How do you know you're getting old...

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Senescence begins
And middle-age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends.

Ogden Nash.

Never going to happen to me, all my "descendants" have been acquired by marriage.
 
I went to pick my lad up from after school rugby. he was about eight, so I'd have been fifty six. We had to go into the school as they wouldn't allow the children out after normal school closing time. I walked down the corridor and a lad shouted Matt, your granddad's here. Matt walked around the corner, saw me and said that's not my granddad! Oh, I am sorry, the lad said, your great granddad. (He was the only kid picked up on a 1900cc Yam, though.)
 
My first venture into what could be called personal computers was an Acorn Atom, a precursor to the BBC computer. It came with 2 kb of memory. That's right, two kilobytes.
This was a slight handicap, especially as the machine used most of it for the display and work area. This left half a kilobyte of program space for the user but, if you're canny, you can do a fair bit in 512 bytes.

You could upgrade to a maximum of 12 kb, each kilobyte consisting of a pair of 512 bytes integrated circuit components which would set you back £3 per pair in 1981.

If you think about it, at that price per kilobyte, a 16Gb USB stick would cost you £50,331,648.
 
My son's maths master was a bit of a know all - I was always tempted to send the boy to school with my slide rule and five figure log tables and ask to be shown how to use them.

I've covid atm and after having double pneumonia twice in the past my lungs are feeling every day of sixty eight.
 
So when does 'old' begin? I'll be 73 soon and sometimes I feel much older and sometimes, in my head, I think I'm 40 again until my body reminds me that I'm not!

G.
Talking to yourself has alway been a sign of getting on. Answering yourself is confirmation of a steep down hill in the mental race .. but when you ask yourself to repeat what you just said ... well!!!
 
Apparently you are old if you can remember the first laptop computers being introduced and really old if you can recall a life before digital watches, pocket calculators, mobile phones and personal computers. Well that’s according to my kids anyway.
The first computers I worked on occupied a large room and we had punch cards to input programs and data. Then we had magnetic tape..... whoopy! It was several years before terminals and keyboards appeared, let alone laptops. Now I am feeling old.......
 
My son's maths master was a bit of a know all - I was always tempted to send the boy to school with my slide rule and five figure log tables and ask to be shown how to use them.

I've covid atm and after having double pneumonia twice in the past my lungs are feeling every day of sixty eight.

Best wishes for it to clear quickly and leave no evidence that it was there other than capable antibodies and t cells to ward off the next round.
 
The first time I had pneumonia I was working part time at the market. I went back to work and a sweet old lady asked if I was feeling better and said you know the best thing about pneumonia? When you get it again you'll know exactly what you've got.
Twelve months later to the week (my daughter's birthday) I got it again. I rang the GP. What can I do for you, Mr. P? I've got pneumonia, doc. What makes you think that? I've had pneumonia before. Come in right away, you've got pneumonia, he said. I told him what the old lady said, and he said unfortunately she was right.

I'm about three days into this, and if this is as bad as it gets I'll be lucky.
 
Someone mentioned breaking wind earlier.

This comment really isn't fit for public, but I think I've learned around 40 that suddenly the idea of covert breaking wind outside (where nobody will notice) suddenly cannot be trusted.

I hear there's a point beyond this where you get old enough not to care that someone will notice. I'm far from there, but a little miffed that at 45, I now must suffer the full cost of manners.

Conversion rate in the old days (not caught, etc) was probably 99%. I think the fraction has flipped to be a photographic negative now.

Like a pitcher who has lost his control.
 
The first computers I worked on occupied a large room and we had punch cards to input programs and data. Then we had magnetic tape..... whoopy! It was several years before terminals and keyboards appeared, let alone laptops. Now I am feeling old.......
I recall coxing a Burroughs TC500 to life complete with paper tape. Much time spent reeling it back up when it dumped itself in a pile on the floor 🙄
It predated me but was donated to our school at the end of its useful life. At that time BBC micros were the new kid on the block. *FX etc etc
 
Why the predictive text left out the T I don't know, but yes Marty not Mary 🥴 as I said the original sketch.
 
On the computer side of things, I remember the first Analog one being installed into the offices of Ove Arup's in Fitzroy Street, (1966 or thereabouts) a crane was needed to get it into the building through a full height window opening, I worked in the B.E.D. (Building and Engineering Design department).
 

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