Getting old
May. 14th, 2011 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertSome time ago I went through some of my very old financial records and shredded that which is clearly no longer needed. Just now I found, in a filing cabinet drawer that I obviously hadn't opened in some time, some records from roughly 1994. Remember the days when the bank sent your actual original paper checks back to you? Also, I sure didn't earn a very large number of dollars working part time at minimum wage.
A few of the more interesting items are cable TV bills for $24.48, which seems astonishingly low now, though, of course, that did not include Internet service back then. (Adjusting for inflation by the CPI brings that to $36.80 in 2011 dollars, still very low). The phone bills are surprising in the other way, more in nominal dollars (and add inflation to that!) than I pay now, and, again, no unlimited data plan in that, it was, as the phone geeks used to call it, POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Remember when "long distance" cost extra? That was mostly in-state, and by then it was no longer a super-expensive exotic sort of thing, but it still actually cost significant extra money over just the charge for having a phone in the first place.
Also, the electricity and gas bills are huge. There were three of us sharing an apartment, but, wow, we blew through an amazing amount of electricity. The price per kilowatt-hour wasn't much lower (adjusted for inflation, very nearly the same), but we had incandescent lights everywhere back then, and piles of computer equipment.
I found the invoice for an Exabyte 4mm (DAT) tape drive, for $949. It held a staggering 2GB per tape. Things have changed. (I've always been a big believer in data backups.)
And here's a business card from "Compact Disc Connection." Pioneering on-line retailer, you could dial in at up to 9600 bps, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. Local numbers in 75 cities. The really special thing, and I remember using this, you could connect to them over the Internet, by telnet. Because that was before this new-fangled HTTP thing. They printed the numerical IP address on the card, in case you didn't have DNS, I guess. There is still a cdconnection.com, I don't know if that's a direct descendant or not.
A few of the more interesting items are cable TV bills for $24.48, which seems astonishingly low now, though, of course, that did not include Internet service back then. (Adjusting for inflation by the CPI brings that to $36.80 in 2011 dollars, still very low). The phone bills are surprising in the other way, more in nominal dollars (and add inflation to that!) than I pay now, and, again, no unlimited data plan in that, it was, as the phone geeks used to call it, POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Remember when "long distance" cost extra? That was mostly in-state, and by then it was no longer a super-expensive exotic sort of thing, but it still actually cost significant extra money over just the charge for having a phone in the first place.
Also, the electricity and gas bills are huge. There were three of us sharing an apartment, but, wow, we blew through an amazing amount of electricity. The price per kilowatt-hour wasn't much lower (adjusted for inflation, very nearly the same), but we had incandescent lights everywhere back then, and piles of computer equipment.
I found the invoice for an Exabyte 4mm (DAT) tape drive, for $949. It held a staggering 2GB per tape. Things have changed. (I've always been a big believer in data backups.)
And here's a business card from "Compact Disc Connection." Pioneering on-line retailer, you could dial in at up to 9600 bps, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. Local numbers in 75 cities. The really special thing, and I remember using this, you could connect to them over the Internet, by telnet. Because that was before this new-fangled HTTP thing. They printed the numerical IP address on the card, in case you didn't have DNS, I guess. There is still a cdconnection.com, I don't know if that's a direct descendant or not.
