it goes on

[calimac]

I hope my last post didn't alarm anyone into thinking I was in a terminal funk. It was just the news of the day. Deaths and funerals and dislocations will always happen; if they don't require any major action or decisions on your own part, just keep your head down and keep going. That's the way to get through life if looking up and getting a real view of the situation is too bleak.

So I got the newest book to review in the mail today. It's a cultural/historical source/inspiration study of Tolkien, and it's supposed to be written for lay readers. In such cases, I always picture the person on the MythSoc mailing list years ago who wasn't quite sure of the difference between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, and had trouble retaining it after explanation. That person would find this book utterly bewildering; even I am only understanding it because of additional knowledge that's not provided by the author.

A friend undergoing major life changes hasn't replied to an e-mail suggesting a concatenation. Another who knows one well suggests that a text message to one's phone might produce more responsiveness. Oh, great; I don't know how to do that. Occasionally I receive text messages on my phone, and I don't know what to do with them, either.

Part of the problem is that I don't want to have to learn to do any more new things than I absolutely have to. Even little, simple things, because they add up. My old brain is too stuffed with decades of things I've learned to do in the past that have become obsolete, or at least quaint. I ought to make a list. Among the obsolete or quaint things I can do are:

• Drive a stick shift car (has that ever proved useful on various distant past occasions and visits to the U.K.);
  
• Tie a men's long necktie (visits to the wardrobes of my contemporaries who wear ties as fashion accessories has revealed that they usually keep them knotted and just slip them over their heads; this at first astonished me);
  
• Write a simple batch file to open a program in MS-DOS (saved a lot of extraneous typing, and I used to do it for friends' computers too);
  
• Hand-tag a simple static web page (all the pages on my personal web site were created that way);
  
• Properly alphabetize and file library catalog cards (and those alphabetization rules were complicated and full of conditionals);
  
• Clean and play an LP (a very quaint procedure by today's standards);
  
• Fold a standard gas-station map (a rare ability even in the day, apparently).

What can you do?

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Well, for one, I can use a slide rule. A few years ago, my calculator went into hiding when I needed to do vehicle design for GURPS (a process that involves taking 2/3 powers at one point); I did it with one of my slide rules—I have two about the apartment, normally for purely antiquarian purposes.

Handling LPs is slightly more functional; I'm hoping to get back to uploading chorale's six feet of vinyl with our USB turntable. . . .

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I think at one time I was taught at least some of the function of a slide rule, but I rarely had to use one so it didn't take. I do have one slide rule joke, though. Guy absent-mindedly multiplies 2 x 2 on his slide rule. "3.99999 .... aw, heck, call it 4."

I still have many LPs, so many and some so infrequently played that I'd never get around to converting them all, and since for me the purpose of converting would be to eliminate them, I see no point in converting any. Then I'd have to photocopy the liner notes (these are classical LPs with lots of info on them), label all the CDs ... nah. I can see its usefulness for others, though.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've seen a variant: When you ask an engineer to multiply 2x2, he takes out his slide rule, fiddles with it, and says, "3 . . . 9 . . . 9 . . . 7? Okay, now where does the decimal point go?"

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Hang clothing properly on a clothesline (and the proper way to iron, including ruffles)

prep a coal/coke stove heater (Austria, 1972, the only time I ever needed a heater)

Insert a carbon page so that the typescript go on the second copy and not on the back of the top page

Wrap hair in rags to induce curl (either mine or someone else's)

strip down and clean the xerox machines of the late seventies, early eighties (and do plugs and points on older cars)

All I can think of.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

At one of my secretarial jobs that punctuated my college career, I was the Key Operator, the person who'd get called when the "Call Key Operator" light flashed. But all that meant was that I knew how to clear jams, something I can still do, even with newer machines. Stripping and cleaning, no: we had mechanics who'd come in and do that regularly.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The big 9500s had to be working fast when orders for scripts and pages came through, and so I had a close relationship with the local Xerox center, as I was the manager of 12 machines. I discovered that if I took care of the basic stuff, the stripping and cleaning, when big problems happened, Xerox would be more likely to get someone out fast. (they also knew our jobs were on the line--a director who is hyper aware that every minute of delay costs him 15 grand doesn't give a flying fig that the Santa Anas are blowing and all the machines are jamming, or that there was a major breakdown. Re the Santa Anas, I found that watering the carpet twice a day kept the static problem way down.)

[chorale.livejournal.com]

I worked in a copy shop that used Xerox 9500s, and I had to learn how to clear jams, clean the coretrons, and clean the belts. Taking minor scratches out of the photoreceptor was something I left to the more experienced operators and service techs. The business I worked for had its own in-house technicians, so we had service quite quickly.

I, too, can hang clothes properly on a clothesline, and I can make coffee in a percolator and use a manual typewriter (set tabs, primarily.) I can clean vinyl LPs, but a little badly now that I am so out-of practice, as well, and clean a cassette deck.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, photoreceptor cleaning was dicey, but it did save time.

We match on everything but percolators. (In those days I used to grind my own beans, but that was before my guts said "No coffee, Or Else!")

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, do not drink coffee, and as a result I don't even know how to use a simple automatic coffeemaker. When asked by busy coffeedrinkers to get the machine going, I'm at a loss, and sometimes I figure it out vaguely correctly.

[chorale.livejournal.com]

My guts are complaining at me about coffee now, but I persist in maintaining my high-level caffeine addiction. I used to grind my own beans, and I still have an electric grinder, but whswhs sleeps longer than I do, so I don't want to wake him by grinding. I settle for grinding at the store or buying pre-ground if I am impoverished.

[chorale.livejournal.com]

I just remembered that I can develop film and photo prints. At least, I had learned how many years ago.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've developed film and made prints too, but many years ago, and I couldn't do it now, not least because I haven't any space suitable as a darkroom. And what were all those chemicals anyway? I have no idea, and would have to look it up. That's not compatible with still knowing how.

Another thing I actually did around those days was card and spin wool, but in charity I could not be said to have known how even as I was doing it. Want any really lumpy yarn?

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I can spell "supersede", thread a Kodak 16mm projector in the dark, get rid of most non-migraine headache (via massage) and ameliorate migraines, whistle and hum at the same time. These get used a lot, except the projector. Haven't done that in several decades; I may need light, but I bet can still do it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I have threaded 16mm projectors, but if it worked properly it was sheer luck. I couldn't say I know how, or even that I knew.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I can do those, too, except for the Kodak. (I use massage and also accupressure at certain nerve clusters If it's a sinus migraine, I can sometimes cure it, or at least alleviate it.)

[margdean56.livejournal.com]

I can properly conjugate "lie" and "lay," which comes in handy more often than I like to think in my job as a freelance proofreader.

At one of my early places of employment I learned how to use a telex machine (with paper tape!), but I can't see using that in the future even if I remembered how to do it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No telex for me, but I did use early fax machines, the ones where you'd call somebody up, tell them "I'm going to send the fax now," and plug the handset into the handset-shaped carrier on the fax machine while they did the same at their end.

[chorale.livejournal.com]

You remind me of my time demonstrating TRS-80 computers, where one used an acoustically-coupled modem sometimes. Using cassette tapes as storage files was tricky and for me, usually resulted in lost sales.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, lie and lay--I used to drill my fifth graders until they were sick of it. I wonder if any of them now think it was a useful skill?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't lie money on it.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes...they probably lay around cursing me and my useless drill sheets!

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I can mix chemicals which were in acid mixes. I can deprocess computer chips with aluminum wiring. (Now they're made of copper and it's a whole different ball game.) I have a whole bunch of obsolete technical skills from the semiconductor industry.