Happy Birthday ESPN

[Marlow]

I dreamed as a kid of a device that would allow me to have all of my music 24/7. I lived to see it!

If the internet (specifically google and wikipedia) had been around when I was 10, I never would have seen the light of day. I always had questions on the weirdest subjects that my library could never satisfy.

[scottmitchell74]

Agreed. I would be a doughy ball of goo. As it was I spent a lot of time in libraries. I love the places.

Along the same lines, my parents never allowed video games, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

[Pego]

Really? I can't turn that off fast enough. It's everything that's wrong with Sports Talk Radio/TV - inane, sound-bite conversations with no rational thought necessary.

Yeah, all the talk shows have ruined ESPN like reality TV ruined MTV. I used to watch the Sports Reporters before NFL Gameday but that was the only one I could handle.

I miss the Sunday night Primetime. Boomer and Tom Jackson were truly entertaining. Their best (I think two) years were with Robin Roberts.

[lonewolf]

I usually stay about one technology generation behind. I remember my youngest daughter was working in a music store circa 1980? and talking about cassettes about the time I had an 8-track in my car.
I began my professional geology careen in 1955 when Uncle Sam decided he did not require my further services. At that time, fledgling geologists started out "well sitting", examining drill cuttings under a microscope, plotting the formations penetrated, looking for oil shows, calling for drill stem tests , etc.. .
It was a 24/7 job as long as the well was drilling. This was before someone thought of air conditioned/heated trailers on the well site. You slept in the back seat of your car, ran samples on fender of your car in the daytime and on the bench in the dog house at night. If a decision beyond your pay grade was necessary, the rig stopped drilling while you drove fifty miles or more of bad road through rain, snow, sleet and desert heat, and came back with instructions.
If you were "watching" more than one well at a time, it really got hairy.

Now, this same daughter, with a MS Geology/Geophysics, sits at a computer console in her office, with instant verbal communication with the well site, real time access to drilling times, mud log and LWD (electric logging while drilling) information and supervises as many as eight wells, in two states, at a time.

While we drew maps manually by compiling and posting data from hard copy well files, she posts this same data, and more, from computerized data bases to a latitude/longitude computer base map. The computer calculates elevations, subseas and intervals instantly and in minutes can generate, for human evaluation and tweaking, a series of structural, geomorphic, isopach and production maps that would literally take months manually.
About the only constant is that she is " on call" 24/7, which, even so, is not as restrictive these days
Still, she moans that we old timers found more oil the oil fashioned way, which may or may not be true since there were more places to look, but consoles herself with the knowledge that she is much better compensated.

[Cooter Brown]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colum...olympics_N.htmhttps://<br /> <br /> ESPN is maki... NFLers.<br />