The scene was the First Floor Alcove at work and the occasion was our daily Scrum Meeting when I casually commented that I was having trouble getting a RETAIN userid provisioned correctly. RETAIN is just one of the many systems at work that have their own userid registry – just yet another account that you need to keep track of and which needs password maintenance performed every 90 or so days.
I innocently commented that I think the issue I was having might be related to the fact that I believe I had a RETAIN userid back around 1995 or so. Without missing a beat, my Scrum Master (Team Leader) Cheryl sort of chuckled and commented “I was in the Fourth Grade in 1995”. Ouch. Direct Hit. My battleship was sunk.
So I looked up and across the table at my colleague Sue, who, along with Your Faithful Servant, is one of the more, how should I put this, experienced Software Engineers on the team and plainly stated: “Did you hear that Sue? Cheryl was in the Fourth Grade in 1995.” We both gave each other the “Doesn’t It Really Suck to Be Old” look.
At least Cheryl was subtle.
A couple of years ago, I was in a conference room with my colleague Rich and another much younger (now former) colleague. By this time, the formal meeting had ended. Now it isn’t uncommon for older engineers to wax poetic about the old obsolete hardware and software they have programmed in the past. So Rich and I were going back and forth with various recollections. I had the opportunity to work on DEC equipment in the early 1980s since Pitt was a DEC school and we programmed these PDP-11s (a classic machine). These boxes ran an OS called RT-11 and supported 8 inch floppy disks. Rich was skeptical about such a large sized floppy disk, so I googled them and proudly showed them off to Rich. Nobody was topping my 8-inch floppy disk that day. I was proud.
All the while, our younger colleague was buried in her laptop, sending email after email out, oblivious to the stimulating discussion that Rich and I were having. She put her laptop in Hibernate mode, wrapped up her power cord, and plainly proclaimed: “You guys are old.” She stretched the pronunciation of old to last as least three seconds.
