Haaaaappy Birthday to you!!

[susandennis]

Biggie is two years old. Because of the pandemic, of course, there will be no party this year, but a quiet celebration here at home. Just the two of us. His second present arrived and while he's delighted, it may go back.



Sleeping is fine but playing in it causes the snaps to unsnap. If it happens again, it's probably going back. It's cool and it's nice looking but it was too pricey to keep if it's not going to keep it's shape.

+++++++++

Yesterday pink_halen highlighted another entry in the Innovative and Obsolete In My Lifetime game.

My grandfather had a tape recorder when I was a kid. It was a reel to reel, giant thing. I do not remember what he recorded with it or why he had it. But I do remember understanding that you could talk into it and then hear yourself when ti was played back. In high school we had a language lab where you could practice your French or Spanish. It was a big room of reel to reel tape recorders.

I sucked at French (as I did with most all school endeavors). One night, my father brought home a new gadget that a friend of his has lent to him so I could practice my French at home. It looked just like this one.



It was small enough to hold on your lap and great fun to play with. The future!!! (Alas, my French still sucked.)


++++++++

This time last year... There's a lot of that phrase going on just now but around here, the military was setting up a field hospital in the exhibition hall of the football stadium across the street. Everyone was in lock down so the only people on the street were people in fatigues. It was the weirdest thing ever. After a couple of weeks, they decided that the resources were needed more elsewhere and they dismantled the whole thing before they had the first patient.

Today, that same exhibition hall is being configured for vaccinations. It's due to open this weekend and will be the largest civilian-led mass vaccination site in the country. They intend to ramp up to 22,000 vaccinations a day.

This is going to put an interesting tint to the neighborhood.

I'm going to move up my next grocery outing to this weekend. I want to do Trader Joe's. They still have a senior hour on Wednesdays and Sundays so I'll do Sunday and get what I need and get back home before things get nuts. It will probably be a couple of weeks before they do but if I don't have to go anywhere, that would be best.

Today I don't have to go anywhere and might not. Well, I am going to go down to the dumpsters with a load of trash but that doesn't really count as somewhere, I don't think. I might get creative and I might not.

Comments

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Very cool ball/sleep design. Really too bad if the snaps don't work right.

I ended up with Popoo's tape recorder. The one tape I had was of Everett Dirkson speaking at the UN.?????? WTF.

But I ended up playing ADHD games with it and screwed it up. Of course.

[susandennis]

Everett Dirkson at the UN. Soooooo Popoo! I think using it for games was a good way for it to go.

[xinas_island]

Happy Birthday Biggieeee!!!!

[pink-halen.livejournal.com]

I have problems unsnapping but only when I sleep.

[susandennis]

:)

[theirgrammy.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday Biggie, have a fun filled day. 🎉🎊🎈🎁

[christalin80.livejournal.com]

A very Happy Birthday to Biggie, many more!

[sweetmeow]

I remember reel to reel recorders. My Uncle Ned - who (for his time) was very technology savvy, had one. He videotaped our wedding, then gave us the reel. Trouble is - we had no way of seeing it unless we came to him. So - I've only seen it once, and remember the hassle it took to set it up! I don't even know where that reel is now. I wonder (if it's still around) whether it could be transferred to some modern means - like mp4 or something.

I also remember collecting cassette tapes, but they're gone now. CDs had superior sound and I still have many of them - and use them still. Computers don't put CD/DVD slots in computers anymore, but I purchased an external CD/DVD drive and use it occasionally. Our home stereo still has DVD/CD capabilities.

Somewhere I have a 3 1/2" USB external floppy drive. I used it until I transferred to the cloud the very few important things I had stored that way.

[letmesaythis.livejournal.com]

Hello! Legacybox.com digitizes reels. I don't know where in the world you live, but this company is US based.

[sweetmeow]

OMG, yes! LegacyBox! Good idea. I'm scared that it's gone, though. Maybe? Maybe not.

We are snowbirds and it's in our other home. I won't get back there until May so I'll hunt then.

[hopefulspirit.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday to Biggie! Looks like he will be celebrating in style, that is a fancy new contraption for him to enjoy (if it doesn't have to go back).

That's a huge vaccination clinic, I hope that all goes well. Up here they just opened it up so anyone over 16 can get the vaccine.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

When we emigrated to NZ when I was very young, we had a reel to reel and so did our relatives in England. International phone calls were prohibitive then - we used to have one very expensive ten-minute phone call a year at Christmas. The rest of the time we swapped tapes.

[letmesaythis.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday, Biggie!

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

22,000 Per day?! Wow

[siglinde99.livejournal.com]

I remember those tape recorders. We gave one to my grandparents and we had one so that we could mail tapes back and forth instead of writing letters. As I recall, it only got used a couple of times.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Our household acquired a reel-to-reel tape recorder when I was about... I dunno, 10? One feature of this particular model – maybe this was true of all the tape recorders of that vintage – was that if you recorded something on a tape and then turned it over and played it back you would hear what had been recorded – backwards. I remember at least one occasion on which we got a certain amount of entertainment from this feature, based mostly around the fact that if you recorded "Rawd uth zulk" (I've invented the spelling for this) it would come out as "close the door" with s heavy Russian accent.

[mollywheezy.livejournal.com]

I had a tape player just like that. :)