I was traveling this past weekend and got home very very early in the morning which is why I didn’t get my comic up that day. The place I was staying had a bed much softer than what I’m used to which is a normal futon. I guess I haven’t slept in one like that in a long time or ever. Anyway, it surprised me just how uncomfortable something soft could be. Complaining about back pain is something that just makes you sound/feel old, but it did sound especially so when I said it.
When I was a kid I used to wonder why adults didn’t run around all over the place. I’d be running down the sidewalk and when I looked back they’d never be rushing to catch up to me.
Mystery solved.
Actually my birthday was yesterday but I wanted to make sure of something before I did my comic about turning 30. Someone I know told me that no matter what I’d wake up feeling achey on my 30th birthday. Thankfully that didn’t pan out, and I’ve already been thinking of tons of good things about turning 30.
For one thing I already know a lot of people over 30, and their unanimous reaction has pretty much been “30? Pfff, whatever.” Also one thing is I was never a real partying type, so I very easily grew out of the starting the night at 10:00 PM and ending it at 3:00 AM. Hanging at friends’ houses drinking six packs of beer which cost roughly the same as one beer at a club suits me just fine. I’m also into being able to hear my friends as I have a conversation with them.
I’ve always been a homebody so I think in many ways I was already kind of in the post-20s lifestyle. It’s just that now I can just sum up the whole decade of people in their 20s instead of having to specify people “in their early 20s.” I think this is only a big step in that if you take someone in their early twenties and compare them to their early 30s they’re likely to be much more different than someone in their 30s to their 40s.
Then again, what the hell do I know? I’m still 10 years away from there so maybe I’m entirely wrong. I’ve lived in New York for over 10 years so that’s like another lifetime away. Anyway, I’ll probably get myself something more tangible for my 30th, or maybe in the spirit of getting older I’ll be responsible and save my money. Or maybe I’ll buy tons of video games, either way is good for me.
This is a memory I remember very vividly. I had a 14.4k modem when I was 13 and my friend had a 56k modem and I remember when he downloaded the Duke 3D demo and it “only” took him half an hour. I have a vague recollection of what the modem looked like too. Anyway it was super impressive and we played the demo a lot at his house. Not a lot of people owned the full version of many games back then because of all the shareware stuff we’d just play over and over again. Because of that I don’t remember ever seeing much further than the first levels of Duke 3D
The reviews are coming in and people are blasting Duke Nukem Forever because it seems like it’s a game very stuck in the time period it was relevant. I think Serious Sam is the only modern game so far that was able to take an old school game feel and make it relevant today. But if the buzz out there is any indication I’m going to stick with my plan of playing the demo of Duke Nukem Forever and leaving it at that. In a way it’s entirely appropriate since that’s all I really did with the original.
Strictly speaking I wasn’t alive before the very very beginnings of what we now know as the internet, but I was certainly alive before its wide adoption. Pretty much knowing anything that is something that only exists on the internet will make you old faster than anything going on outside of it.
There are certain things like 8-track tapes (or just cassette tapes in general) that make someone feel old when younger people don’t remember, but that’s even more extreme with internet memes and sites. It was only a year or two ago that a friend of mine who is only six years younger than me asked me what “Friendster” was. That’s when I got to thinking about what is the minimum period of time something on the internet must be irrelevant before it’s completely unknown by people only a few years younger than you.
Incidentally, there are indeed people who have posted the question “What did people use before Google?” Most of the answers seem to be wise asses saying “the library.” Personally I was an altavista guy because you could use plusses and minuses to hope in vain that it would help improve your results.
Nowadays these kids on my lawn don’t realize that if they just typed the question they submit to Yahoo! Answers into Google, they’d get their answer.
This could just be me, but I’m pretty sure it’s a fairly universal thing for people who live in the outer boroughs who are also above a certain age. This sentiment has been compounded now that I have to pay $2.25 for every single subway fare which means I try to get all my Manhattan traveling done in one fell swoop. One trip to Manhattan feels normal for a day, but the second one usually feels like a slog because it’s about another hour of traveling that wouldn’t have happened if I just planned my Manhattan time better. So even though I do find myself going into Manhattan twice in one day it always feels wrong.
It took me an embarrassing amount of toast for me to realize that one of the knobs on my toaster oven wasn’t set to toast. I thought maybe somehow that the bread being old could affect this. This is beginning of the end where I become an old person who comes up with crazy rationalizations to understand things that don’t immediately make sense to me which I care not to investigate further.
The top knob is for temperature at the top of which is toast mode. The middle knob switches between keep warm, bake, broil and toast. The bottom one has the illustration of white and black toast to indicate how dark your toast will get. This means there are 200% more things I need to check in the morning when I’m groggy from hunger.
It’s true, I like watching CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. Their segments are well produced, they’re amusing, well shot and very pretty in full HD. I watch it almost every Sunday morning. Then during the evening I always watch 60 Minutes even if it’s a repeat.
We used to watch 60 Minutes when I was a growing up but I didn’t pay as much attention to it back then, but I liked the Andy Rooney parts. Since there’s very little real investigative reporting or really hard hitting relevant interviews about current events, 60 Minutes is just about the only place on TV to go to for this kind of content. Even if I had cable TV I don’t think there’d be much competing with it. The other place I used to go to for my news is Bill Moyers Journal but sadly he’s retired that show now.
Yup, getting old.
Growing up in the suburbs of Boston meant that my school had a number of snow days built into their school year because it was just inevitable. This meant that as soon as there was any talk of snow that meant hoping it snowed a lot so I’d get the day off. Once there was the indication there was going to be any accumulation at all it meant a ritual of watching the weather until bedtime, then watching the school closings in the morning.
Later on when the schools implemented a system where we could call their telephone “snow line” that meant waking up early to check if it had been updated yet. I’m guessing schools now just use the internet and/or have some kind of Twitter that you could see the instant it was updated.
But since I live in a city now and don’t have to shovel (or work currently) that means staying in the comfort of my apartment and watching the pretty snow fall. Then later when the weather is on TV is when I’ll realize that there’s going to be actual significant accumulation.
I went to the holiday party for a company that I used to work for four years ago. Most of my friends from that company have either gotten married or gotten married and have kids now. That means that the nights can’t go as late as they used to unless the spouse is out of town with the kids. It’s funny, because this is the company that I credit my alcohol tolerance to. I didn’t drink really at all in college, so this company and those friends were the first people I really went out for drinks with on a relatively regular basis.
