ColI'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.
Barry Rowlingson@kibcol1049 I'm so old I remember when the internet was in black and white and they played an mp3 of the national anthem before it shut down every night.
Trouble@geospacedman @kibcol1049 I'm so old, I remember when the Internet was black and green...
Will 
@trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Wasn't there a time when the internet was a line printer? Before my time, but I recall whispers from the founding folks.
@AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049 I think you mean teletypes (i.e /dev/tty), but yes. I am not that old. I have never used punch card or tape either.
MissConstrue@trouble @AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049
I have both programmed with punchcards, and maintained supercomputers with tape. I may be an Elder. 🤷🏻♀️🤘🏼🥳. Why I remember when we telnet into each others bbs, and we liked it!
@AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
One of the "funniest" is when I worked on supercomputers at 3InitialCorp, which was a very buttoned down, blue suit red tie kinda place, but I worked in the servers, so I dressed like a geek; concert tshirts, jeans, doc martins, visible tattoos, weird hair. I was young...early 20s...so about 40 years ago, pre dotcom.
I got a typed letter, hand signed by an executive, which I still have somewhere, which "reminded" me that the dress code for women was knee length skirts, panty hose, heels, well coifed hair, and manicured nails.
And I invited the executive & HR down to the pit with it's wire grate walkways, and pointed up and said "You're telling me to wear skirt and heels and walk around on that? You wanna run that past your lawyer first, or should I call mine?" They changed the dress code to casual for my dept.
And people want to know why there weren't a lot of women in tech in the beginning. Huh. Weird, that.
@MissConstrue @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Bravo for standing up for yourself at the absurdity of the situation and making it better for all.
I had a similar, if far less dramatic, story. At the turn of the 90s, I had worked for a large bank. I was LAN administrator, but a big part was mucking about with desktop computer innards and crawling around on the dusty carpet for patch cable swapping, as well as pulling cable in the drop ceiling. This bank had a policy where you had to always wear a suit (with jacket!) and tie regardless. (Side note: this outfit was rather triggering for my gender journey, but that's another story.)
I found a workaround. The bank had a long running campaign that, if you donated a small amount to United Way, you'd get a sticker you could put on your clothes and thus wear casual clothing. So each month, I'd stock up with nearly a full month of these stickers. Went to a good cause, and solved the issue!
@AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
That's the thing about arbitrary rules with no logical basis. Clever people will always find a way around them.
If we took all the hours that all of us have spent circumventing rules made by people who live in boxes inside their own head, we could have solved cold fusion by now. Or quantum computing. Or figured out why observing an event changes the event. That shouldn't happen, why is that happening? We would probably know, but a theoretical physicist was interrupted and told to go put on some stockings and now we'll never know.
I blame management. And also Cern. As one does.