Personal question: How old is your computer?

[Xist]

I don't have any idea when I last used floppies. I used flash drives when I was earning my first Bachelor's, which I finished in 2007.

Floppies aren't that old, though, they used them in "The Fast and the Furious!"

Oh, VCRs, too.

Dang it!

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Xist

I used flash drives when I was earning my first Bachelor's, which I finished in 2007.

Around that time I was finishing high school, and having my first contacts with flash drives. Well, even though they already had a much greater capacity than floppies, those earlier ones would be insufficient nowadays...

Floppies aren't that old, though, they used them in "The Fast and the Furious!"

Despite being on short supply, they're still widely used in aviation for instance.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Despite being on short supply, they're still widely used in aviation for instance.

That's scary. The least reliable medium I've ever used was floppies. CD burning was pretty hit or miss though.

[Xist]

A friend came over to make a mix CD and somehow it took hours. It finally burned, he pulled it out, and there were weird swirl patterns on it.

It didn't play.

[freebeard]

i.pinimg.com/originals/dc/b5/92/dcb592ac6084abc9673595f2fd660690.jpg

Through the 1970s I had one of these*. It had five heads and would pinch two tapes together, read one and write the other. It ate tapes.

Eventually as the heads eroded, the gap in the heads was too wide.

Forget where it went. Like many other things.

*The tape is threaded all wrong. The top left reel should feed to the post to the left of the normal track and back up to top right. The switch in between controls them.

[redpoint5]

I probably coastered 20% of my CDs, which as a high school student and at a buck a pop, was not insignificant.

My $200 2x burner died just over a year of use. I scammed my way into a 4x burner, and it too died outside of warranty, and I scammed my way into an 8x burner. With $200, I got 3 burners over the course of time. At 2x, a CD took 40min to burn, at 4x, 20min, at 8x, 10min... that's how I discovered the law of diminishing returns. Each doubling of effort returns half the improvement. Every speed above 16x was insignificant. Who cares if it takes 2.5 minutes, or 1.25 minutes to burn a CD? Those suckers were spinning insanely fast, making tremendous noise, and there's plenty of videos showing catastrophic failure.

I was selling mix CDs for $10 well before Napster was a thing. Took 20min per song to download over my 33.6 connection, if I could even find the song. Took me 9 months to get the full King Harvest - Dancing in the Moonlight.

The last CD I burned was in 2012 for my ex-girlfriend. I had the keys to her crappy Pontiac Grand Prix briefly, and found just enough time to copy it before returning them. Then at 2am, I broke into her car, replaced her cracked headlight, and put in the CD I burned for her into the player. She's now my first wife.

*As an aside, 2am in Kenton (Portland) is more alive than 2pm with all the weirdos, crackheads, Johns, and prostitutes. There's a torso on a skateboard (no legs) wearing all black, in the middle of the street using his hands to wheel around at 2am. Once, a woman jumped out in front of my car at 2am sobbing and saying she was desperate for a ride. It's where dysfunction coalesces.

[freebeard]

The last CD I burned was in 2012 for my .... first wife.

It's a heart-warming story, but who or what is 'it' and 'them'?

I've got stacks of blank CD-R if any one needs them.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

It's a heart-warming story, but who or what is 'it' and 'them'?

I've got stacks of blank CD-R if any one needs them.

The inside joke is that I alternately introduce my wife as either my ex-girlfriend, or as my first wife. You've met her.

Her favorite holiday is Easter, so I made a mix CD with my best attempt at Easter music. I should start an annual tradition of playing it on Easter... next year.

My favorite holiday is Halloween, which is her least favorite (read despised).

I progressed to double density DVD-R, started a large collection of movies courtesy of Netflix, and then had my collection stollen. Poetic justice. It cost $75 to replace the window that was smashed out. 3 out at a time meant I averaged 6 movies a week to my collection. There's no way Netflix was making money on my subscription. Can't claim that now.

Never got into Bluray, don't own a single Bluray movie, and never had a Bluray burner. I've got a Bluray player in my Playstation 3, which was half the reason I bought it despite the fact I've never played a Bluray disc. Physical media was dead by the time it came out. I can't be bothered to walk to a machine and feed it a disc to watch something.

[freebeard]

John Prine -- Jesus, The Missing Years?

[Xist]

I own a blue ray player and am sure that I have some discs, but we never watch non-Hallmark movies.

Since I moved in over 5 years ago we watched "Hidden Figures" and "Wonder woman."

I don't remember watching much more, unless I had a girlfriend, but they always came with streaming services.

Then I insisted on watching an actual movie on date night.

I bought Mom several movies that she never opened, but I learned that if I want to watch a movie as a family I need to buy them for Mom.

My brother has a box of movies that he refuses to open.

Is it illegal to stream a movie from a random server if I own a physical copy?

For the second week in a row Mom cannot get my brother's SLP, who has worked with him on and off for like 12 years, to connect, and somehow this is my fault.

It is my fault that the woman she insists on having do speech, even though she often cancels or no-shows, cancels or no-shows, when I kept trying to persuade Mom to let me work with my brother officially.

Mom said that I would, the next time that the SLP tried to change providers, but Mom told the SLP, the SLP said "That is unethical," and I have had this nightmare since--plus every other SLP asking me "What part of that is unethical?"

I think this is an example of reading between the lines. In no way is it unethical, but the SLP didn't want to lose occasional business, so she made up an excuse.

Edit: Mom just called the SLP for at least the third time.

There have been times that I lost track of time or something came up and I was unable to reach out to my client's family, but I don't think anyone ever reached out more than once.

They might send a text and then either I apologize and try to see them or they decide "I guess we are not having speech today."

This is highly unprofessional and I have been planning on reaching out to school speech therapists to see if anyone can pick up my clients. I would say that I work for two agencies, but there is another which pays better and seems to find more clients.

She has also been sued for back pay and one of her therapists complained about the difficulty she had being paid right.

Should I mention that?