Pictures of Activision office/employees, circa 1983

[RamrodHare]

Not to hijack the thread, but I wanted to share something.

 

On the subject of old phones, up until sometime after 2000, we still had a rotary phone. When I got dial-up internet, I had to pay for the touch-tone upgrade. It added between $1-2 a month. After I moved back to my house, my father wanted to drop the touch-tone and go back to rotary and the phone company said they couldn't change it back. Of course everything had went to "PRESS 1" crap by then, so rotary would have been useless for a lot of calls. But my father was all about saving money, so his frustration grew with each phone bill as they snuck in small amounts for things. He'd call and complain, they remove a charge, then the next month here was something new. A few years ago he had enough and told them he wasn't paying, just cut the service off. Then he got a prepaid flip phone. He still blames me for not having his land line anymore. LOL

[Zonie]

On 7/30/2020 at 5:50 PM, fiddlepaddle said:

No, dial tone is the sound you hear on a land line phone that indicates the switchboard is ready to accept a phone number; it exists on every land line phone that I'm aware of, including dial phones that existed many years before touch tone existed (although, yes, the phones in those pictures all appear to be touch tone phones).

When the handset is lifted off the "hook", it takes some time (usually a portion of a second, but sometimes much longer, depending on network activity) before the dial tone begins and continues for maybe 60 seconds to allow you to enter a phone number, before eventually timing out.  At that point, the connection must be closed (ie, hang up the phone) for a few seconds and then one can try again.

 

Dial phones will work fine on (most) touch-tone capable land lines, but touch tone phones will not work on land lines that have not been upgraded, but there are probably very few of these left.

 

How old do you think most of us are?
I still Have a dialtone on my IP phone...

@ High Voltage, Yes, she is.

 

[fiddlepaddle]

(sigh)

He specifically asked me if I meant touch tone instead of dial tone, which I didn't, so I explained what I was talking about in more detail; age has nothing to do with it.

Edited August 4, 2020 by fiddlepaddle

[roadrunner]

On 7/29/2020 at 12:28 PM, JayAre said:

I was able to come across some pictures of Activision's main office and its employees, from around 1983.  I don't think very many of these types of pictures survived and thought you guys might find them interesting.  Enjoy! 

 

On the right side, there appears to be a poster for Megamania.  There's also a poster showing the different high-score patches

 

The ladies appear to be looking at a folder with samples of the artwork for River Raid on the 5200

 

Poking out from underneath the wall calendar is a promotional sheriff's badge for the Happy Trails game for Intellivision

 

What stood out to me here is that, on the dry erase board, there appears to be a comment which says "Order Shrink Wrap".  I can't make out what the other comments mean

 

A couple of Activision letters or memos can be seen on the wall

 

Activision President, Jim Levy

 

Not alot of diversity in the workplace.
 

[CapitanClassic]

22 minutes ago, roadrunner said:

Not alot of diversity in the workplace.
 

With a sample size of 8 people, what would you expect?

https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-spurring-african-american-stem-degree-completion

Quote

African-American and Latino college enrollment is up by more than a million students since 2008. ^[  4  ] While these institutions have made considerable progress, there is more to be done.  Students of color still have low degree completion rates and low representation in STEM fields, where needs for professionals and technical personnel are growing tremendously. African-American students, like their Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian counterparts, are underrepresented in STEM programs and courses of study compared to their overall college enrollment rate. African-Americans received just 7.6 percent of all STEM bachelor's degrees and 4.5 percent of doctorates in STEM. ^[  5  ] In 2011, 11 percent of the workforce was black, while 6 percent of STEM workers were black (up from 2 percent in 1970). ^[  6  ]

 

[high voltage]

[Philflound]

On 7/29/2020 at 2:06 PM, JayAre said:

My pleasure.

 

And check out the cool digital wristwatch in the first picture.  I think many of us had one of those back then.

Actually I probably still have one. I was selling vintage Bradley watches from the early 1980s of Snoopy, Smurfs, Darth Vader, Kermit the Frog and some others. When I moved, I don't know exactly where I put them. All of which were brand new in the boxes and guaranteed to work. I was getting $100-125 each for them. My mother used to manage a jewelry store and they were old store stock I acquired in the 1990s from her boss.

[JayAre]

14 hours ago, Philflound said:

Actually I probably still have one. I was selling vintage Bradley watches from the early 1980s of Snoopy, Smurfs, Darth Vader, Kermit the Frog and some others. When I moved, I don't know exactly where I put them. All of which were brand new in the boxes and guaranteed to work. I was getting $100-125 each for them. My mother used to manage a jewelry store and they were old store stock I acquired in the 1990s from her boss.

Phil, you reminded me of my first wristwatch.  It wasn't digital, but it was from Bradley.  It was a Mickey Mouse watch that I had when I was around 8 years old.  I found a picture of one online.  Man, I used to love that watch.

 

[+cvga]

My first watch was a Hot Wheels watch like this one...

 

 

I loved that watch. Turns out it's from Bradley also.

[+cvga]

4 hours ago, JayAre said:

Phil, you reminded me of my first wristwatch.  It wasn't digital, but it was from Bradley.  It was a Mickey Mouse watch that I had when I was around 8 years old.  I found a picture of one online.  Man, I used to love that watch.

JayAre, that's a cool watch. Do you still have it? I don't have the Hot Wheels one. A much older kid on the bus asked if he could look at it and refused to give it back. I told the bus driver, the kid claimed he didn't know what I was talking about and I never saw it again.

[Rogerpoco]

13 minutes ago, cvga said:

JayAre, that's a cool watch. Do you still have it? I don't have the Hot Wheels one. A much older kid on the bus asked if he could look at it and refused to give it back. I told the bus driver, the kid claimed he didn't know what I was talking about and I never saw it again.

Aw, Man.

I was riding a "strange" bus with a Friend once to spend the night, had a copy of(Man, I am guessing here...)X-Factor #1(this would have been 1988 or so mebbe?), and a slightly younger Kid grabbed it, and ripped it on purpose.

He happened to get off on the same stop as me and my Friend, but, lol, so did his two big Brothers, who were kinda "Tough Guys".

So I was kinda "what the heck?ing" him when we got off, and he took a swing at me, I exchanged, and we traded a couple blows, me obviously tentative and half-hearted on account of the Brothers, it really didn't quite amount to a "fight".

They walked their way, we walked ours-the Brothers were smacking the kid Brother on the head, "why did you do that?", "He should have kicked your butt", haha.

It rolled over, we were "Friends" and stuff, eventually resumed "no problems", I just remember that as a funny story, I was afraid they were gonna kick my butt when in fact they wanted to observe a "Brotherly beating" they didn't have to dish out.

I'm not/wasn't any particular "comic collector", was just a coincidental/incidental thing.

Still sucked tho, I was pissed.

[Philflound]

Here are some of the photos. Sorry this got so off-topic, but i couldn't resist. I have photos of several others that I must've sold like Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, and Star Trek.

[JayAre]

1 hour ago, Rogerpoco said:

I was riding a "strange" bus with a Friend once to spend the night, had a copy of(Man, I am guessing here...)X-Factor #1(this would have been 1988 or so mebbe?), and a slightly younger Kid grabbed it, and ripped it on purpose.

Roger, that's too bad.  Thankfully things didn't get out of hand.

 

2 hours ago, cvga said:

JayAre, that's a cool watch. Do you still have it? I don't have the Hot Wheels one. A much older kid on the bus asked if he could look at it and refused to give it back. I told the bus driver, the kid claimed he didn't know what I was talking about and I never saw it again.

CVGA, that Hot Wheels watch is way cool.  What a shame you lost it, especially like that.  I think things like that happened to a lot of us growing up.

 

As far as the Mickey watch, unfortunately, I don't have it anymore.  I was just remembering something about the watch.  This is a stupid story, but oh well.  Just like you, I used to take my watch to school.  At different times of the day, my classmates and I would try to come up with what Mickey was doing, depending on where his hands were pointing.  I actually remember a few of them; I looked online & found some pics to show you guys what I mean.  For the hours of the day that we weren't at school, we just moved the time forward on purpose.

 

Mickey celebrating after winning a race

 

John Travolta's famous pose from Saturday Night Fever

 

Here we have Mickey clapping

 

This one was our favorite - Mickey needing to pee real bad