Pre- internet/ GPS

JoanE2012 · April 2015

JCbride2015 said:
When I was in college, I had a cell phone but smart phones weren't a thing yet. A few times I would be out driving and have to call my mom to ask her to look up directions for me.

Also during college, Fi and I took our first "real vacation" together, to Williamsburg, VA. We actually called AAA and had a TripTik mailed to us in hard copy. It was pretty fantastic, actually. I bet those don't even exist anymore.

hahaha, my mom gave me TripTix several years ago. GPS existed, but it was "just in case".

What about before cell phones when beepers were all the rage? You had to pull over and find a pay phone to call the person back. And using -411 and -911 depending on the type of message you wanted to communicate.

jenna8984 · April 2015

@joane2012 my cousin had a pager and a cell phone to call people back. I was always like why don't they just call the cell phone then??

FiancB · April 2015

I definitely made a few mix tapes. When I was little, we had to learn how to use a card catalog at the library. Drawing maps for people so they could find my house. Having all my friends' phone numbers memorized.

I remember Encarta Encycolpedia being a big deal.

Using a phone book wtf.

huskypuppy14 · April 2015

FiancB said:
I definitely made a few mix tapes. When I was little, we had to learn how to use a card catalog at the library. Drawing maps for people so they could find my house. Having all my friends' phone numbers memorized.

I remember Encarta Encycolpedia being a big deal.

Using a phone book wtf.

All of this.

They still mail the phone books to the house. Why? Such a waste of paper.

All that work learning the card catalog, for the longest time at the library I would still use it when I didn't know how to use their computer system. This was probably late high school.

levioosa · April 2015

My TK confession: I still listen to cassette tapes. I have an old radio show (from the 40's-50's) that I like to listen to, and since they work just fine, I haven't bought the new MP3 releases. I also found a floppy disk at my house the other day, but I lacked the means of finding out what was on it.

I love that I can use my GPS, but most of the time I like to look up a map and visually/mentally space it out so I'm never confused during the drive. I like knowing that even if I take a wrong turn, I can still get to where I need to be without fiddling with a GPS. It's also kind of a fun memory game for me.

I don't understand how people can be so terrible at directions that they need a GPS for everything. My ex was one of those people. He would get lost driving back to his house in his own city.

dolewhipper · April 2015

wandajune6 said:
Also, I was never into video games but remember fighting over my sister for time on our black/white Mac Classic -- occasionally for homework but mainly to play Oregon Trail.

This was the worst.

novella1186 · April 2015

levioosa said:
My TK confession: I still listen to cassette tapes. I have an old radio show (from the 40's-50's) that I like to listen to, and since they work just fine, I haven't bought the new MP3 releases. I also found a floppy disk at my house the other day, but I lacked the means of finding out what was on it.

I love that I can use my GPS, but most of the time I like to look up a map and visually/mentally space it out so I'm never confused during the drive. I like knowing that even if I take a wrong turn, I can still get to where I need to be without fiddling with a GPS. It's also kind of a fun memory game for me.

I don't understand how people can be so terrible at directions that they need a GPS for everything. My ex was one of those people. He would get lost driving back to his house in his own city.

SIB
When I first started at this company a couple years ago, part of my job at the time was to track down all of our FDA files-- whether they were on someone's personal computer, only in hard copy in some random filing cabinet somewhere, etc to organize them into our new online database. (It was as much of a pain in the ass as it sounds. SO GLAD I'm in clinical research now)

I was digging through a box of files and found an entire pile of floppy disks, and was like "wtf do I do with these?" Couldn't throw them out, cuz they might have had data on them that we needed. But our computers (obviously) don't even have a slot of floppy disks. So I went to IT, and they gave me this little portable floppy disk reader that plugs into computers with a USB port. The whole thing was so weird to me.

I kept thinking, "I really thought I'd never see one of these things again in my life, let alone use one"

FiancB · April 2015

levioosa said:

I don't understand how people can be so terrible at directions that they need a GPS for everything. My ex was one of those people. He would get lost driving back to his house in his own city.

This is me. GPS is a godsend. I blame it on being from a town with basically two main streets- and I still find things back home from driving along those streets until I run into what I'm looking for. We moved to the cities shortly before getting married and I got lost about 93928 times running wedding related errands, even with GPS.

jenna8984 · April 2015

FiancB said:
I definitely made a few mix tapes. When I was little, we had to learn how to use a card catalog at the library. Drawing maps for people so they could find my house. Having all my friends' phone numbers memorized.

I still know most of them even though they have been disconnected and/or parent's moved away LOL

jenna8984 · April 2015

FiancB said:

levioosa said:

I don't understand how people can be so terrible at directions that they need a GPS for everything. My ex was one of those people. He would get lost driving back to his house in his own city.
This is me. GPS is a godsend. I blame it on being from a town with basically two main streets- and I still find things back home from driving along those streets until I run into what I'm looking for. We moved to the cities shortly before getting married and I got lost about 93928 times running wedding related errands, even with GPS.

See here in MA the roads are a clusterfuck. Just all over the place, if you didn't know where Walmart was, you'd need a GPS for sure. But when I moved to Phoenix all by myself at 22 years old before GPS- I never got lost once! The city is a perfectly laid out grid and if you miss a road you just take the next one parallel. There's a Walmart on like every 3rd corner. My friends were always like "how can you move to a completely new city and not get lost?!" But I swear, I never did!

hellosweetie1015 · April 2015

ohannabelle said:
My friend and I were just laughing about this. Do you have funny stories from back then that would never happen to you or your kids nowadays?
In middle school, my dad was taking me to Kelly's house. We lived 5 miles on the outskirts of town, so once he got into town he said "OK- where does she live?" I froze and was like "I have no idea! Mom always brings me and I don't pay attention to the roads" (there were no cell phones so I don't know what the hell I was watching the whole ride?) He had to drive back home so we could use the house phone to call her house phone and ask for directions.
Still can't believe I drove across the country with my best friend and a paper map in 2007. That probably sounds so ridiclous to @ohannabelle who probably drove the country 18 times with paper maps hahah. Not calling you old- I swear!
Oh and remember doing homework and reports with encyclopedias?!

I heard that!

But it's true, and yep, I find a lot of the technology dependence hilarious. I survived the earth pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-bank card. Pre-handheld hair dryer.

(I wrote my first novel entirely by hand, because I didn't want to invest money in a word processor until I had a marketable finished manuscript.)

There was an ad on craigslist not long ago for a "zombie apocalypse survival kit," and of course I had to look. It was a set of encyclopedias. Because "how are you going to find shit out when google's gone?" Cracked me up.

I love technology. I do wonder, sometimes, how it's going to impair our common sense thinking skills. I can already see it damaging social interaction skills. It just makes it too easy not to interact with other people.

The bolded is the only one I cannot imagine living without. Everything else, meh. (Even my iPhone.) But my mom doesn't use a bank card, and she's at the bank at least twice a week getting cash.

I really want your and novella's novels...

Pre- internet/ GPS

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