Use it or loose it, a mind question

[audreyh1]

I find I use my mind a LOT since ER. I used it a lot before and you had to keep studying as an engineer to keep up with technology. But the mental effort didn't change after ER - only the subject matter did.

For one thing, to start I really hit the books! Yes, nerdy me. My engineering education did not give me an education in natural history, so I needed to make up for the missing knowledge. I tackled a home study course in ornithology from Cornell - equivalent 3 semesters of college level ornithology. Also cracked a book on organic and biochemistry (yep!), and earth science.

I also learned the arts of photography and videography - both VERY technical areas that require both a lot of understanding of the technical stuff as well as lots of hands-on experience. And that's on TOP of the creative skills you need to learn to produce something worth printing/publishing.

And that's not to mention going from a beginner to fairly advanced birder. A whole other slew of skills.

These days I find wrangling with photoshop to require extraordinary efforts of focused concentration and all sorts of mental contortions and research to figure out what the heck is going on and how to get the result I envision.

All of these things I hope will keep the mind sharp. It's supposed to reduce risk of Alzheimer's, no?

I'm glad I never lost my thirst for knowledge. (Well, the fact is that I have always been a knowledge seeker, so that didn't change after ER).

Audrey

P.S. I can't BELIEVE you guys didn't get the 10 right away!!! (especially with such a BIG hint!)

[Mach1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 P.S. I can't BELIEVE you guys didn't get the 10 right away!!! (especially with such a BIG hint!)

Us technical guys only understand hex, you know the 0-9 and A-F digits.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 P.S. I can't BELIEVE you guys didn't get the 10 right away!!! (especially with such a BIG hint!)

Let's just say that it didn't get quite the uproarious reception in the Nords household that I expected it would...

... and my spouse had to explain to our very annoyed daughter that "!@#$ing nuke" is actually a term of endearment.

But I'm still smiling!

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mach1 Us technical guys only understand hex, you know the 0-9 and A-F digits.

Whaddya mean you technical guys only understand hex?!? I spent plenty of time dealing with binary too. I guess because half my career was hardware design.

Maybe it's just you software only guys who think in hex.

Audrey

[Caroline]

Two gentle suggestions...

To the "Use it or loose it, a mind question" people -- improve your grey matter by looking up the difference between "loose" and "lose."

To the "Use it or loose it, a body question" people -- please don't do the latter anywhere around ME!



Ok, that was snarky of me. The fates will probably punish me by putting a typo in here somewhere for everyone else to point out.

Seriously... I'm learning ceramics on the wheel, slowly studying Italian, working the NY Times Crossword and other puzzles, and improving my three-dimensional problem-solving skills by putting in a kitchen. I don't detect much of a difference in brainpower, but maybe that's the point.

I was thinking that taking up the guitar might be a good idea too, since I have never tried my hand at a musical instrument before.

Or maybe I'll join Audreyh1 in birding -- that's interesting stuff. (I once spent half a day watching a water ouzel dive for food in the Grand Canyon -- what a dynamite little bird!)

[heyyou]

The descending trill of a Canyon wren is one of my favorite sounds. Spending hours just loafing in The Canyon is time well spent.

[mathjak107]

as long as its my mind that goes first heck i can deal with that.

[Mach1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 Whaddya mean you technical guys only understand hex?!? I spent plenty of time dealing with binary too. I guess because half my career was hardware design. Maybe it's just you software only guys who think in hex. Audrey

Audrey,

I was half kidding but it is true that we don't use binary much in programming, we do use hex in instance where the cursor needs to advance to the next line for example, would would embbeded hex characters 0D and 15 at the end of the line.

Mach1