinking, "I know that when television first really became popular, late 50's or so, there were articles about how everyone had disappeared into their homes, and no longer socialized to the degree prior to TV...and if we go back to the 1920's or so, when the telephone first came out, were there people who preferred to call up their neighbor instead of walking to their house? And did people lament about the "lack of face-to-face social interaction" even then?"

I wonder when we'll all get a USB port in our body, so we can just plug into the WWW and live a virtual world (like the Matrix). I have two questions about that:

1. Would you prefer to live in a "Matrix"-like world, or stay completely disconnected from the Webz?

2. Where would the "ideal" location for said USB port? How about an alternate location, just in case someone doesn't have that particular location available?

Kariann, I'll  miss you too. Hopefully this thread will still be alive and kickin' when you get back!

Charter had a terrible signal and speed here, and never cared to fix things too quickly because it's a small town.  But they finally got it done, and the speed varies from 15 to 30 Mbps, but tonight it's only 13.      

Hope you get more consistent service when it's done. 

If that happened here I would at least be able to use my smartphone, the thing is I hate it , it is so hard to use and I hate touch screens they don't work for me, I throw it across the room @ least 3 times a day - good luck

Quote from: kathyk on August 06, 2013, 10:55:51 PM
Charter had a terrible signal and speed here, and never cared to fix things too quickly because it's a small town.  But they finally got it done, and the speed varies from 15 to 30 Mbps, but tonight it's only 13.      

Hope you get more consistent service when it's done.

I remember the days when 28.8K was the standard...and 56K was the high-end offering...and the tea-leaf readers were talking about "dial-up speeds up to 10x faster!! (i.e., 500K/sec)."

Fantasy, I tell ya! FANTASY!! 

Quote from: Beth Andrea on August 06, 2013, 11:14:13 PM
I remember the days when 28.8K was the standard...and 56K was the high-end offering...and the tea-leaf readers were talking about "dial-up speeds up to 10x faster!! (i.e., 500K/sec)."

Fantasy, I tell ya! FANTASY!! 

My first modem was 2400bps, (I missed out on the 300/1200 days).  I remember when I went from 2400 to 14,400 - that was blazing speed.

Quote from: kathyk on August 06, 2013, 10:55:51 PM
Charter had a terrible signal and speed here, and never cared to fix things too quickly because it's a small town.  But they finally got it done, and the speed varies from 15 to 30 Mbps, but tonight it's only 13.      

Hope you get more consistent service when it's done.

We've got Charter here, the 100/5 plan - it's running about 95/5.3 right now which is actually pretty good for this time of night.  They just went to 8 channel bonding in our area a few weeks ago and my evening speed seems to have become more consistent with that.

Quote from: Beth Andrea on August 06, 2013, 11:14:13 PM
I remember the days when 28.8K was the standard...and 56K was the high-end offering...and the tea-leaf readers were talking about "dial-up speeds up to 10x faster!! (i.e., 500K/sec)."

Fantasy, I tell ya! FANTASY!! 

If I'm remembering correctly I think the first time I ever went on the net it was with a 14k modem. This was back in 95 when I was still in high school. My has the Internet changed since then.

Quote from: Heather on August 06, 2013, 11:25:57 PM
If I'm remembering correctly I think the first time I ever went on the net it was with a 14k modem. This was back in 95 when I was still in high school. My has the Internet changed since then.

OMG you young whipper schnapper!!

I first encountered computers in high school also, back in *cough* *cough* 1980...we used a TRS-80 for BASIC ("input A$...A$ = blah blah"). We also had a "mainframe" which connected by phone to the local university, and whatever we could do on that, I do not remember...it was (and still is) Greek+ to me.

I do remember asking, "What in the heck is the use of learning this crap? I'd rather type on the IBM Selectric typewriters!" (Back in the day, "keyboarding" was called "typing" LOL) We were so modern back then...we had electric carriage return and EVERYTHING! (Yes, that was when the "enter" key was called the "return" key)

My first modern-ish computer was bought in 97, win 95 iirc.

Quote from: Beth Andrea on August 06, 2013, 11:14:13 PM
I remember the days when 28.8K was the standard...and 56K was the high-end offering...and the tea-leaf readers were talking about "dial-up speeds up to 10x faster!! (i.e., 500K/sec)."

Fantasy, I tell ya! FANTASY!! 

Do you remember these acoustic couplers; those which you could place a reagular telephone receiver on and have a modem?

Those were times...

Quote from: Beth Andrea on August 06, 2013, 11:35:38 PM
OMG you young whipper schnapper!!

I first encountered computers in high school also, back in *cough* *cough* 1980...we used a TRS-80 for BASIC ("input A$...A$ = blah blah"). We also had a "mainframe" which connected by phone to the local university, and whatever we could do on that, I do not remember...it was (and still is) Greek+ to me.

I do remember asking, "What in the heck is the use of learning this crap? I'd rather type on the IBM Selectric typewriters!" (Back in the day, "keyboarding" was called "typing" LOL) We were so modern back then...we had electric carriage return and EVERYTHING! (Yes, that was when the "enter" key was called the "return" key)

My first modern-ish computer was bought in 97, win 95 iirc.

I think the first computer I used was at school back when I was in the forth grade. I think it was an Apple IIe I think that is what it was called I just remember playing Oregon Trail a lot. And I remember the screen colors only being green and black. I also remember using the one of the earlier versions of the omg the screen is in color Mac. So I got a little history with ancient technology.   

Quote from: Madison Leigh on August 06, 2013, 11:17:21 PM
My first modem was 2400bps, (I missed out on the 300/1200 days).  I remember when I went from 2400 to 14,400 - that was blazing speed.

my first programming was in high school card punch cards into a little thing no screen

I had a 1200 and then a 2400 before upgrading to a 14.4 then finally 19.2 finally when I got a job they gave me a 56kb that was when I was finally a professional at it at DataSoft

Quote from: Heather on August 07, 2013, 12:19:53 AM
I think the first computer I used was at school back when I was in the forth grade. I think it was an Apple IIe I think that is what it was called I just remember playing Oregon Trail a lot. And I remember the screen colors only being green and black. I also remember using the one of the earlier versions of the omg the screen is in color Mac. So I got a little history with ancient technology. 

Oh wow, I loved Oregon Trail!  Up here in Canada we had another game we played in school too called Cross Country Canada.  This was after the computers with the 5.5" floppy disks with the green and black screens I had in Kindergarten.

Quote from: CaseyB on August 07, 2013, 12:40:31 AM
Oh wow, I loved Oregon Trail!

The question is what kid who was around then to play Oregon Trial didn't love it? 

Quote from: Beth Andrea on August 06, 2013, 11:35:38 PM
OMG you young whipper schnapper!!

I first encountered computers in high school also, back in *cough* *cough* 1980...we used a TRS-80 for BASIC ("input A$...A$ = blah blah"). We also had a "mainframe" which connected by phone to the local university, and whatever we could do on that, I do not remember...it was (and still is) Greek+ to me.

I do remember asking, "What in the heck is the use of learning this crap? I'd rather type on the IBM Selectric typewriters!" (Back in the day, "keyboarding" was called "typing" LOL) We were so modern back then...we had electric carriage return and EVERYTHING! (Yes, that was when the "enter" key was called the "return" key)

My first modern-ish computer was bought in 97, win 95 iirc.

Exactly!!! Me too BTW. I loved being one of the few allowed to use the computers then.

Quote from: LordKAT on August 07, 2013, 01:52:52 AM

Exactly!!! Me too BTW. I loved being one of the few allowed to use the computers then.

Learned Fortran IV and punched stacks of cards in college, then like you got permission to use the mainframe.  And In 1979 we did the same as engineers.  No business oriented consumer progress in 10 years, and now things seem to change monthly.

Quote from: kariann330 on August 06, 2013, 10:21:44 PM
So i wanted to let everyone know that im not leaving the forums....but sadly my internet is getting shut off and will be off for about 3 weeks while the cable company works on the lines here in town. They are upgrading the entire system and we were told to expect daily blackouts in service. Ill miss everyone and will be back soon.

Kari.

That blows! If you ever have time, drive out of town and update us 

I have Armstrong and they are upgrading my city to "black fiber optics" from an older transmission wire. I usually get pretty good speeds but they are saying we can get speeds up to 50MP/S once the upgrades are done.

Quote from: Beth Andrea on August 06, 2013, 11:35:38 PM
I'd rather type on the IBM Selectric typewriters!" (Back in the day, "keyboarding" was called "typing" LOL) We were so modern back then...we had electric carriage return and EVERYTHING! (Yes, that was when the "enter" key was called the "return" key)

Yeah, I remember typing class - we had mostly Selectric's, but we had a few IBM Wheelwriters.  After a couple of weeks two of us ended up on those exclusively as if you were fast enough you'd get double strikes down the left side of the page.

Hurry back, we will miss you!