It's so big it sounds as if a temporary water bottling plant could be set up on the Iceberg itself. Granted, an operation like that would be plenty dangerous and expensive, but I'd imagine a fair amount of folks with fat wallets would be willing to pay a pretty penny for bottles of iceberg water.

Zoom knows it's Pandemic-days gravy train is about to go off the rails and is trying to cement itself as relevant in a post-pandemic world. Nice try, but no 'Zoom session' will ever replace the in-person experience. And good riddance, I'll be happy to toss Zoom on the burn pile along with my stash of masks (almost done with my 2 part vaccination).

I remember back in the mid to late 90's when the term 'AOL' was synonymous with the term 'Internet' and vice-versa. There literally were people who thought the Internet was just some confabulation dreamed up by AOL and once their access to AOL was cut off, so was their access to the internet. I don't mean to make fun of these people - AOL literally bombarded TV and Radio space with essentially this notion. They were even so ubiquitous that anytime a movie of that era needed to cue a scene of someone dialing up to the Internet (most famously probably the movie 'You've Got Mail') sure enough it would be via an AOL dialup app with it's characteristic screeches and static sounds.

I first found my way to the Internet in late 95' (through AOL) at a friend's house. When my family first got a computer and then signed up for Internet access it was June of '96. By then I knew I didn't want an AOL account as it was a 'curated' version of the Internet and wasn't just a 'pure' connection where you could pick your own browser and apps. So yeah we went through a generic Internet provider, then I aquired a copy of Netscape Navigator and then untold numbers of free networking apps (ICQ, Excite Chat) and then of course played awesome games like the originial Quake (someone ate a Pineapple) and Duke Nukem 3D. Ah, those were the days - slow, but fun!

I'm all for jettisioning the Kardashians into space. They can be famous for being famous in outer space.

Interesting - as most ‘white collar’ jobs don’t require employees furnish their own tools like many ‘blue collar’ jobs (mechanics, hair stylists, etc). Maybe this concept, too, will come for white collar workers.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. It would be a revenue source for white collar employers. If you want a permanent space, sure - no problem. We’ll just dock $10.00 a day from your paycheck. If this is the case, however, I would hope employers would allow those who can the option to work from home to avoid this charge.

And if you don’t want to pay the ‘cubicle charge’ then you can use a random ‘hot desk’ like the rest of the peasants.

I believe even a single VHS tape back in the 80's could cost a video store intending to rent it out upwards of $100.00 (or even more I've heard). This is because the studios that sold the videos knew the video stores that were renting these movies would make quite a bit off of even one tape and knew the stores would pay this sum. Another little fun fact, I believe in most cases the video stores were the only place you could obtain a copy of any given hit as it wasn't available through consumer retail channels until months later (sometimes longer if I remember right). So my point being a lot of rental houses viewed even single movies as pricey investments and it doesn't surprise me that there would be at least some cases of the law getting involved with renters who didn't return movies, although I would think this would be more for serial offenders and not one-offs that were likely the result of innocent mistakes.

Also, is it me or did the 80's VHS tapes (dating myself a bit here) feel a lot heavier, like lead weights compared to tapes that were released in subsequent years? Or maybe since I was a kid then most everything felt heavier.

YES - this. I don't know how many times my damned flathead screwdriver landed on the motherboard surface while trying to push down those freaggin' heatsink clips. Who knows what traces/components/resisters were destroyed or affected by that jagged bit of steel. Most of the time the thing booted up, so it couldn't have been that bad - but still - like nails on digital chalkboard.

Dang. If that environment was doing that to the computers, I really feel (and worry) for the poor people who had to work in that lab as well. All that chlorine couldn't have been good for them.

Hah. And right there was born the thin-n'-crispy laptop.

Back in the eary 2000's, my poor PS2 has been dropped 3 times, once it fell about 4 feet from atop a tv, another time it was jerked to the floor from about 1 foot height, and another time it fell from the same distance and landed atop my lord of the rings fellowship extended edition cd totally cracking the cd up. But alas it still worked...!! =)

Oh man, it hurts just reading that. Glad you lived to tell the tale, at least!