The Black Vault

I have a bunch of 45's my sister and I both bought in the 50's, lots of elvis, Rick Nelson, but most of the things you put in the center we have are made from metal not plastic.

I remember the old tinsel we had for the Christmas tree was that old lead stings of tinsel. It was very heavy. Also the old fashioned bulbs, the long pointed kind about 1/2 inch in diameter, 2 inches long, and the glass was ribbed lengthwise. That stuff probably was my parnets in the 40's.

2 decades ago is more than half my life. I'm still a baby, really.

At least my grandpa would say so.

Let's see...I often think in terms of computers. The internet wasn't mainstream back then. There were bulletin boards BBS I think they were called. There was a sysop who was like a webmaster. We connected to them with modems whose speed was 2400 baud. The 56,000 baud modem was bomb when it came out. Let's see, the 56k would run at 5.6 kb/s max so I guess a 2400 baud modem ran at 0.24 kb/s. My internet connection now is about 700 kb/s.

12kHz was a good speed for a CPU, and I remember a time before math co-processors which was the big thing with the 386 computer. Eventually CPUs had math co-processors built in. With Intel's first 586 (aka pentium), there was some errors that needed patching.

An i7 CPU can run at 3 GHz times four CPUs. 3GHz, that's 3 billion cycles per second. 12kHz is 12,000.

Moore's law.

The first computer I had with a hard disk was a 286 with a 40MB hdd. 40MB is enough room for fewer than 10 mp3s. Electronic film for digital cameras now hold 2 GB easy. That's 2 billion compared to 40 million. And they have hard drives now that go up to 2TB, 2 trillion bytes. In those days, DOS 5.1 was a big deal because it allowed users to compresses their OS files to save room but nowadays, DOS is so utterly primitive it's almost hilarious. No multitasking whatsoever.

I believe the first hard drive was developed by IBM I forget what year but I surmise 70's or 80's. It was huge and could hold ONE MB. I believe it looked something like this:


If I recall, it was used for the Olympics.


And now they have solid state drives which have no moving parts and are uber fast, though still quite expensive.

One searched the internet through what were called gophers. Rudimentary search engines.

etc, etc.

Trees.

Clean air

ect ect.

Meals your Mother made long before the days of the Microwave.

When evryone burned papers anbd burnables in a barrel or backyard incinerator. I recall when we moved to California, yards all had one of those but they were already illegal to use by 1960. Back in my Grandmothers hometown in farmcountry, people were allowed to burn leaves in the gutter and everyone had a 55 gal barrel to burn papers in.

People still burn leaves and papers in the Poconos, greeney. At least, they still did the last time I was living there in the fall, about 2 years ago. Not many people, granted, but some. My Mom and step dad still have their barrel.

I remember when I first started to drive, gasoline was only .22 cents a gallon. I remember is under .20 cents. You could also buy real high octane gasoline when most motors had high compression and need leaded fuels.

People still burn leaves and papers in the Poconos, greeney.

Yes we do . It is common here to have a burn barrel as the first thing you put in you're yard when you move in...


I don't use mine as much anymore, I take all my stuff to work...




BloodStone...

In this entire area (NH, VT and ME) almost everyone that's outside a city limits (majority of people) have burn barrels or even outdoor furnaces. The town I live in we are right on the border of the fire permit line and therefore can't have one.
Funny story about the outdoor furnaces for ya.
The largest dealer of them up until 2 years ago was here in the town I live in. The City Council passed a ban on them being used within city limits. So the guy who had a great business for the area up and moved. He moved his business 1 mile down the road so that he is now legally in a different town and can use his own furnaces.

Quality cartoons.