Feels like it. Actually it was five years ago. The same computer I've been running since then. I turn it on in the morning, get my coffee, feed the animals, and come back 15 minutes later to see if Windows loaded yet.

[old man voice] Eh, sonny, what's that? Buy a new computer you say? Why, back in my day my computer had a whopping 256 mb hard drive and 4 whole megs of ram! I remember taking the 4- 1 mb sticks out and upgrading to 4- 4 megs, a huge 16 megs of ram! Both ways, in the snow! Barefoot! [/old man voice]

Yes:D

What a fantastic way to remember your grandmother!

For the fun and learning experience of it I've been building a php/mysql based website in my spare time over the last few weeks. I've played around with the languages a little bit working on LoT of course, but there's a difference between tinkering with existing code and building a DB and CMS from the ground up.

It's really hit me how insane it is that having what amounts to 4 languages (html, javascript, php, and sql) kludged into a single line of code is pretty much SOP for most content management systems out there. It's a mess.



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On an unrelated note, amid yesterday's rain I was struck by the fact that in all likelihood, T will never know the horrors of those evil thumb-pinching umbrellas. And it boggled my mind that the human race managed to invent home computing before managing to invent (or at least make universally available) an umbrella mechanism that wasn't designed specifically to torture young childrens' fingers.

I really enjoyed the 100 Cupboards series. I also really liked Life as We Knew it. I've heard The Everlost trilogy is very good, but I've never read it myself.

I actually really enjoyed the Hunger Games...refuse to read the banality that is the Twilight series.

I don't know that I've ever owned an umbrella (being from Washington my philosophy is "you get wet, later you dry off"). Though I guess I know what you mean.

How have they changed?

You used to have to push in a button (that was shaped like a dull razor blade) located just under the plastic collar that supported all of the spring tension of the open umbrella. The moment you depressed it enough for the umbrella to close, the entire force of that spring tension would be released, pinching your thumb between that stupid button and the plastic collar.

These days, instead of the tension being held by the spring loaded button on the shaft, everything is internal to the plastic collar and all you have to do is pull down on the plastic collar to close. No button, no sudden release of tension, no pinching.

It really is amazing it took so long to design the plastic collar. You would think it would be a lot easier, and cheaper than the razorbutton.

The very first computer I owned had 2 Kb (not Mb) of RAM: you upgraded it by plugging in a 16 Kb module. If you wanted a program, you typed it in, line by line and if you wanted to save it, you backed it up to a cassette tape.

Ah, those were the days !!!

...not to mention going over 8 pages of closely written code to see which character you'd typed in wrongly.... :(