26 Sep
2010
26 Sep
'10
8:37 p.m.
On 9/26/2010 4:21 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Sun, 26 Sep 2010, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I suppose there are some advantages to
having been born in 1938. :-) I
still think the Erector set I got for Christmas when I was about 10 was
about the best present I ever got from my parents. After they passed
away in 99, when I was cleaning out one of their storage buildings I
rescued it, and I still have what was left of it out in my garage. The
last thing I built with it (a windmill) is out there too. With the
little electric motor on the base driving it I'm sure those unprotected
metal "blades" would be considered way too dangerous for a kid today -
even though the drive "belt" was (I think) just some string. IMHO,
everyone should learn to keep their hands out of obviously dangerous
places, and learning that at a fairly young age is not a bad thing. I
had a pretty fun chemistry set too, but I always liked the Erector set
better. I could never get some of the "experiments" to work, but the
Erector set projects always worked...
Depends on the parents. My folks refused to get
us an NES when we were
younger, and wouldn't even let us rot with the old Intellivision. They got
us Legos and Construx, and forced me to learn how to use the C64 ("we spent
a lot of money on this, and you will damn well learn how to use it").
I'm eternally grateful to them. Truly.
My parents got my brother and I a used REAL erector set, and a used
chemistry set (a reasonably REAL one).
But they never understood tools. My father never understood that there
was more than one size of Philips screwdrivers, and always thought that a
soldering iron was a big pistol shaped thing with a trigger, that all auto
body work was done with a big rubber hammer, and that nobody needed a
"whole SET" of wrenches, because the slip-joint pliers and the imitation
Crescent wrench from the dime store fit all sizes.
But, I did learn the concept of a mains fuse box when I was 4 :-)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com