SKYLAB CHAT

[skylab]

Actually my mother had 78 records that she liked to play when I was young, and I can remember her talking about using a wind up Victrola when she was young. I agree, the vinyl LP packaging was half the fun, plus the lyric sheets were another plus. There was something about the spinning vinyl that made one feel "connected" to the performance...at least this was true for me as I taught myself to play the guitar by moving the arm back and forth to repeat songs, or difficult parts of songs. With CD's the discs disappeared from view, limiting access...so I was one of the last people to buy a CD player...haha.

 

[skylab]

Couldn't resist the Hivewire Kitty

 

[Miss B]

Nice render Sky.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I came in at the tail end of the record players, I think. My mother had when I was a kid a full stereo system... record player on the top, then the stereo am/fm down below that, and the bottom tier was a dual tape deck... one could be used for recording. It was a pretty snazzy unit for the time.

I used to stare at the record while it played. Loved the spinning, and loved the sound of the needle for some reason. I somehow missed the 8-track, though...LOL

 

[eclark1894]

I came in at the tail end of the record players, I think. My mother had when I was a kid a full stereo system... record player on the top, then the stereo am/fm down below that, and the bottom tier was a dual tape deck... one could be used for recording. It was a pretty snazzy unit for the time.

I used to stare at the record while it played. Loved the spinning, and loved the sound of the needle for some reason. I somehow missed the 8-track, though...LOL

I had an eightrack tape player. Loved it. My brother and I used to put a tape in and let it play all night long.

 

[Charles West]

Poor kids! I remember the Album Art being half the fun of buying an album. Decorating your walls with the cover Checking the inside cover to see if they put it in liner notes. Some did, some didn't. Earth, Wind and Fire always did and their albums graced the walls of my poor Barracks apartment. Hey remember the miracle of the Turntable that actually remembered the track it just played? Did anyone ever use the 78 setting?

Ever use a 16 1/2 setting?

 

[Charles West]

and a peek at what I am working on. Getting back to the basics and relearning to create again.

 

[quietrob]

Never saw the 16 and half setting. Only used the 45 and 33 settings. I do remember 8 tracks and that KA-THUNK right in the middle of the song as it switched to the next segment. I remember talking my big brother into getting something called a cassete tape for his Dodge Charger just when he came back from Nam. I thought it was nice that it fit in your pocket...who woulda thought it had the benefit of being able to go back to any portion of any song? CD's could never do that and they never fit in your pocket! So There!!

 

[Terre]

I finally remembered what the 78s I had were. Children's records. One had on had the story of Snow White and Rose Red on it.
I also missed 8 tracks.

Hi Charles, that looks fun,

 

[eclark1894]

Never saw the 16 and half setting. Only used the 45 and 33 settings. I do remember 8 tracks and that KA-THUNK right in the middle of the song as it switched to the next segment. I remember talking my big brother into getting something called a cassete tape for his Dodge Charger just when he came back from Nam. I thought it was nice that it fit in your pocket...who woulda thought it had the benefit of being able to go back to any portion of any song? CD's could never do that and they never fit in your pocket! So There!!

Yeah, but cassettes broke easily since the tape was so thin. And anything over 90 minutes were even worse.

 

[Miss B]

I came in at the tail end of the record players, I think. My mother had when I was a kid a full stereo system... record player on the top, then the stereo am/fm down below that, and the bottom tier was a dual tape deck... one could be used for recording. It was a pretty snazzy unit for the time.

Don't laugh Seliah, that's exactly what I have now, though my dual tape deck is on the top shelf.

 

[Terre]

I'm hoping the next few days at work go smoother than the last several:
This was Super Smart Buy (IE: HUGE batch of warehouse TPRs) weekend. The boss wanted me to pull the old tags Saturday night instead of morning to get the most out of the batch going off as this is also the weekend on the 1st. I said OK and told Jim that I was going to have a double shift on Sat. I'd also been asked to save some hours (I'm hourly not salaried). I had managed to save a couple of hours by the time I clocked out Thursday.

Then.......

Just after I finished breakfast Fri morning (normally one of my two days off) I get a call from the meat manager saying they have an emergency and only I can handle it. He wasn't exaggerating. If he hadn't called me we wouldn't have gotten most of the stuff we needed delivered on Sat.
So what happened? Thursday afternoon the PHONE COMPANY in Lubbock cut the fiber optic line between them and Amarillo where AFI is. This resulted in LOTS of AFI supplied stores not being able to transmit orders in both NM and Tex. They were originally going to try and get me to email an order using an xcel spread sheet. While I was trying to figure out how I'd manage that since my options for email are an ipad (which has to use xcel online) and my home compy which is an XP (and doesn't have a paid xcel license) they realized that the store was set up for web ordering. So I log into their site after having been given the store's user name and password and have the computer tell me that the site wasn't responding when I clicked the retailer login button. Called TrueNo, Eventually the tech realized what I was sure of from the start which is that he needed to call MD Tech to tell the firewall to let it through. So then we start getting a mix of being able to get through and "internal server error' messages. They call AFI. AFI was having issues with that server and working on it while we were trying to get me in. Over two hours after I got to work I finally could start typing in the more than 1500 items that needed to be entered in using their order numbers, quantity, and department in every entry. The system is actually set up as a quick order on so each file was only 15 items long. Click on "add to truck" and continue. I had to read the numbers and quantities from the little screens on the two telsons that the orders had been scanned into. Eventually I got done. I put in about 5.5 hours total on Fri. Some numbers wouldn't go in so I wasn't surprised when we were missing some items that were expected. The bad ones included a couple of pallets that had been ordered for a three day sale that started today. This stuff will be on an emergency order arriving tomorrow morning. At least it better.
Saturday I tried to put in a short morning but only left maybe an hour or so earlier than usual. New items etc, Went back at 6pm and spent a little over two hours walking all over the store looking at expiration dates on little yellow tags and pulling the ones with 10/01/16. Had 49.39 hours on the clock for that week when I left.
Go in today and had to make the three day sale my first project then help with the TPRs then mess with the weekly price changes. Fortunately I'm allowed to ask for help with the big batches of TPRs so that got done by late morning. I got everything but hanging the new base price tags done today and will go back tomorrow morning (also usually my day off). Meanwhile we started having EBT foodstamps say the com line was down while other cards were fine. Called TrueNo. The NM server which handles foodstamps had lost power.

 

[Terre]

I have some records I want to copy to CD and now have the equipment to try it when we decide to.

Don't laugh Seliah, that's exactly what I have now, though my dual tape deck is on the top shelf.

 

[Miss B]

I was considering getting something like that, but never got around to it. I'd also like to copy my tapes to CD as well, but don't recall if what I was looking at years ago did tapes as well.

 

[Charles West]

Never saw the 16 and half setting. Only used the 45 and 33 settings. I do remember 8 tracks and that KA-THUNK right in the middle of the song as it switched to the next segment. I remember talking my big brother into getting something called a cassete tape for his Dodge Charger just when he came back from Nam. I thought it was nice that it fit in your pocket...who woulda thought it had the benefit of being able to go back to any portion of any song? CD's could never do that and they never fit in your pocket! So There!!

Well some of the older players had a 16 1/2 . Of course you had to have a record for that speed. Usually it was 1/4 inch thick and recorded on one side. Mother had one record 'Sousa's March' directed by John Philip Sousa. Always loved it even with all the scratching sounds.

 

[Charles West]

here is one playing at the slower speed you can almost read the label.

 

[skylab]

Here's a portable, wind-up 78 player...not bad for no electricity or batteries. Note the rotary phone in the background

 

[eclark1894]

We had a rotary phone until sometime in the 70's. Then switched over to button dial.
Just out of curiosity, if you still had a record player, where would you find the needles?

 

[skylab]

...and a little Elvis of 78...mom had a lot of these.

...and later came Little Richard and other classics on 45's...she used to use a portable AM radio as my nap time babysitter

 

[skylab]

Well, I don't know about sources for needles these days, but I do know that they are making USB turntables now, for the purpose of transferring music from vinyl to MP3, using software like Audacity.