I love this site so much I put up with this lol.

I'm afraid to admit that I actually worked on equipment that old. I date back to the paper tape, punched card, key in the bootstrap in binary days.

I remember paper tape when we were putting together the High School newspaper back in '77. I was only there a few weeks before I had to quit again, so I didn't use that. Punch cards I was familiar with because of bills, Mannix (season 1) and the search for Key Punch operators in the early 80s. I didn't get to college til '87, but we discussed those methods in "Ancient Computer History". ;-D JK, but we did discuss that, along with the IT manager that would pick up a mag tape and say that the data entry people were slacking off because it didn't weigh as much. I programed a bit in Basic and COBOL, but never did binary, FORTRAN, or even C. I played a bit in UNIX, though.

So I'm just a few years older than you. A lot of people don't know where the term 'Boot' or 'Bootstrap' comes from. It meant that a computer (through human help) pulled itself up by its own bootstraps. Here was the process. One would key in binary code from the console that was the start of the boot process. If you went through the long series of instructions correctly and deposit i.e. data each binary instruction on the right memory cells, you would then put a small pice of paper tape in the reader, and hit the Execute button. Your binary instructions would tell the computer just enough info so that it could read that short piece of paper tape. You would then insert a longer piece of paper tape, and that paper tape, along with the previous one would give enough instructions so that the computer could now read a mag tape. After reading the mag tape, the computer would know enough to use a hard disk (which was a huge piece of equipment) that had very little storage compared to today's smart phones. After it could read the disk, the computer was up and running. The boot process took about 20-30 minutes. I too programmed in RPG, Basic and COBOL, along with FORTRAN, PASCAL, and C. I was with MIT for a lot of years on the research side of things.

High School dropout. Went to community college after getting GED. Wanted to learn programming, but instead got steered towards PC Business applications. It was a good program, and, while not what I wanted, was still a good foundation. I'm pretty much self taught on graphics programs, although I don't care for Photoshop. Prefer JASC Paint Shop Pro. LOL. Like I said, I played around with UNIX. First task was to design a database in that. My supervisor helped me with the technical part, but he was surprised that I understood the relational part of database building. I took a course in Access at Arizona State while living in Phoenix. Just a short course, but I wanted to see what I was missing in my copy of Access. All AT&T employees in the short class. I learned a bit, but was way ahead of my class mates. Teach quickly covered what a relational database was. Everybody built the data from scratch. I built one based on company data, key field, Employee number. Here's all these employees with all sorts of data in one table, while I had the same data spread out over different tables. Instructor looked at me and asked where I learned that. Had to show a programmer what a relational database was after I left the company and was on a project for GM. He'd never heard of such.

Swiggy,

I neglected to mention about formal education and software people. Some of the finest software people I have ever worked with had no formal software education. And some of the worst software people had tons of formal education. I came to the conclusion at a very young age that software is far more of an art, than it is a science. And those who have a knack for writing copious amounts of generally bug free code, are the very best regardless of their formal or informal education. So, if you made a good career in software, I have no doubt that you, sir, simply had the knack of writing great software.

That's the problem. I was stuck between too good to be an end user and not experienced enough to be a programmer. Marketing was, by far, my weakest point, and the best recruiting service I ever came across was killed by the ISPs: The Usenet Job Boards. Oh, I miss those. Today's online job boards are nothing more than fodder for various scams. Avoid companies that don't have their own program for hiring because for every application sent online, it generates dozens of emails and phone calls. Try it. They'll usually ask if you're interested in furthering your education, but the program will not accept a no answer: the code must be a loop: If answer = no, run question again, else run next step.

I finally said the heck with it. Last time I became disabled, just decided to go with it. But I watch for the scammers.

Very cool! I too started in Business applications, and then went on to Scientific and embedded systems programming. Software was berry, berry good to me, and I suspect that it was berry, berry good for you, also. Best Regards from Northern New Hampshire's wilderness that borders on Canada.

That's ok...you wanna go back in time? My dad worked in R&D for Friden, Inc. They made some of the machines that turned the thin rolls of plain paper into the punched paper tape that you're talking about. Note the newly-punched tape emerging from the left side of that "Friden Flexowriter".

I actually worked on those as well.

Awesome! My dad was manager of (manufacturing cost) estimations located in the Rochester, New York offices. Based on his department's calculations, Friden either went ahead with with manufacturing, or literally went back to the drawing board to try and find a cheaper way of making whatever they were trying to make.

When someone on Napster had an obscure movie and was the only one uploading LOL

lmao!

I especially like the memes that are submitted by users who made them two weeks ago and they get featured in front of mine that I made an hour ago. Then they get more views. I think if a meme was created over 24 hours, it shouldn't even be featured.

I made this one back in May of 2016. <a href="imgflip.com/i/144zgo";><img src="144zgo.jpg (click to show)" title="made at imgflip.com"/></a> I didn't post it until January because I didn't have time to post anything, so took time off. (a lot like now. I'm super busy and don't have time to post much. busy season started early this year) I don't even have a stock pile like I should have had. Still, it would have been easy just to remake it, but I already had it. Still my most popular meme, and yes, it made Page One. It was like my fifth or sixth post, ever.

My cousin, Swiggys-Back, tries to keep a few on hand for when he gets brain farts. But then, he's got a collection that goes back decades, so he's not at a loss for something to post. I never even got a computer until 2004. He's a digital packrat.

Thanks. You should have heard the discussion we had when I made that one.

Same here. They go back months, maybe years. Then I forget about them. My work is never done.

Sorry I didn't get back sooner. FIrst time I've been on since I replied. I'm HOPING I can be off on the fourth, but when duty calls...

still, I need to get cracking on these.

I didn't think anything got featured that old hmm lol. I just had two not feature in two days, most I've had not feature in a year, weird....

I was in a creative dry spell a month or two ago and started going through my old stuff and submitting old comments and creations. Some of them were up to 8 months old. One gif turned out to be a front pager with most upvotes ever for me. There's gold in them thar hills:)

I agree, if you notice my number of creations it's pretty obvious I have made a lot of memes in the past. I've re-worked a lot of stuff over time, usually I re-photo edit it since my ability grows the more I do it. When I submit something I spent time on I look forward to it featuring. When that takes forever it sucks mainly because I like to hear other people's opinions on stuff I make. I get tired of waiting is all, no big deal in the whole scheme of things...

Sometimes I create memes and I can't submit them right away, either I want to wait until just the right time (in this case I'm just creating said meme so I don't forget it), or I realized I have no more submittions left and have to wait until the next day.

There are some of us memers who create memes in batches. There are some days when I might create 15 memes. There are other days when I create none, or only 1. When the content on the meme has no correlation to news events, or other time criticality, the memes are just as fresh on the day that they are featured which might be several days after creation. But there are indeed cases where I submit a perfectly good meme very early in the morning that is not featured until late afternoon or evening.

I will have to start checking again, but there was a point here recently when I saw that each batch of memes got featured in order of when they were created, started with the newest and went to the oldest. What I think is bothersome is submitting 3 memes at the same time created at the same time but get featured at different times hours apart. Even today had 1 get featured after 2 hours then another 3 hours go by and the second gets featured. Nothing special about them (not custom templates) so I don't see the reason as to why the delay. But to limit only less than day old memes to be allowed to get featured, that forces people to either wait to create memes and forget their idea, or try to recreate their memes when they are ready to submit.

So I did more checking already. Made a meme 17 hours ago, submitted about 2.5 hours ago, was featured 30 minutes ago on page 3. Before it was a meme created 2 hours prior to mine and rhe one after was a few hours later. Page 1 was full of memes made an hour before being featured. I checked 30 minutes later when the new batch of memes came out and page 1 started with 1 hour old memes and had some at 21 hours towards the end of the new batch. My guess is you don't see your memes right when they do get featured and a new batch just posted before you checked, which means you would see an older meme listed before yours. So they are featuring in order like you want, you just don't realize it. What I think is the problem is I submitted mine before some of those were even created and they get featured at the same time and mine got pushed down the list. I am sure others are experiencing this as well, so it isn't just me. But when I have also submitted 2 or 3 at the same time and they feature at different times, I think that is also an issue.

I'm not really sure there is a rhyme or reason to meme submissions. I've submitted memes that feature around 2am and get good play on them, and submitted memes that feature midday and nothing... Aside from Raydog and DashHopes, I don't think anyone really gets a good percentage to the front page.

Popularity does have a factor, and there are times when featured time and day of the week does matter. And depending on if you have a hoard of trolls attacking you, if you submit while they are awake you end up being prone to their attacks which effects things.

I do know they keep changing the site and it keeps effecting what improves the chances of memes being seen, which is why I am not a big fan of their last changes. But since they don't seem to want to respond to people making suggestions or offering help, I have just decided they really don't care.

Sad

Lol

Kentucky jelly lol

Sure didn't expect top of the front page for this crybaby meme lol. Guess I hit a popular note ;)

Yes you did...LOL