TR Forums

just brew it! wrote:

...I'm still resisting the pressures to sign up for Facebook and all the other newfangled (haha, get off my lawn!) "social media" sites (OK, I'm on LinkedIn, but that's not the same thing...) so TR is pretty much my online "home", and has been since shortly after I signed up.

I'm not sure what Facebook would offer you at this point, unless you're looking to see what people from HS/college are doing, or keep tabs on your kids/nieces/nephews. It was amusing for a couple years, but now into my 30's, it's just gotten depressing and kinda weird. Nobody goes out and has fun anymore. For a while it was weddings, and now the three categories of posts are: pictures of kids, progress in weight loss programs, and token birthday wishes. You can't even joke around with people that much, because many of them need to keep their pages clean for work/career. Where's the fun in any of that??

just brew it! wrote:

Edit: As far as where I "grew up" online goes... well, I'm too old to have grown up online (in the Internet sense), and wasn't into the BBS scene. I did discover Usenet when I was in my early 30s, and spent countless hours reading and posting on rec.crafts.brewing and alt.music.progressive. Ahh, those were the days, before AOL (and later on, the spam flood) destroyed Usenet.

Never got into Usenet. I did mess around with BBS's for a couple years before we got our first internet service, but that was mostly to download shareware versions of games from Apogee, Epic, etc, not as a method of communication. If my parents had bought me a console at that moment, or if I had other types of gaming available (e.g., tablets/phones today), gaming wouldn't have driven my interest in PCs, and I'd probably have different hobbies today.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Amen. When I first got here in 2003, I was no less a turd than I am today, but I was a different, more embarrassing turd.

Ah, such is life.

The Egg wrote:

I'm not sure what Facebook would offer you at this point, unless you're looking to see what people from HS/college are doing, or keep tabs on your kids/nieces/nephews. It was amusing for a couple years, but now into my 30's, it's just gotten depressing and kinda weird. Nobody goes out and has fun anymore. For a while it was weddings, and now the three categories of posts are: pictures of kids, progress in weight loss programs, and token birthday wishes. You can't even joke around with people that much, because many of them need to keep their pages clean for work/career. Where's the fun in any of that??

The one thing it would offer me is that a few local businesses and organizations that I actually care about seem to think it is an alternative to having a proper web site and/or mailing list. "Oh, you didn't hear about that? But we posted it on our Facebook page!" Grrrr...

Honestly, for small businesses, I think it's possibly a better choice. Easier for them update, no need to pay for anything, etc. I know a lot of the smaller agencies and non profits I work with have gone nearly exclusively to FB for posting updates and news simply because it's a lot easier. When you're talking a small (sub 10 people) organization that isn't tech focused, sometimes good enough is just that.

paulWTAMU wrote:

Honestly, for small businesses, I think it's possibly a better choice. Easier for them update, no need to pay for anything, etc. I know a lot of the smaller agencies and non profits I work with have gone nearly exclusively to FB for posting updates and news simply because it's a lot easier. When you're talking a small (sub 10 people) organization that isn't tech focused, sometimes good enough is just that.

I debated this at work a few years ago. We're a well-established, mostly commercial, and fairly small company. One of my co-workers was adamant that we were "falling behind" by not having a Facebook page, despite having a full fledged website and most of our customers knowing who we were for decades. My stance was that while it's free and certainly wouldn't hurt, it almost wouldn't be worth the time taken to create the page, and there was certainly no need for panic.

Am I the only one who has absolutely zero (or even negative) interest in using Facebook for shopping or any other commercial interest? It's a purely social for me.

It's been 12 years today being on TR! Wow, man.

Most of the ones that use it didn't have a webpage before or never updated it because they never had a steady contract with an IT service. Rural alliances of churches, small non-profits, etc. A 60 year old volunteer secretary can figure out how to use FB and it doesn't cost anything.

just brew it! wrote:

The one thing it would offer me is that a few local businesses and organizations that I actually care about seem to think it is an alternative to having a proper web site and/or mailing list. "Oh, you didn't hear about that? But we posted it on our Facebook page!" Grrrr...

One thing that struck me while watching the Superbowl this year is that back in the 1990s/early 00s, every ad had a website plastered at the end of the ad and many had enticements to go continue some game or challenge from the ad, at the website.

This year, I don't recall seeing even one web address, but every commercial ended in #Something.

My first post was apparently a "Which Holy Grail Character are you?" quiz. Love that that stuff is relegated to Facebook these days. Second was a real tech question about my Radeon 8500.

I Wonder if ATi would still be here had AMD never bought them.

Also, I bet I have one of the lowest post/time ratios of the old timers.

I remember when anonymous gerbils use to roam freely on the front page.

Krogoth wrote:

I remember when anonymous gerbils use to roam freely on the front page.

Amusing story: back when I was coding up Metal, I obviously took a look at the huge comment database.

I was all like "wtf" seeing so many anonymous posts, thinking I'd messed up the user IDs somehow. Then Damage told me that registration wasn't a requirement back then.

I visited about 4 years before I joined, and joined on "Joined:Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:53 pm", so probably started to frequent the site around 2004-2005, possibly earlier, because I recall reading reviews on the radeon 9800 pro and the A64 S754, on which I personally built my first very own PC, well first build anyway, about the summer of 2003.

So ya, probably around 2003, wow, time goes by too fast ;(

A tip of the hat to all those we lost in The Great Gerbilicide of 2004.

They should have registered. Don't you dare feel sorry for them, Ned.

12 years. I no longer have access to my first post, IIRC it was in the R&P forum and I opted out of that forum several years ago

I probably started reading TR back in 2001. I got back into building PCs when I built a rig in 2002 that had an OC'ed P4 2.4 and an ATI 9700 Pro. The 9700 Pro seemed fitting at the time as my previous build had a VGA Wonder.

Now that I think about I may have missed everything in between 286 and P4.

morphine wrote:

And no, I'm not going back to my old posts. I feel ashamed enough as it is.

Tell me about it, the way i was during the earlier days at TR, pathetic. Also, i would really like to apologies to the gerbils for my previous behavior, honestly it was just my immaturity.

idchafee wrote:

12 years. I no longer have access to my first post, IIRC it was in the R&P forum and I opted out of that forum several years ago

You were complaining about the Cuban embargo.

If we're talking about where we came from, I drifted over here when SharkyExtreme turned to mush but it wasn't until The Great Gerbilcide of 2004 that I decided to register.

What other sites were there in 2001 that we can poke fun at in the Internet Archive

I didn't realize its been so long. My most posted thread is "Got a Wii wOOt".
Man kids suck the spare time from you.... I was meaning to do a post last year when I got a ASUS VivoNote 8 before they were generally available. I still have all the bench marks, I guess I could post them 15 months after I intended to...

I'm currently playing with / writing software for the Panasonic FZ-E1 at work http://www.panasonic.com/business/tough ... -fz-e1.asp

ludi wrote:

This year, I don't recall seeing even one web address, but every commercial ended in #Something.

Wow.

In one of my net neutrality posts (don't worry I'm not actually going back into that issue) I brought up the counter-factual scenario of "what if AOL's model of 'keywords' had won?"

What you just posted makes me wonder: Maybe it did (after a brief hiatus)!

Yes, just the application layer without any control of the network layer beneath it (unlike AOL), but in some ways that's even more insidious. In any event, from a user perspective the end result is largely the same: information segmentation.

OMG, SharkyExtereme, completely forgot about those guys. First article I remember reading on TR was back in the Geforce 3/Radeon 8500 era. Back then I had just upgraded from a Radeon 32MB DDR to an 8500. I didn't join the forums for another year or so...

What ever happened to that guy with the gamer tattoos and was a wrestler. Geez his name escapes me. I think he also worked for Disney. So many have fallen off from the old days. Like remember that one guy (again name escapes me, Geez I am getting old) who was banned and then tried to set up his own forums and take some of the community away.

PerfectCR was the Disney tattooed wrestler. TheGleek was the banned forum instigator; unbanned now.

My first post was asking for a third party ATI web site, getting me into Rage3d. Fun place, but the last ATI card I had was a..... 9800pro? That can't be right. Let me think.... 8500 128MB(!), 9700pro, 9800pro, 6800GT,then GF9600GT, GTX 285 (won here!), 460 1GB, then my laptop with a GT560M. Yep. Guess so.

And I lurked for a few months until I figured I would join and ask. Joined May 29, 2002. 13 years in 6 weeks.

Captain Ned wrote:

PerfectCR was the Disney tattooed wrestler. TheGleek was the banned forum instigator; unbanned now.

That's them. Haven't seen those usernames in years.

What ever happened to Howard the drake? I know there were some honesty issues that eventually came to light....

drfish wrote:

Well, most of my posts are still in the Distributed Computing forum even though I've been out of the F@H game for a long time. This thread is a classic IMO and still has more of my posts than any other single thread including the BBQ ones. Good times.

Same here, Fishy!

Captain Ned wrote:

PerfectCR was the Disney tattooed wrestler. TheGleek was the banned forum instigator; unbanned now.

God i hope THE GLEEK has become more humble with AGE

Lickety lives!

My My..how time flies...im still kickin..retired...and earning a meager living ON the Golf Course( Hell...someone has to do it eh?) I see JBI is still the one and only original PostWhore...See Hance from time to time..used to come see me once a yr and donate to my golf ball fund. Since he is now a partner in business any spare time is dedicated to his model plane stunt man tricks Lots of new faces which is good..remember the beer wars. Which by the way ive taken up brewing..and i have to run people out of the house so i can play golf..its good...no GREAT beer. Cant remember name of guy in Canada..think he was a mod for awhile..was going to come and play golf with Hance and myself . He never made it..got divorced and vanished..i hope he is ok!! You keep on posting JBI...someday your fingers will merge with that keyboard..then what

Of course Vrock..im too damn old and mean to go this early in life