You are too old if you remember.......

[kkt]

Wow. 8.3 all-caps filenames.  I don't miss those.

[LilianaUwU]

I don't know if anyone has said this yet, but I remember having to turn the TV to channel 3 or 4 to watch a video tape or play games.

(OT: Has there ever been an area with both numbers being assigned to different stations? Probably not, because at least one channel would have to be free for those kind of things.)

I can't be that old, right? Because I recall doing so until around 2007. Then again, I come from an island in the middle of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence where dial-up Internet was common until 2003, so I don't know if that plays a role in the delay in technology.

As for 3 and 4 being taken, channel 3 was Radio-Canada while channel 4 was TQS, which are both main channels, so I'm assuming cable frequencies differ from old antenna technology.

[GCrites]

Dialup was still common everywhere in 2003.

[Max Rockatansky]

Dialup was still common everywhere in 2003.

Your online service had a minutes plan.

[formulanone]

Dialup was still common everywhere in 2003.

Your online service had a minutes plan.

Or hours; I remember that AOL and AT&T/BellSouth once offered up to 500 free hours per month (in its latter years) and wondered how anyone would use even half of that back then.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if I used 300 hours of data — it's not measured that way anymore — on my phone per month.

[Max Rockatansky]

Dialup was still common everywhere in 2003.

Your online service had a minutes plan.

I forget how Prodigy rated their plans but I believe they technically were by hour much like how AOL did it.  Even in that era I don't know what the point of being online was if you were going to have to jump off super quick.  The best things Prodigy had going was the chat rooms and bulletin boards, neither usually was a quick sit visit.

Or hours; I remember that AOL and AT&T/BellSouth once offered up to 500 free hours per month (in its latter years) and wondered how anyone would use even half of that back then.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if I used 300 hours of data — it's not measured that way anymore — on my phone per month.

[Big John]

Couldn't get online during peak hours as all the lines were busy.

[Takumi]

Dialup was still common everywhere in 2003.

Your online service had a minutes plan.

We had NetZero. Every 4 hours it would cut off and have a 10-minute cooldown period.

[webny99]

The era when agentsteel53 was completely untouchable as the forum's most prolific poster and that "Likes the forum way, way too much" badge felt like an exclusive status he would maintain for decades.

Now, over 20 users have joined that club and he's on the cusp of tumbling right out of the top 10.

[kphoger]

The era when agentsteel53 was completely untouchable as the forum's most prolific poster and that "Likes the forum way, way too much" badge felt like an exclusive status he would maintain for decades.

Now, over 20 users have joined that club and he's on the cusp of tumbling right out of the top 10.

Heh.  I still have his number in my cell phone contacts, but I have no idea if it's even his number anymore.  I've never texted him from the phone I own now.

[tmoore952]

Richard Nixon resigning.
Gas at 30 cents a gallon.

I can raise my hand to both.

[kkt]

The horrible 1968 election - the murder of presumptive Democratic nominee Robert Kennedy after primaries already started.  The Chicago convention police riot.  The upshot being that Nixon got to run against a candidate he could beat, when there were several stronger Democratic candidates available.

Apollo 8 orbiting the moon.

Tet 1968 - North Vietnam's spring offensive which succeeded (at great cost to them) in invading the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.  Made a lot of the American public realize that maybe this wasn't a war we could win.

The My Lai Massacre of mostly women and children by American troops that made a lot of people realize this maybe was a war we shouldn't win.

Passing the Civil Rights Act.

The lotteries for the draft - not for me, I'm not that old!, but some of my uncles' fates depended on the lottery one year.

I remember gas at 25 cents.  But that was a brief time and unusually low even then - gas price war.

The old Dumbarton bridge.  (And sneaking onto the new Dumbarton bridge after the structure was complete and before it was officially open.)

The Internet before it carried ads.  The first ad from a law firm to help immigrants get green cards.

CA 238 between I-580 and CA 17, before I-238 provided a freeway connection and it was dumped onto a very overcrowded boulevard with a traffic lights.

Leaded gasoline.

BART opening day.

The election that created and authorized taxes and bonds for BART and how stunned the establishment was that it actually passed.
One was quoted "If I thought the damned thing would pass, I never would have endorsed it!"  I think it was the first new passenger rail system created in the USA since before WW II.

The occupation of Alcatraz.

Getting a whiff (which was more than enough) of tear gas from overreacting National Guard troops against protesters on the Berkeley campus, per overreacting Governor Reagan's orders.  I was in the car on the street adjacent to campus being driven by my grandfather with other assorted family members.  He told us to close all our windows and turn off the ventilation fan, but we still got a bit.

The evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Saigon - helicopters off the roof completely full, not enough space on the offshore aircraft carriers for all the helicopters so they just dropped many of them into the sea so there would be space for more of them coming in.

The Mother of All Demos - Englebart showing off a computer small enough to sit beside a desk, used by just a single person, with a memory-mapped screen that could display graphics as well as text, and windows with different things going on in different parts of the screen, a mouse, communicating with another computer in a remote location by network in real time.  (I was not at the Demo, but read about it a couple of years later.)  Compared to the batch oriented, card deck data processing systems of the early 1960s it was like seeing a century of progress in a day.

[tmoore952]

The lotteries for the draft - not for me, I'm not that old!, but some of my uncles' fates depended on the lottery one year.

Ditto for my older brother.
I don't remember this clearly --- it's just a little bit too early for me. I do remember other things from around that time, but not that specific day.

He told me about a decade later about having bad dreams the night before the lottery.

[bing101]

When talking about the 49ers in the Super Bowl didn't turn into politics and of course because Joe Montana was the star at that time.

[tmoore952]

Esso gas stations in the U.S. (before they became Exxon).

[dlsterner]

Esso gas stations in the U.S. (before they became Exxon).

As well as Enco gas stations (predominately in the south, with Esso being in the north)

In 2015 I did see a station still branded as "Esso" in Ontario (Canada).  Stopped there, both because I needed gas, and because I can claim gassing up at an Esso.

[tmoore952]

Esso gas stations in the U.S. (before they became Exxon).

As well as Enco gas stations (predominately in the south, with Esso being in the north)

In 2015 I did see a station still branded as "Esso" in Ontario (Canada).  Stopped there, both because I needed gas, and because I can claim gassing up at an Esso.

Name changed from Esso to Exxon in 1972 (US only) when Esso bought the Humble Oil Company.

One of my favorite pre-digital photos I took was of an Esso sign just over the Canadian border from Fort Kent, ME in the province of New Brunswick. I did not stop there though, since I have memories of (parents) stopping at Esso when it existed in the US.

I know Esso (said as "s" "o") stood for Standard Oil. I'm not sure if the Humble Oil purchase forced the name change to Exxon, haven't found any info about that. Although I do remember this change happening by virtue of seeing the signs change, I am too young to have read or understood the details of the sale when it happened.

[bwana39]

Name changed from Esso to Exxon in 1972 (US only) when Esso bought the Humble Oil Company.

Standard of New Jersey bought HALF of Humble in 1919 and the rest in 1959.

SO-NJ had operated under a hodgepodge of names including ESSO, Humble, and ENCO (ENCO was primarily to get around the regional distribution rules imposed on ESSO during the Standard Oil breakup.)

In 1973 Humble Oil and Refining Company (the gasoline and lubricants marketing arm of SO-NJ) Had expanded into much of the United States. They decided to get away from regional restrictions (in the US) of use of the name "ESSO" and market using a single name throughout the US. SO-NJ became EXXON Corporation. The gasoline and lubricants subsidiary (Humble Oil....) became EXXON Company USA.

[bwana39]

Dialup was still common everywhere in 2003.

I got DSL at work in 1998 we upgraded to T1 in 2000.

We got DSL at home in 2002.

[bwana39]

Full Service ONLY at every station.

A/M radio was king.

Coin Phone Booths

Gas stations had MINIMAL items beyond gas and oil.

3 Speed on the column.

Ramblers

[roadman65]

When you had to wait till the weekends to see and talk soup with your friends as cell phones were a fantasy of the future.

[thenetwork]

Full Service ONLY at every station.

At the beginning of the year, we lost our last & only Service Station with Full Service pumps (they had self service as well) and a repair garage.  In our part of the country, ANY gas station with an in-house repair shop and/or Full Service pumps is a rarity indeed.

[roadman65]

The use of Filling Station.  All the old shows would use that term instead of gas station. In fact growing up I used to think Goober on Andy Griffith worked for Phillips 66 as filling does sound close to Phillips.

[tmoore952]

Name changed from Esso to Exxon in 1972 (US only) when Esso bought the Humble Oil Company.

Standard of New Jersey bought HALF of Humble in 1919 and the rest in 1959.

SO-NJ had operated under a hodgepodge of names including ESSO, Humble, and ENCO (ENCO was primarily to get around the regional distribution rules imposed on ESSO during the Standard Oil breakup.)

In 1973 Humble Oil and Refining Company (the gasoline and lubricants marketing arm of SO-NJ) Had expanded into much of the United States. They decided to get away from regional restrictions (in the US) of use of the name "ESSO" and market using a single name throughout the US. SO-NJ became EXXON Corporation. The gasoline and lubricants subsidiary (Humble Oil....) became EXXON Company USA.

You should write for the erroneous Internet information places I got my info from.

[Scott5114]

When you had to wait till the weekends to see and talk soup with your friends as cell phones were a fantasy of the future.

I remember I couldn't wait to get to school on Monday morning and tell everyone about the tomato basil I had on Saturday night.