Daughter to Uni - Question 2!

[Cudzoziemiec]

We had payphones at the end of each corridor. Remember the 10p coin? On one occasion I was standing there talking to my mum or whoever, with my back turned to the corridor, and when I turned round my corridor-mates had carried all the furniture from my room into the main part of the corridor. Happy days!

[Wowbagger]

My nom d'internet dates from Dez's time at Swansea Uni (late 1990s), where their "talker" was based largely on the Hitch-hiker's Guide.

As the only parental unit to have a) sufficient computer knowledge and b) a reliable internet connection at home I participated in this "talker". Because I was much, much older than anyone else on there, my user name became obvious.

[Kim]

That's cool.  Our talker wasn't^[1] based on the novels of Mercedes Lackey.  Which I've never actually read - someone warned me soon after joining not to bother.

I was at the time in a long-distance relationship with a stereotypical arts student, who I educated in the murky ways of Solaris and operating Windows NT without a functioning mouse.  This provided unlimited telnet access on the computers too weird or shonky to be of interest to the other students, and was a far more reliable means of communication than negotiating a voice call with a payphone-per-corridor on one end and ACC Telecom on the other.

My parents got the odd email, which they checked about once per term.


_{[1] For copyright reasons.}

[Wowbagger]

My telephoning form College was from a small maths room which, for some unknown reason, was not kept locked.

In there, there resided a computer terminal. This communicated with a mainframe somewhere (Preston Poly, I think) by means of someone dialling a number and resting the receiver in a specially designed receiver rest so that the computer terminal could speak to its Lord and Master all of 15 miles away (we were in Poulton-le-Fylde).

Obviously, the telephone was a fully functional one which did not require the insertion of coins to make it work.

That maths room was also the first place I found an electronic calculator. It was about the size of a typewriter, it plugged into the mains, its display was dependent upon glowing wires and it was not clever enough to do square roots. I thought it was absolutely amazing, but this was about 1974.

[Kim]

That maths room was also the first place I found an electronic calculator. It was about the size of a typewriter, it plugged into the mains, its display was dependent upon glowing wires and it was not clever enough to do square roots. I thought it was absolutely amazing, but this was about 1974.

When I was there, the main lecture theatre in UKC's maths department had good old fashioned sturdy wooden benches, with an abundance of mains sockets, of the type you'd expect to find in a science or engineering lab.  On asking around, these turned out to have been installed at the time of construction (I assume mid 70s, on account of the underwhelming concrete architecture) in anticipation of the calculators.  That architects failed to anticipate the microchip revolution, I can forgive.  What baffled me was the idea that maths students would actually use calculators.

Given that laptops are now both portable and affordable, the sockets are probably getting used these days.

[Cudzoziemiec]

That maths room was also the first place I found an electronic calculator. It was about the size of a typewriter, it plugged into the mains, its display was dependent upon glowing wires and it was not clever enough to do square roots. I thought it was absolutely amazing, but this was about 1974.

I've seen an episode of an early 70s sitcom with Ronnie Barker (I think) which revolved around him waiting for delivery of an electronic calculator like that, and nobody recognising it when it arrived.

[mrcharly-YHT]

That's cool.  Our talker wasn't^[1] based on the novels of Mercedes Lackey.  Which I've never actually read - someone warned me soon after joining not to bother.

She's written one good book, about someone with autism. Speed of Dark.
I lent my copy to someone.

[juliet]

I phoned my parents,with whom I have a good relationship, about weekly when at uni (late 90s, initially payphones, then acquired cheap parent-funded mobile with minimal credit towards end of course). Since then they have mastered email & more recently text. (and now L exists, mum invites herself to visit much more often, bless her )

Have sleeping 6 mth old on my lap at this moment; am gently boggling at the notion that eventually he too will be 18 & leaving home for uni or wherever & utilising new & strange slang on the new equivalent of the facebooks.

[Jacomus]

Looks like he is up to no good again tonight 
The new word seems to be 'mortal' 

Ye gods! What happened to just plain drinking BEER until you mysteriously wake up the next day, hopefully in your own bed?!

Whilst I never enjoyed drinking those kind of things*, I am familiar with all of them.

Parents, consider looking away now!

*Though I did drink Kryptonites, or 'Erasers' as we named them, a fair few times - for cheapness because it cost £3 to make up a glass of it on Thursday nights.

(click to show/hide)

Mortal = Hammered

Gas chamber (Never did it, watched a few people do though) = A shot of something flammable. Light it and hold a bag over the top to capture the vapour. Inhale the contents of the bag. Vomit.
Terminator = 1 can RedBull, 1 shot Jaegermeister, 1 shot vodka
Kryptonite AKA "Eraser" = Pint glass, 1 can RedBull, 3 shots Vodka, 3 shots Apple Sourz (Totally erases your memory from about 20minutes after drinking it.)
Blowjob shots (Never did it, it just seems too disgusting!) = 50/50 Baileys/Kaluha, whipped cream on top

It goes without saying that you replace the names brands with their super-cheap student equivalents.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Ye gods! What happened to just plain drinking BEER until you mysteriously wake up the next day, hopefully in your own bed?!

Surely some mistake? 

[Jacomus]

Ye gods! What happened to just plain drinking BEER until you mysteriously wake up the next day, hopefully in your own bed?!

Surely some mistake? 

Not at all You never want to mysteriously awake in someone else's bed, you want that to be intentional!

[Feline]

Thanks for the translation Jacomus 

It may go some way to explaining this mornings latest facebook tagging 

[Kim]

Either that or he's taking up audax...

[Feline]

Either that or he's taking up audax...

I guess this experience could all be useful practice for sleeping in bus shelters. There may not be a handy duvet though!

[Wowbagger]

I phoned my parents,with whom I have a good relationship, about weekly when at uni (late 90s, initially payphones, then acquired cheap parent-funded mobile with minimal credit towards end of course). Since then they have mastered email & more recently text. (and now L exists, mum invites herself to visit much more often, bless her )

Have sleeping 6 mth old on my lap at this moment; am gently boggling at the notion that eventually he too will be 18 & leaving home for uni or wherever & utilising new & strange slang on the new equivalent of the facebooks.

Make the most of it! An oft-repeated truism, but I wonder where the last 30 years have gone and what on earth I have done with them. I suppose having a number of offspring, half of whom I rarely see, all doing laudable things in various bits of SE England is achievement enough.

[rogerzilla]

I took my parents' old fridge.  I cannot recommend this highly enough.  Not only will you have your own secure stash of cold milk and beer, everyone on your hall floor will come and worship at the altar of Freon.

[Kim]

I took my parents' old fridge.  I cannot recommend this highly enough.  Not only will you have your own secure stash of cold milk and beer, everyone on your hall floor will come and worship at the altar of Freon.

Yeahbut the cleaners will dob you in to the warden, who will sacrifice you at the altar of power factor.  Unless you've got dire beaties or something, in which case the university will buy you your own shiny new fridge.

[rogerzilla]

No-one ever complained about it 

[Kim]

Things have changed.  I think mine was the last generation of students where you could get away with a sneaky fridge by being on sufficiently good terms with the cleaners.

[David Martin]

Being at a London college (and unlike Dundee, the trend was to get as far away as posisble) following minor mishaps in my planned career path, my trip to college was along the lines of driving the car there, unloading, taking the car home and then cycling back to halls. Popped home (15 mile ride) most weekends, getting back into halls after hours on a Sunday night meant lobbing the bike over the fence and then following it.

Second year I stayed mostly at home after a flatshare fell through. Third year I wasn't there. I had discovered research over the summer, and the wonders of email on X25, Vaxen and other such things including a bulletin board known as UNACCESS which would log you out every 15 minutes. Found flat mates through that (not the best of ideas) and then spent the next year in Harrow working for a large Pharma company. Computer access was a 286 running kermit through a 1200/75 modem to the ULCC vax. Or the Z88 if I was feeling keen. This was 1989/90 and one of my housemates wrote the occasional tech review for a magazine so we had copies of Coherent to try out. A Xenix-like OS. Quite different to Windows 2 which I had on the 286 box with a black/orange BT screen.
Back to college and a different flat, this time in Queens Park. No dial up access from there but I was one of the few with an email account. At about this time JANET went internet instead of X25 PAD so email became so much easier. Had a single speed drop frame bike I used to cycle Queens Park to New Malden on via Richmond Park with my washing every weekend. Found my first computer virus in '91.

Ah, fun and games. AOL/Compuserve/Janet. Kermit became old hat by my final year. Amazing really what we managed to do with what we had.

[Feline]

Things have changed.  I think mine was the last generation of students where you could get away with a sneaky fridge by being on sufficiently good terms with the cleaners.

I got away with keeping a hamster in my halls of residence room in first year. I managed this by not keeping Morrissey in a cage. He had his little house and litter tray in the bottom draw of my desk, which he accessed from a pile of books underneath. He used to have fun in the evenings climbing the spokes of my bike wheels, and up the curtains. He never actually mastered the technique of what to do at the top of anything, and always fell off trying to summit the mudguard, or in the case of the curtains fell from a great height onto my stomach in bed during the night. I once nearly lost him when he fell from the desk into the bin and I found him just in the nick of time the night before the cleaners came with tea bags on his head.

[Jules]

Finally - Term is starting at the "University of South Coventry but Warwick sounded nicer". Just got the daughter out of bed, the bicycle and a big lock are in the car. Just need to load 4 tonnes of food and the rest of her possessions and head up the M40.

[mr magnolia]

Ye gods! What happened to just plain drinking BEER until you mysteriously wake up the next day, hopefully in your own bed?!

I strongly remember that the main point really was to try and wake up in someone else's bed.

[TimO]

Term start todays at Imperial. I can't quite see the logic of actually starting at the weekend, when they don't need to be in College before Monday, but I presume there is some reason why they do this (maybe they get an extra couple of days funding from HEFCE?)

I'll have to attempt to get in earlyish before they turn up and nick all the moderately easy places to lock their bikes up, although it'll take a few weeks for the bike presence to peak, before it starts dropping off again, when they realise that whilst bringing their bike from home to University sounded like a good idea, once the weather gets cold, it's a lot easier to use the Tube!

[rogerzilla]

I strongly remember that the main point really was to try and wake up in someone else's bed.

Unless it's the Coyote Ugly syndrome.