GOM (grumpy old man)

[noelm]

A recent thread got me thinking (I know, a rare occasion) about how "we" have become a lazy society, we will search everywhere (within arms reach) looking for the remote control rather than get up and walk a couple of metres to the TV and if we can't find it, just watch what's on. We sit in our air conditioned leather seats in the car at a drive through rather than go into a shop, order a extra jumbo burger with added lard, a kilo of chips and a couple of litres of sugary gassy drink, all without moving an inch! We text someone who is only 20m away because we are too lazy to get up and actually talk to them. People want to know a street in the neighbourhood they grew up in, first option...google, it's not that hard to remember a few street names..is it? Just imagine if today's kids had to actually ride their bike to their friends place, only to find no one home! that's just how life was, you ride there and took your chances. The phone rang, (if you had a phone) there was no caller ID, you answered it and it might be your school teacher checking up on why you're not at school, it was a risk you took! I am not too sure we are really "progressing" as such anyway, rant over......

[JustJames]

TL;DR

 

 

[Rebel]

Geez @noelmI am glad I don't live in your world.

 

Cheers.

[Mike Sydney]

1 hour ago, JustJames said:

TL;DR

 

 

Absolutely brutal  @JustJames still chuckling now 🤣

@noelm I’m about to turn 40 and can feel the grumps coming on. I get irritated by kids doing the same stupid things I used to do at their age. 
As for the phone, the only time it rings is a telemarketer or a scammer. 
Had a phone call from “Telstra” a couple weeks ago saying they had received error reports from my IP address.
“Interesting” I said, “and who am I? What’s my name ?” 
“Asshole” he replied and hung up

 

[noelm]

Yeah I don't know, things just seem to have got out of control with people. I hope we are not heading for an American style society, sue everyone for anything, lot loose on anyone who jumps in a queue in front of you, carry a gun in your pocket, one in your car and one in your boat. It's bad enough that people have become completely obsessed with their phone, the second it is out of their hand it's a tragedy and they are distraught. I come from an IT background, so technology doesn't scare me, but I never have my phone with me, thirty years ago people found a way to contact/find me, so they still can if they really want to!

[noelm]

31 minutes ago, Mike Sydney said:

Absolutely brutal  @JustJames still chuckling now 🤣

@noelm I’m about to turn 40 and can feel the grumps coming on. I get irritated by kids doing the same stupid things I used to do at their age. 
As for the phone, the only time it rings is a telemarketer or a scammer. 
Had a phone call from “Telstra” a couple weeks ago saying they had received error reports from my IP address.
“Interesting” I said, “and who am I? What’s my name ?” 
“Asshole” he replied and hung up

 

You know you have reached GOM status when a kid on a motor bike riding past annoys you, or a car with a loud exhaust, get off my lawn.......

[noelm]

Just to add, those fools that ring and tell you your internet or computer has been "hacked" are my best entertainment, I string them along for ages, then tell them I am involved in an Australian Federal Police setup, and only kept them talking to trace the call, and someone will be smashing their door in shortly to arrest them.

[Mike Sydney]

I went without a mobile phone deliberately for two years 2010-12 for the exact reasons you mentioned Noel.  My wife eventually made me get one to keep track of my movements.

it was blissful, though I also didn’t wear a watch - asking strangers what time it was seemed innocuous to me, but in the age of smartphones I inevitably had to clarify why I had no phone before they’d accept I just wanted the time, not spare change!!

[big Neil]

I am probably a lot older than you are noelm and I struggle a lot with the technological advances of today. Sure life was very different pre technology era. We GOM have had a great life, a very different life, and like every generation that has witnessed the "advances" in society, we tend to be hyper critical of people and situations. That seems to be a normal progression towards becoming GOM.

There is another side to the coin though. Speaking personally, I welcome my interaction with technology. Let me explain.

I live on my own since my wife passed away nearly 2 years ago. The 3 kids are all adult with kids of their own. They live a long way from where I live and I rarely see them or the grandkids. That's an acceptable part of modern society! What isn't acceptable is not hearing from them at all. That's where I find benefit in having email, Facebook and a mobile phone. They contact me to see how I'm going WHEN THEY HAVE TIME. I have a lot of old relatives and the technology allows me to talk face to face with them, no matter where they are in the world. This is something that would not happen without the access to technology.

I remember the first car I had in Australia and the amount of time I used to spend keeping it in running order. Today my car has a service every 9 months or so, all I have to do is to put petrol in it. I look on that as a very important improvement, given that I am incapable of effecting the repairs like I used to.

Back to being GOM for a final whinge...it is very easy for people to become addicted to technology and this can have negative impact on their lives. The general theme of making life easier for us may well turn out to be detrimental to our long term well being. Time will tell.

A good topic for discussion noelm, while the fishing is in limbo, courtesy of the excess rainfall. bn

[noelm]

I am pretty lucky, my kids and grandkids live quite close by, but, they still FaceTime at least once a day. I guess my GOM comes from being lucky to have experienced the "old days" yet still know technological advancements, when I started in IT, a 40MB drive and 4MB of ram was a big deal, I remember our first "car phone" it was just a standard home phone in a box that required a big aerial on the car. I just fear that the rate society is going we are going to be just zombies, forever reliant on iPads, iPhones, remote controls for every gizmo we own, the simple life skills are just vanishing with each year. 

[Mike Sydney]

You were lucky! We used to dream of having 40MB! 

 

[noelm]

I didn't have that, I worked in IT, I only had a double floppy drive and 500k memory at home, with a dot matrix printer and tractor feed paper! But I do consider myself extremely lucky to remember a milkman, a baker that sold half loaves of bread, a real butcher and a vegetable man that used to come around in an old truck, but we mostly grew our own Veges. Not to mention a phone box that took coins and you had to press button A to allow a call, and B to get your coin back, plus a number you called to get the time.

[Yowie]

When mum was young, she lived on King Georges Road at Beverly Hills, at the top of the hill near the girls high school. No phone in her house for a while so the lady opposite had a phone and received calls for mum and her family.

The lady would yell out across the road that there was a call for mum, they could hear the yell and walk across the road to answer the call.

Try yelling across King Georges Road today. 🤣 No-one would hear you.

 

Todays youngsters need to be permanently attached to technology. The missus and I were in a national park in Qld a couple of years ago. We had finished our walk and were heading out towards the carpark. Some young 20 something girls walked in near the entrance for a "walk". Make-up applied with a trowel, big blubber lips, boob tubes, flicking their heads about to wave their hair in the air, then one yelled out, "I don't have phone reception."  I could not stop laughing at her. (the missus told me to behave)

[Hoods]

You Guys Were LUCKY!!! We had two (2) chanells on a black & white TV - when the electricity worked (living in a rural area west of BigNeil) AND the arguments over who should get up off their backsides to go & change the chanell.

Imagine the Luxury when we got a fancy "remote" conrol that plugged into the front of the new TV.

I recall listening to (one of 2 chanells) the radio at the grandparents over breakfast - That was the news of the day.

Fortunately the parents have kept up with modern advances - probably more than me - so we use all those things BN uses to keep in touch. But I wonder if it is "better"!! How long since we have received a letter in the mail as a form of contact/communication other than a bill??!! I suspect my kids would struggle with writing a letter to their grandparents.

Am I sounding like another GOM?? Must be time to go fishing

[Little_Flatty]

Aaaaah c'mon GOMs...one day in the next 50 years millennial anglers will become GOMs and GOLs themselves and will reminisce about the days where they CAUGHT live fish instead of PRINTING THEM!

Then they will reminisce about how they used PHONES instead of getting messages by telepathy straight to their heads 🤣

@noelm my career in IT has spanned just long enough to have had to support token ring printers. Did you ever have the pleasure of dealing with those? I was often on the phone to some guy in a warehouse in Auckland, with trucks banking up in front of him, and here I am, this early 20s kid trying to restart this printer via a green screen, pressing F5 furiously until the print queue started moving again (if I was lucky). Over the phone, I'd hear 'hey boys, some Aussie thinks he's gonna fix it eh, followed by laughter'.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Little_Flatty

[noelm]

11 hours ago, Hoods said:

You Guys Were LUCKY!!! We had two (2) chanells on a black & white TV - when the electricity worked (living in a rural area west of BigNeil) AND the arguments over who should get up off their backsides to go & change the chanell.

Imagine the Luxury when we got a fancy "remote" conrol that plugged into the front of the new TV.

I recall listening to (one of 2 chanells) the radio at the grandparents over breakfast - That was the news of the day.

Fortunately the parents have kept up with modern advances - probably more than me - so we use all those things BN uses to keep in touch. But I wonder if it is "better"!! How long since we have received a letter in the mail as a form of contact/communication other than a bill??!! I suspect my kids would struggle with writing a letter to their grandparents.

Am I sounding like another GOM?? Must be time to go fishing

Yep, I can remember sitting around the old black and white 17" "Astor" TV, that had long spindly legs like a spider....with only a couple of channels, channel 9 and the ABC were first on the air. Having been in the TV repair game for a very long time, I fairly recently help restore an old HMV set. Now we whinge because with the dozen Chanel's, plus Foxtel, plus Stan, Netflix and god knows what else "there's nothing on" GOM syndrome right there!!

Edited April 14, 2022 by noelm

[frankS]

Nothing I like better than talking about the old days, good old days as it's put. The things we had to endure just to have a wash, we had an old chip heater that had to be stoked up with wood cuttings to heat the water that we would put into a huge copper bowl that we called a bath tub. we had an ice chest and the ice man would come with horse and cart and he would carve a block of ice to suit the size of our ice compartment in the ice chest. For air conditioning on the hot summer days we would soak a blanket and hang it in a doorway with a fan behind it to blow cool air into the room. no tele in them days we would sit around the radio and listen to shows like Biggles and Dr Mac The Phantom and Sammy the Sparrow when i was getting ready to walk the 3 miles to school .

And we were lucky cause we had an electric fan, poor people next door didn't have a fan so they suffered more than us.

WoW I could go on and on forever, but the young people of today just wouldn't care.

Frank

I still believe I grew up in the best era ever in history.

Edited April 14, 2022 by frankS

[noelm]

I had to walk to school, through ten feet of snow, uphill both ways........just joking, but I did walk to school, along the beach to Shellharbour Primary School, most times I was late because I found something along the way and had to stop to fool around. It's kind of funny, along the back of the beach was a track through the scrub, during summer snakes were there every day, no one was ever bitten (that I know of) that's why most walked along the beach. These days there would be all sorts of shady people lurking in the bush, no one would let their kids walk to school, but to us, that's just how it was! The track is now a road, most of the bush is gone, except a strip along the beach to prevent erosion, which strangely enough was never a problem until "we" started building houses and roads....go figure. What we called bush or scrub, is now a "fragile dune environment"

[Blackfish]

1 hour ago, frankS said:

 

WoW I could go on and on forever, but the young people of today just wouldn't care.

Frank

I still believe I grew up in the best era ever in history.

Some young people Frank, I believe there is good out there in all ages out there.

But as you said, for me anyway, the best era in our history.

For example, say if you were born in 1900 ... for example and give or take a few years.

By the time you 14 the First world war starts and I recon there would be no one in Australia that it didn't touch. Straight away when that ends and you have the Spanish Flu that kills more people than the First world war, that lasts for 2 years.

You have a bright period "The Roaring 20's" but at the end of that there's the Great depression in the 30's, now they were tough times.

Then at the end of the 30's the 2nd World War which finishes in 1945.

Sooooooooooo what i'm getting at is that the time your, say 50, look what you have seen and I wouldn't wish that on any one.

I was Born at the end 0f 1950 and what have I seen compared ........... nothing.  How good is life.

I wish happiness and good health to all, appreciate your life and be thankful.

Enough of me ranting 🙂

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Blackfish

[noelm]

I guess (putting the GOM aside for a second) people born from about 1950 to 60 would have seen some remarkable changes, man on the moon, from simple calculators to modern laptops, wireless technology, cars and boats with EFI that start instantly, flat screen TVs, mobile communications, things all taken for granted, but all huge steps in their own right.

[Blackfish]

Also, sorry @Mike Sydney I overlooked that you had already put up The 4 Yorkshire Men

[Little_Flatty]

7 hours ago, frankS said:

WoW I could go on and on forever, but the young people of today just wouldn't care.

I'm not sure I agree - go on and keep sharing! We're listening! But I guess at 40 I'm not young anymore 🤣

As a younger bloke, I really enjoyed (and still enjoy) the company of my older colleagues and friends. In a way, they helped to finish 'bringing me up' at a life stage where my parents couldn't, as I had ventured into a profession and corporate culture they knew nothing about. About the only advice of my older friends that I didn't follow was to not get married (I did,  pointing out that they were all happily married) and chase the dollars (I did, but not nearly to the extent they think I should have...I still get chastised whenever I see them!).

Any young person with a growth mindset - like pretty much any Fishraider - would enjoy an older person's company if they had a shared career or shared interest like fishing.

5 hours ago, noelm said:

I guess (putting the GOM aside for a second) people born from about 1950 to 60 would have seen some remarkable changes, man on the moon, from simple calculators to modern laptops, wireless technology, cars and boats with EFI that start instantly, flat screen TVs, mobile communications, things all taken for granted, but all huge steps in their own right.

I read an interesting article on LinkedIn a few years ago about marketers in the digital age. Like many industries (IT included), they love youth. Companies bring on kids in their early 20s on massive salaries to market for them because they 'understand disruption'. The writer of the article (a young marketer himself) challenged the assertion that older generations didn't understand disruption, pointing out that older marketers witnessed the move from radio to television, to computerisation, to digitalisation, all in the space of 50 years or so. They've seen more disruption than a Tiktok influencer can poke a stick at. It is a really interesting point.

On another note, my wife and I are big fans of the BBC production 'Call the Midwife' which started by following the lives of midwives and the families they supported through the 50s and 60s. We looked at it as if it was olden-days stuff, but then we realised that the babies being born in that era were younger than our parents and we had several colleagues of that vintage!

Edited April 15, 2022 by Little_Flatty

[noelm]

I got into IT quite late in life (which is pretty unusual) but I had been in electronics (and outboard repairs..strange combination) and at the time I was doing component level repairs on boards considered just swap outs. From there I just naturally progressed into software development and support, worked with some "kids" that astounded me with their skills, still great friends with a few that I managed and have gone on to their own huge businesses, employing dozens of people. That said some "olden days" stuff still gives me a chuckle and some stories about work and boating make laugh to myself at times.

[bluefin]

I turned 68 yesterday. I have earned the right to be Intolerant ! A GOM.

 

 

Actually not being Tolerant is a major fault of mine ATM. I have become very aware of it . I am working on it ! Prayers needed !

[Hoods]

You lot crack me up. Thanks for the Monty python skit - perfect. My Grandfather was "intolerant" in his later years. Had no time for idiots. Born in 1908 in Melbourne. Managed his way into Y2K then pulled the pin. Wanted a refund on his 10 year Passport which he needed for my brothers wedding in NZ. His lot saw the most changes in human history. Cars, electricity, telephone, 2 world wars, 3 monrachs, new countries created, old ones gone, depressions, recessions, booms, 10 pound poms, white australia policy, multi national Australia, internet, he even facetimed overseas, travelled overseas on a jet plane (and by ship), and god forbid he even saw the Wobblies win a world cup. My kids think they know everything buthave seen nothin. No wonder we are GOM.

No that's not true. I am a GOM cause I haven't been fishing. The kids can look after themselves but this constant rain & floods along the coast is proving very challenging - especially to lots of affected families.

Being a GOM is an asset to society.