Two Steps Forward, One Big Flashback

Two Steps Forward, One Big Flashback

As I worked on a couple of print covers and some huge files today, I found myself thinking about where I was four or five years ago. I was on a computer with a 10GB hard drive and heaven knows how much RAM—I’m guessing 128MB, upgraded to 512MB. I could work on only one cover at a time, lest I run out of room before I could burn my work files to CD with an external CD burner that ran like molasses on a cold winter’s day. If I needed to render something in one of my 3D programs, it took an entire day or two—I’d let the computer sit there unhindered as it processed all the bits, bytes, and pixels of my masterpieces.

I can see me talking to my kids and grandkids now. “Back in the day, I had to wait 5 minutes for an upload both ways!”

God, I love technology.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because I finally got myself Toast for the Mac, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why it took me so long. Oh, that’s right—the cost. It’s nearly $100 on their site, and I got it for half that during a sale.

But I’m slowly migrating some of my older files from floppy disks—remember those?!—to flash drives, CDs, and DVDs. Wow, I’m flashing back to those days where a software installation meant dealing with five floppy disks and a lot of waiting.

Or wait! I remember my very first Apple computer. The IIc didn’t even have a hard drive, and it took an even older version of the floppy disk that was extra floppy and as big as a slim CD case. If I wanted to save anything, a game for instance, I had to save it on the floppy with the program.

Oh! And I remember DOS and BASIC. I remember coding things in it and thinking, “This isn’t at all like the movies. This is hard!”

Oh, my God! I remember my Commodore64 computer, too!

Help! Help! I’m regressing! I need to get back to the reality at hand. I need something solid, something from the present to hold on to before I lose myself in the past completely. I need…

Whew! I put my hand on the cute little box that Toast came in, and I feel better now. It’s such a tiny box, too…

Hey, remember when software would come in really big packages with a full tome of a manual included?…

Ack!

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6 thoughts on “Two Steps Forward, One Big Flashback”

  1. My next computer will be a Mac, but I’m stuck trying to decide which one to get. 🙂 I’m cleaning out my archived files and I have old documents printed out in dot matrix. Ah, the memories…

  2. Oh, yeah! And the dot matrix printers! I remember waiting all night, until the wee hours of the morning, for my homework to print out.

  3. Ha ha !! I just tossed out my old ‘box’ with the gazillion disks and manuals. I must say that I love the little covers they come in these days. They’re so small and insignificant. At least you felt like you got your moneys worth in the olden days *sigh*

  4. When I was a lad and began the writing trade, we used chisels and rocks and we were glad to have them…Jeeez — you young people. I still can’t find software that knows how to create the beats in ACT II!

  5. My first computer was a TI-99. My second was an Atari. I remember it was a big deal when I bought my first hard-drive – several hundred dollars for a 40MB monster. Technology is great – I work for Intel these days, and it’s amazing the things we’re doing with logic chips.

  6. Lyn, not to mention all the manuals these days are PDFs. Yikes! What if you can’t even get the CD to work?

    H.E., rocks? Beats? Aren’t you thinking of music software?

    Mark, I had an Atari!! 🙂 It was the 2600, though — just for gaming. I couldn’t do any computing on it.

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