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07 December 2009

Obsoleted in the Aughties Thanks for the memories, subway tokens...
Odd list. I would have considered cassette tapes obsolete by the mid-1990s. I'm surprised that CDs weren't (pre-emptively) on that list instead.

Now I would like to get some old subway tokens. Surprisingly, there aren't any lots of old tokens being sold online inexpensively.
posted by filthy light thief 07 December | 20:01
My mother is heartbroken over Hydrox's demise. She much prefers them to Oreos.

One item I expected to see on that list but didn't: videotapes. (Again, hat tip to Mom: I picked up some great cheeeeeeeap VHS movies for Mom at Local Cool Videostore today; my much younger friend at the register asked "Your mom still has a VCR?" Ahahahahaha, yes, she does. So do I!)

We still have an answering machine on the landline; a housemate and I briefly tried voicemail on the house phone, but we missed being able to screen calls from the other room (i.e., without looking at the caller ID).

We misplaced our phone book some time ago, and whenever it's time to order pizza, we wish we could find it; it's so much easier to flip through to the PIZZA pages than to track down the various delivery places online.
posted by Elsa 07 December | 21:07
I swear that we get three different yellow pages and a white pages every year and we never use any of them. And google maps does a good job of finding take-out places for us.
posted by octothorpe 07 December | 21:23
Oh and I wish that pop-up web slide shows had become obsolete but obviously not.
posted by octothorpe 07 December | 21:27
And google maps does a good job of finding take-out places for us.

It's not the finding that's a problem; in my town, at least, lots of pizza places put menus in the yellow pages. And some places don't deliver, or have a delivery minimum, which is noted in the add.

The putatively-local online yellow pages are not an adequate replacement, either, not until they're better organized and edited. Trying to make a list of local furniture stores last week, I kept finding that tiling, plumbing, and heating services were accidentally indexed under the furniture listing.
posted by Elsa 07 December | 21:52
I agree that the dead-tree yellow pages are actually a much more direct way to find services by category than sifting online - not least because so many of those online yellow pages are slackly run ad vehicles that really don't care whether the content is current, correct, or usable.

But most of the things on this list are out of my life - only very recently, though. Just last week I decided it was silly to hold onto all my cassette tapes, when I no longer have the technology to play them, not even in the car. And I threw out my ol' Rolodex at my last job a short while ago when I realized that Google contacts was all I needed and it could go with me everywhere. I've always hated fax machines, as it seems they only work reliably about 50% of the time.
posted by Miko 07 December | 22:41
You know, an HD twiggy disc can actually still hold most ringtones. Ponder that.

And my AskMe is about the library getting rid of VHS.

Earlier this decade I tried to write a rolodex web app (and then 37signals came out with Highrise).

As for fax machines, gah. I almost got fired once in the 1980s because I didn't know the difference between Group 1 and Group 2 or Group 3, and that my floor was stuck with a six-minute-per-page device and I was given a 40 page document to transmit.
posted by dhartung 08 December | 01:26
Oh! Forgot the best one. I still have a shirt emblazoned with a giant subway token, that I bought in the subway (Times Sq. I think). My favorite memento of New York. It's way too small for me now.
posted by dhartung 08 December | 01:41
People my age could say "Grandpa, do you really remember when there were horses and carriages on the street?"

And for my kids, there are all of these old dead things that they won't even think to ask about, completely disappeared, that were new and revolutionary when I was coming of age...

This planet is getting really fucking weird.
posted by Meatbomb 08 December | 03:46
As for fax machines, gah.
We are looking to replace a couple of copiers at work. The other day the staff member who is working out the deal told me they could bundle a new fax machine at a good price. Me: "We still have a fax machine? "What the fuck for?"
posted by dg 08 December | 06:31
Even as a high tech company, we still have a fax machine. A lot of local vendors still use them and our medical insurance group still takes form via fax. The only time that I've used a fax machine personally in the last ten years was buying a house and the real estate agency wanted me to sign some forms and fax them back.
posted by octothorpe 08 December | 07:21
I still use a fax machine because one of our biggest client's building rep can't read .pdfs on her computer. Yes, the same client who is offering a 3 bedroom rental in Gramercy Park for $15,000 a month.
posted by TrishaLynn 08 December | 07:54
Yeah, I had to use a fax machine a lot at our old job, too. I hated it - I always feel like there is some sort of voodoo involved, and I'm never sure it's worked.
posted by gaspode 08 December | 10:58
Though I hate them, we still have to use fax machines too, mainly for two reasons: we deal with schools and with government agencies. Both of them often require documents with multiple signings in real handwriting, and have complicated forms with fields, and don't construct those in PDF yet. So several times a year we've got to fax stuff.
posted by Miko 08 December | 10:58
There's a fax machine at my workplace, and we still get fax spam from time to time.

dhartung - you could turn it into a patch on another shirt, or on a jacket if that's how you roll.
posted by filthy light thief 08 December | 14:20
I almost passed on a cheep multi-functional laser printer because it had a fax machine as well. I really feel bad having a fax machine at home - especially since I don't even have a landline to plug it to.

Then I open the manual, and 80% of the pages are explaining fax options. 80% of the submenus are for faxing. A huge bright green led stays on at all times (in my bedroom, when I'm trying to sleep), to indicate that the machine is, indeed, able to receive faxes.

Fuck you, fax.
posted by qvantamon 08 December | 14:48
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