S06.E11: Ruthless, Toothless, and a Week of Bed Rest

[Sarah 103]

20 hours ago, Kaycee said:

At the video store George outing Missy being in 7th grade with the customer could have been handled better. I get Missy being embarrassed. Could have stated she was still in school and not allowed to date adults to get the point across. 

It's possible that I am totally horrible at guessing ages, but the guy she was flirting with didn't look like an adult. He looked and acted like he was in high-school. I do not think it's okay for someone in 7th grade to date someone who's a freshman or sophmore in high-school, but I also think that's a very different scenario from a fully grown adult hitting on someone who might possibly still be in high-school or younger. 

[Bethany]

24 minutes ago, Sarah 103 said:

It's possible that I am totally horrible at guessing ages, but the guy she was flirting with didn't look like an adult. He looked and acted like he was in high-school.

I wasn't sure of his age but thought more college than high school.  I think Missy does look mature for her age but not college age  though so I think you are probably right.  And I guess this was really just an excuse to have us find out that there was an age difference between George and Mary that they never talked about before.  I wonder if this is setting up something for a future storyline.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Elizabeth Anne

[bad things are bad]

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

I remember when I was in college in 1981, there was a computer room where students could sign up to use the computer-- it was a single terminal and all the math-science geeks would hunker down in there

Ah, but did you program it using a stack of punch cards? That's how we did it in 1977, yo 

[SoMuchTV]

11 minutes ago, bad things are bad said:

Ah, but did you program it using a stack of punch cards? That's how we did it in 1977, yo 

Ah, but did you draw a diagonal line down the side of the deck with a  Magic Marker, so you could put them back in order after you dropped them?

[highway61]

11 hours ago, bad things are bad said:

Did I miss an explanation of what happened to his sister? She got Chuck Cunningham'ed

I figure dad took her away to live with Abishola.

[OlderThanDirt]

I worked for a city who bought a large building built for the phone company to hold their mainframe computers. The building was converted into the new City Hall and the phone company retained a corner of the basement for their computer. That was 20 years ago now so ...

[Gizkok]

Didn't we already meet Mandy's parents a few months ago when Mary and George invited them over? That was when George, trying to be charming maybe said that Mandy looked like her mother. Or something to that effect. And now it's like the mothers had never met before.

[shapeshifter]

1 minute ago, Gizkok said:

Didn't we already meet Mandy's parents a few months ago when Mary and George invited them over? That was when George, trying to be charming maybe said that Mandy looked like her mother. Or something to that effect. And now it's like the mothers had never met before.

Thank you! I thought I must be conflating TV shows plots.

[Katy M]

21 hours ago, Gizkok said:

Didn't we already meet Mandy's parents a few months ago when Mary and George invited them over? That was when George, trying to be charming maybe said that Mandy looked like her mother. Or something to that effect. And now it's like the mothers had never met before.

I remember the dad coming over to bring Mandy money and Mary suggesting they invite them over, but I thought the husbands shot that down. I don't remember Mary and Mandy's mom meeting before.

[proserpina65]

On 2/3/2023 at 4:45 PM, hoodooznoodooz said:

I would be fine with them focusing on all of the other characters. Why does Sheldon have to be obnoxious to the guy delivering the computer equipment? Such an unpleasant tone of voice.

Because Sheldon is obnoxious. Pretty much all the time. 

[proserpina65]

On 2/4/2023 at 3:03 PM, Sarah 103 said:

It's possible that I am totally horrible at guessing ages, but the guy she was flirting with didn't look like an adult. He looked and acted like he was in high-school. I do not think it's okay for someone in 7th grade to date someone who's a freshman or sophmore in high-school, but I also think that's a very different scenario from a fully grown adult hitting on someone who might possibly still be in high-school or younger. 

He looked more like college age to me but I'm not great at guessing ages, so maybe not.

[Bethany]

3 hours ago, Katy M said:

I remember the dad coming over to bring Mandy money and Mary suggesting they invite them over, but I thought the husbands shot that down. I don't remember Mary and Mandy's mom meeting before.

That's how it happened. We do meet Mandy's parents in "A Tougher Nut and a Note on File"  and the dad seems nice but she's awful.  They are very much presenting her as domineering and not happy to help Mandy at all.  As far as I remember Georgie and George Sr are the only Coopers who met the mother.

[shapeshifter]

34 minutes ago, Elizabeth Anne said:

We do meet Mandy's parents in "A Tougher Nut and a Note on File"  and the dad seems nice but she's awful.  They are very much presenting her as domineering and not happy to help Mandy at all.  As far as I remember Georgie and George Sr are the only Coopers who met the mother.

Yes. There was a dinner involved, but . . .
From Wikipedia:

Quote

6.7 "A Tougher Nut and a Note on File" November 10, 2022

While out to dinner, Mandy and Georgie run into her parents: Audrey and Jim. Though Jim is open to getting to know Georgie and seems to miss his daughter, Audrey is cold to them both. Georgie visiting the tire store they own doesn't help, and Mandy is angry Georgie went behind her back. Jim shows up at the Cooper household to leave money for Mandy and meets George and Mary. Mandy finds out he is there and says her parents must apologize to be part of her life again.
Meanwhile, Sheldon . . . .

 

[b4pjoe]

By biggest take away from this episode was the fact that a mainframe computer system cannot be plugged into a regular household electrical outlet.

[Tom Holmberg]

1 hour ago, b4pjoe said:

By biggest take away from this episode was the fact that a mainframe computer system cannot be plugged into a regular household electrical outlet.

And neither Sheldon nor Dr. Sturgis could guess that would be the case! I guess they needed an MIT man.

[Driad]

2 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

And neither Sheldon nor Dr. Sturgis could guess that would be the case! I guess they needed an MIT man.

Preferably an engineer!  😉

[Tom Holmberg]

23 minutes ago, Driad said:

Preferably an engineer!  😉

My point exactly. (I was using MIT in the Sheldon sense of the word)

[b4pjoe]

Just to clarify it is not physically possible to plug a mainframe into a household electrical outlet. Complete different plug.

[TheLastKidPicked]

6 hours ago, b4pjoe said:

By biggest take away from this episode was the fact that a mainframe computer system cannot be plugged into a regular household electrical outlet.

 

Here's another line that will only be understood by the older folks on these boards:

Some of the big mainframes had water pipes running through them for cooling.  We used to say,  "That little bitty IBM one-room mainframe?  Hell, it's not even hooked to the plumbing!"

 

[Tom Holmberg]

2 minutes ago, TheLastKidPicked said:

 

Here's another line that will only be understood by the older folks on these boards:

Some of the big mainframes had water pipes running through them for cooling.  We used to say,  "That little bitty IBM one-room mainframe?  Hell, it's not even hooked to the plumbing!"

 

And special air conditioning just for the computer room.

[shapeshifter]

4 minutes ago, Tom Holmberg said:

And special air conditioning just for the computer room.

Like the server closets in buildings with computer labs where I worked not long ago.

[b4pjoe]

Yes this is a photo of the computer room where I worked in the 1990's. The room behind the glass was the clean room that contained large disk drives (about the size of dish washers today) where you had to wear a hair covering and booties and a smock. The floor was a raised floor with computer cables underneath as well as the air conditioning. See tiles with the holes for the air.

 

[marypat57]

Back in my college days ((1971-75) almost all of the undergraduate computer classes involved learning how to keypunch—oh those stacks of cards—one mistake, and you have to do it all over again!

[SnarkySheep]

I looked up this episode on IMDB - the actor who played the boy Missy was flirting with at the video store is named Matthew Thorson Benavides. Unfortunately his bio page did not list his age, nor could I find it with a quick Google. Maybe someone else can work their magic and find it.

One of my favorite bits was when Meemaw, Mandy and Georgie were trying to talk privately about the gambling room, and the doctor just matter-of-factly jumped in, like yeah, everybody knows about that...

[curbcrusher]

I've been ambivalent about the database story line to date, since they need to give Sheldon something to do other than be a smart ass in class, but this episode finally put me over the edge.  Even in the early 90's there wasn't a need for a mainframe to accomplish what the university was trying to do, and having a standard household plug on the VAX was just the last straw.

From 90 - 94 I worked for an airport authority that was always trying to get grant money for projects. We bought an electronic copy of all available Federal grants (each grant document was an ASCII file) from the US Government Publishing office. I think the first year it came on a large number of 3.5in floppies and at some point during that time frame transitioned to a CD.  We would put all the files on the hard drive of a  plain ol PC computer that was used the Government Affairs department and run a commercial program called Xyindex on them. They had one  guy whose  sole job was to search those files for grants the airport would be eligible to receive.  Once the files were indexed the key word searching was remarkably quick.

[TheLastKidPicked]

22 hours ago, curbcrusher said:

each grant document was an ASCII file

 

ACCII

Haven't seen that in a while.  Took me right back to my younger days!

84 104 97 110 107 32 121 111 117 ! 

[Sarah 103]

On 2/7/2023 at 7:40 PM, SnarkySheep said:

I looked up this episode on IMDB - the actor who played the boy Missy was flirting with at the video store is named Matthew Thorson Benavides. Unfortunately his bio page did not list his age, nor could I find it with a quick Google. Maybe someone else can work their magic and find it.

I don't think that would be too helpful. Because of child labor laws relating to movies/TV, it's been common for decades for actors to play younger than they are. Knowing the actor's age doesn't really tell you what age the character they are supposed to be playing is. Actors in thier 20s play teenagers all the time. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Sarah 103