How many of the following have you done?
http://obsoleteskills.com/Skills/SkillsA
Adjusting the dwell angle on the distributor of your car's engine?
Adjusting the rabbit ears on your TV set
Adjusting a television's horizontal and vertical holds?
Adjusting the tracking on a VCR
Aiming C-band satellite dish?
Aligning the heads on a 9 track tape drive
2" floppy drive?
Assembly Language Programming
Advising someone to use WordPerfect for DOS?
B
Balancing a checkbook
Balancing the tonearm on a turntable
Banyan Vines?
BASIC?
BBS administration
Blowing the dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
Booting off a floppy disk
Bootloading with binary switches?
Bust apart a long computer printout?
Building a computer from individual components
C
Car repair
Changing vacuum tubes
Changing the ball or ribbon on your Selectric Typewriter?
Changing the battery of a Sega Dreamcast VMU
Changing the C120 Film Cartridge in your Instamatic camera
Changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor?
Changing tracks on an eight-track tape
Changing the wheel on a daisy wheel printer?
Cel Painting
Character codes: Baudot?
Character codes: EBCDIC?
Chipping flint or obsidian tools
Churn butter
Cleaning head of a VCR?
Cleaning the balls inside a computer mouse for better traction
Clicking on the up and down arrows of a vertical scrollbar
COBOL?
Commuting
Connecting to a BBS through an acoustic coupler at 300 baud?
Crew a muzzle loading cannon
Cranking a telephone?
D
Darkroom photography skills?
Darning a sock
Debugging hexadecimal dumps
Defrosting the Icebox?
Degaussing a CRT monitor
Developing photographic film?
Dialing a rotary phone
Double-speed Tape-to-Tape copying
Double de-clutching?
E
Extracting square roots
Edit with edlin
Editing AUTOEXEC-BAT and CONFIG-SYS to get as close as possible to 640K of free memory
F
FAT 16
fdisk <slash>mbr
Fighting for your civil liberties
Finding channels on UHF
Focusing a camera?
Formatting a floppy?
FORTRAN programming - though the logic is still good
Fixing a Disk using a hex editor
G
Getting off the couch to change channels on your TV set?
Getting TSRs and CD device drivers to load into DOS?
Gluing tubular bicycle tires to rims?
Grilling with charcoal?
Governmental data protection?
H
Harness a team of oxen?
Hand crank a car to start it?
Having Cash?
Hayes Command Set?
Herding Cats?
Hexadecimal arithmetic in your head?
Hunting a woolly mammoth
Hunting, in general?
I
Interpolating logarithms?
Inserting a game cartridge at just the right angle to make it work
IDDQD & IDKFA
J
K
Killing all the megafauna on a continent
Knapping flint
L
Laying out magazines using wax and bromides
Lighting a carbide miner's lamp?
Lining up paper on a dot matrix or line printer?
LILO
Loading a reel to reel tape drive?
Loading film into a 35 mm camera
Loading film into a 60 mm camera
Loading data from a cassette tape
Long division?
Look for a job in the classifieds?
Looking up a business on the yellow pages
Local Grocery Store?
Low Format a Harddrive?
M
Making a deer fat poultice?
4" floppy double-sided?
Making a home movie with a cine camera
Making a nail art picture
Making change in shillings and pence
Making electronic tubes
Memory Management
Mounting a Computer Tape by hand?
Morse-coding messages
Mailing in the order form of a catalog?
N
Navigate by the stars?
Navigating using a compass?
Navigate using a sextant?
Netware?
O
Operating an IBM 010 manual key punch?
Operating an IBM 026 electric key punch?
Operating an IBM 029 key punch?
Open and Administrate a Blog?
P
Painting cave walls?
Paying for something with a check
Punching a hole in the shell of a single-sided 5.25" floppy disc to make it double-sided
Putting a needle on a vinyl record?
Parking a hardisk
Peeling the developer layer off a Polaroid?
Playing solitaire with playing cards?
Praying
Programming an analogue car radio
Programming in dBase or Clipper?
Programming in MS Visual Basic?
Q
QEMM-386?
R
Ride a penny-farthing bicycle
Reading a Vernier Scale
Replacing Shoe Sole and Heels
hectograph ?
Resolving IRQ conflicts on a mother board
Reading a paper map?
Reading a Sundial?
Remembering telephone numbers?
Remembering keystroke commands in Visicalc?
Removing perforations off fanfold paper so it looks like normal typing paper?
Repairing an 8-track tape cartridge
Repairing small appliances?
Rewind VCR tapes?
Respooling a chewed-up VCR tape or audio cassette?
Reinking a type writer or dot matrix printer ribbon?
Robert Scoble?
Running a mimeograph machine?
Ripping the little holes off the sides of the computer paper?
RS232
S
Taking the tape out of an answering machine to save it?
Searching a card catalog
Sending a letter?
Setting a baud rate?
Setting the timer on a VCR?
Setting type for printing?
Shave with a straight razor?
Shorthand?
Slaughtering Small Mammals and Birds
Splicing out damaged portions of a VHS Cassette tape
Stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next
Stirring the yellow dye tablet into white margarine to make it look like butter
Swapping plates in a hard drive?
T
Tape to Tape Video Editing
Testing radio and TV tubes?
Threading a needle
Throwing with an atlatl?
Trim the wick on an oil lamp?
Tuning a radio
Typesetting?
Typing and sending a telex?
Typing "open door" and "Ken sent me"?
U
Untangling the cord of a telephone?
Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Select-Start in Konami games
Using an adding machine?
Using a Typewriter?
Using a card catalog?
Using a 16 mm film projector?
Using a fountain pen
Using a slide rule
Using a typewriter?
Using a beeper or pager?
Using an abacus?
Using carbon paper to make copies?
Using correction fluid?
Using a fax machine?
Using a flash bulb?
Using a flash cube?
Using a microfiche?
Using a newsreader
Using a pay telephone?
Using a pay toilet?
Using punch cards?
Using 'sacadm' to configure serial ports?
Using a Timing Light?
Using a Log Table?
Using a light pen?
Using a manual choke in cold weather
Using the Dewey Decimal System?
Using the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature
Using the toggle switches on the front of a DataGeneral Nova 1200 to enable in octal the paper tape reader?
V
W
Watching a slide show with a slide projector?
Whistling 2600Hz?
Wikis?
Winding a watch or clock?
Winding up loose cassette tape with a pencil eraser before putting the cassette in the deck?
Wire wrapping?
Word processing with markup codes?
Writing email whilst offline and going online to send
Writing using a dip pen?
X
X25??
Y
Z
ZIPping archives across multiple floppy disks
Zmodem to transfer a file?
ZX Spectrum and "R Tape loading error, 0:1"?
