[sanddrag]

You guys have better stories than mine but I'll post anyhow. Back in my day kids rode bikes after school and on weekends. Cell phones were mainly just expensive options in cars, then we got motorola flip phones.

We had Apple IIe computers at school with 5 1/4" floppy drives on which we played Oregon Trail and fun math games. I had a IIc+ at home. After a short while, as mentioned above, AOL CDs were everywhere. I remember at school when we got PowerPC Macs they were the most remarkable thing. I remember when my 6th grade classroom got one that we would take turns using. Alta Vista was the best search engine on the web. Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice. There was no such thing as Google. I remember reading in the newspaper about how telephone lines would "soon be able to transmit data at much faster speeds of 56 kbps." I remember at that time we had a 14.4 modem at home, that made all sorts of silly noises. Web pages loaded about a 1/2 inch at a time, down the screen. The internet was not full of ads and spam and hobbyists and individuals put great effort into making web pages with quality information that was often quite interesting. Animated GIFs were the hot ticket for making a web page fancy.

I miss the early days of the internet.

The other day I found a receipt for a Pentium MMX 233MHz computer we bought from CompUSA in 1997. It came in just under $2000.

When eBay came to be, it was individuals, in the United States, selling their unique used stuff. You would pay for it with a money order in the mail. People paid insane amounts of money for Pogs and beanie babies. Radio Shack had the best RC cars around, and actually sold radio equipment...

Middle school had classes like Wood Shop and Drafting. Students knew how to respect their teachers, and could pay attention and read books, without having to constantly be entertained.

In high school, I got one of the first color cell phones for about $400.

FIRST Robots were programmed in PBASIC, were powered by drill motors, and you could only buy parts from the Small Parts catalog or a small list of approved materials.

That's about all I remember. Sometimes I want those days back.