Trip down memory lane

Holy shit. I did the Skoal-can thing with my Trash80 too.

 

I think we all had experiences like that in those days. Nothing like scrambling to find someone with keys to get you into the office with the fax machine, then discovering you're locked in and everyone's gone. Or driving down a deserted road looking for someplace with a phone you could send from (I preferred hotels or motels but often wasn't in a position to be picky). Or cursing because sending from the couplers was in reality only sending garble.

Yep, them was the days, by cracky!

 

Last time I used one of those was at a juco regional playoff women's basketball game. I met the AD at the school during football season and he just let me use his office after he left. Then the damn thing had a hiccup and I had to dictate the whole thing back to the desk.

 

Those nights were always fun for all parties involved.

 

$s was part of our coding at the start of a file. $e came at the end.

(I think)

 

I think at our place, the end code to complete transmission was "$e." God forbid if you didn't include that. Also, don't know how many times I had to call the tech guys at the office and ask them to "reset the modem" because I couldn't get a connection.

 

Remembering those days, email seems so simple now.

 

When two of us started writing a twice-weekly freelance sports people column in 1997, the paper gave us one to use. I'm almost positive that the full-time sports reporters had to share the ones they had in the office depending upon who was going out to cover a story and couldn't get back to the paper to write. That didn't make them happy. Found some connections in my home office a couple of years ago that I forgot to return when we stopped writing the column four years later. Hopefully by that time no one needed them.