Before the WWWeb- How did you cope?

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(For the edification of the young and the "nostalgiafication" of those of us on the Geezerhood spectrum) I am in my 50's.

I used to use electronic Bulletin Board Systems. These consisted of someone who decided (for fun) to set up an extra computer and phone line for anyone who wanted to post messages. Most of the topics were about things like the debate over the superiority of the Commodore 64 vs. the Atari 8-bit computers. There were no graphics to speak of, unless you count downloading computer generated drawings to view offline. The topics were very limited. Some BBS's focused on special topics, but there were very few to choose from.

Before the web I used to haunt libraries to read up on my interests.

I didn't. I withdrew and spent my time with video games, only to reemerge and try living in the normal society once again for a few years when I was around 17-20. The last five years I've been living in complete isolation.

LEGO's, mountains upon mountains of LEGO's.

What I was gonna say.

spoke to no-one, wandered the streets of the city where i lived - always alone and isolated. very reduced human contact.

^ did someone steal a FZ sig?
I didn't cope before the internet & i don't really cope now.

Commodore 64? That really puts a date on computer technology. I think it is amusing to watch the film, "War Games" with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy and notice how much computer technology has changed since 1983 when the film was made.

Before the Internet, there also wasn't much known about Asperger's Syndrome as it was only officially recognized in 1994...and
many people just did what they could to survive.

My older brother was a bully, so I had to caught up to a 6 year gap. I trained like a pit fighter "conan style". I met penny price "prof bodybuilder" wanted to sponsee me in 7thgrade. I was the bully destroyer in school. till I joined the army. Airborne school , a few other cool schools. Sometimes it's good to be a loner. Till I found out what I had. Now, am a disablied hippie.

All sig quotes are stolen, in a way.

Seriously, if someone else on WP used that one for a sig I didn't know about it. Was it a different FZ quote? I actually did steal it, but it was from a different web site discussion board, which covers a totally different subject.

I just changed my sig from the Zappa quote about progress requiring deviation from the norm to the current one. The change is retroactive, so it might be confusing.

Last edited by Rocky on 21 May 2009, 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So did I. I was a bit of a connoisseur of the local Southern California/San Gabriel Valley libraries. I loved the LA Central library and it was a big deal to drive myself there. I also liked Arcadia. My local library was not so hot and one of the librarians gave me the creeps, so I tried to go only when he wasn't there. I amassed a huge library of my own books courtesy of Crown Books (mostly). I am paring that library down to a reasonable volume (pun intended), by donating the ones I never read anymore to a prison library, which is very happy to have them. I think I first used Usenet in the late 80's at my first aerospace job, where I also played my first computer game (Rogue). I also played D&D with a group from that job for a few months. Began to use Mosaic in the early 90's as part of work and stepped into a larger world.

I forgot! I did take long walks more than I do now. They did help me cope. Thanks! I should do more walking. I will have to figure out a way to surf the web and walk at the same time.
I may have to break down and get a smartphone and pay the outrageous fees. Nah, I would probably walk into traffic or something.

no problem i just saw someone with that exact quote in love &dating.. pseudonym was "aneurysm" i think
i think Zappa &think of " i told him right there (fido said), it should be easy to see, the crux of the biscuit, is the Apostrophe"

but then i hadn't read your one until recently.. nice way to sum up the Mothers

I thought the majority of posts on this thread would be fellow geezers. So far it's just the opposite. Maybe later, after their naps.

About the long walks, I did that too and I always liked walking alone.

The internet is an old network. I can't remember when it was first implemented, but was reserved for military use. I would say I did what everyone else did. Go outside and play, find friends. Eventually moving on to a job, building my computer and discovering the Internet and getting a huge bill, which my job helped to cover

BOOKS, mountains upon mountains of BOOKS (which is still somewhat true - just not to quite the same extreme). Any non-reading time was devoted to writing, music, or artistic endeavour.