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LuckyCharms

(22,172 posts) Fri Feb 6, 2026, 07:18 PM 22 hrs ago

I got in a really interesting phone conversation with a young woman last night.

The landline rang, and I assumed it was a spam call because I didn't recognize the number.

I was working at my desk, and I always answer spam calls when I am sitting here, just so I can fuck with them.

Subsequently, when I answered the phone, I was kind of pissy to the person on the other end, until she asked "May I speak to LuckyCharms please"?

I could not understand her at all. She did not have an accent, but she was talking WAY too fast, so I said "Sweetheart, I'm very sorry, but I can't understand a word you are saying". She continued talking, and I kept telling her that I could not understand her, until I finally got used to her cadence.

Turns out she was a current student at the university I graduated from. The stated purpose of her call was to gather information about my opinion of the university, whether I enjoyed my classes, what I remember most about my time there, etc. I knew she would eventually be asking me for a donation...but I engaged with her anyway, and we talked for about 30 minutes.

She asked me what I would recommend to current students about life at the university.

I basically told her that this will likely be the most rewarding time of her life. Work very very hard. Push yourself to learn as much as you can. At your age, you are smarter than you realize. Recognize that fact, and jam as much knowledge in your head as you can. Be proud of yourself. Be kind to your fellow students, and learn from them, as well as your professors. Also, make as many contacts as you can, and keep in touch with them after you graduate.

I asked her what her major was, and she told me it was computer science.

I said, Oh Boy! let me tell you...

I'm 67 years old, and I took several "computer courses" while at university. I conveyed to her how much things have changed. A personal computer? They didn't exist back then, everything was mainframe. Smart phones? Forget about it, they didn't exist.

I then went on to explain that I took some FORTRAN and COBOL courses, as well as BASIC. She asked me what they were like. I said, well...

Here's a memory for you that you won't be able to relate to at all.

You would have to write your program out with pen to paper on some kind of coding form, trudge over to the keypunch center with that form, sit down at a keypunch machine and punch your program onto IBM cards, have the machine spit out the cards into a stack about two inches thick.

Then, you would have to walk those cards to ANOTHER building and run those cards through ANOTHER machine to have it print out the results of the program you wrote onto green bar paper, but you were so proud of yourself that you got all of your cards punched, that you would stop at the campus pub to swill down a pitcher of beer, but you got a little too tipsy and dropped your stack of IBM cards, and once they got out of order, even a little bit, you were fucked and your program would not run, so you had to go back to the keypunch building and re-punch them, only now, you're half drunk and it takes you forever, and it's 200AM...those were the days, those were the days...you have no idea how different it was back then...

Got her laughing real good!