This is my solution. I’ve said it before, but think it should be repeated. The global population was half of today’s when I was born. 4 billion instead of the current 8+ billion.

That means if half the population disappeared today, we’d just be back where we were in 1975.

Not having kids is the best thing I can do for both the environment, and myself.

Has the added benifit of leaving me as a passive observer who doesn’t have a biological need to care about the future.

I went into one of the larger local shops to buy some risers or something to try and adjust my old setup. Older sales guy about my age took one look at my gear and said “Your knees must hurt like hell”.

I had the money, so I just went full in on new gear, and came away with something I would never have picked for myself.

Not only did he size everything proper for me, he made sure all the pieces were right together. For the first time in my life toe and heel line up exactly with the edge, and where they belong on the pressure points. I’d always riden too small a board and had far too wide a stance to make up for it.

I was still skeptical, but he told me if I didn’t love it he’d do a full price exchange.

Even though it’s about the longest board I’ve ever had, the banana camber makes it feel half the size. Took about three runs to actually trust the board, and I was completely sold, you couldn’t pay me to ride the old gear again.

True, but at least where I ride they have 100% snow making covered. Solution to man made warning is man made snow.

Joking aside, the season in the midwest sure has shrunk since I was a kid.

It’s like going from moms station wagon to a high end sports car. Do I need the performance sports car? Usually no, but those few times you push it, it’s ready for all that and more.

Thermal form boots are a must, though I guess that tech is more than 15 years old in ski boots at least. I no longer cringe and grunt when I put on my boots, they are as comfortable as any footwear I’ve owned.

The flexibility in modern plastics means the straps and bindings themselves are stiffer where they need to be, and have give where they don’t. Combined with the boots there are no more pinch points at all, and all the force you put into riding goes where you want it.

I ride almost exclusively in the midwest US, so hard, rough, icy conditions that most people wouldn’t consider snowboarding in are the every day. A board with reverse camber, often called banana, and magna tractions, serrated edges for holding grip on ice, are a must.

“Turns ice into powder”, well I dont know if I’d go that far. I can lay into turns in the worst conditions and completely trust the edge to hold. When you get that horrible downhill edge that wants to catch and slam you into the ground, the newer complex curves in the camber means more often than not you will pivot out instead of hanging up. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt that edge wanting to catch and end my day, only to slip around switch and get away with it.

I’m sure there are more now, but a product called 3DO gel was the first I saw. Flexible and soft normally, it turns ridged under force. I have pads of that stuff basically all over my body, knee and elbow pads, but also tail bone, forearms, and in the liner of the helmet. Saw a demo where they were hitting a guy with a shovel and instantly thought “That’s for me”.

If I had to pick one, a board with C2 or C3 gen camber from lib tech, or its equivalent makes the biggest difference. The over all package of a new setup bought and sized together for my cough, um, “modern” weight requirements, took riding from a painful and nervous experience, and made it relaxed and enjoyable again. Due to many old injuries, I used to ride an hour, maybe two, and had to quit. Now I can ride a full evening, and feel good about doing a few hours the next day as well.

The advances in material science and manufacturing in sports equipment in the past 15 years has been amazing.

That means boots, bindings, and a snowboard that would have seemed like alien technology to me when I started riding. Same goes for all the saftey gear, knee pads, helmets, integrated wrist guards in gloves.

The performance, comfort, and saftey offered by modern equipement means I can still enjoy my favorite sports at 50. The thought of getting on a hill with gear I had just 15 years ago makes me shudder.

My earliest gaming memory is my dad taking me to a local hotel bar to play Pac-Man when it came out, which suggests spring of 1980.

I know I played pong, river raid, and pitfall on home consoles as well, not sure which was first.

One xmass we got an Atari, but when my dad realized it came with a poker game he returned it a few days later.

First system I had actual private access to was a TRS-80.

No, I don’t think that would work for me.

Vert skating in the Olympics

Over all I agree, with the one major exception being playing a new Fromsoft game. It’s only so often I get to explore a new souls game blind, and that is something I take the time to savor, so long as I can avoid spoilers.

Elden ring was the first one that my girlfriend and I got to play new / blind together, and it was one of the best times I’ve ever had gaming.

We are doing that again with the DLC now and having a great time.

And small blue creatures from alpha centuri where real small blue creatures from alpha centuri.

I’m old enough to remember when both released and I don’t have a good answer to this, assuming you mean the pink floyd movie and not some other I’m not aware of.

I just found out last week factorio is on a system that I own. Turns out there was a major addiction missing in my life.

As a programmer, I knew I would enjoy it. What I didn’t realise was that in just a week it would literally make me better at my job.

I’m playing the game, and solving problems for work, I’m working, and solving problems in the game, in a huge feedback loop.

Can a video game make you better person? I’m not sure, but if they can, this and Kerbal Space Program are the ones to do it.

I’ve skated and hung out with a lot of pro skaters over the years at various demos, but the one who is probably most universally recognized is Bam Margera.

It’s either him or Ben Bernanke, the ex federal reserve chair.

My cat was 16 or so years old and in good health, though pretty under weight, when we brought in a 6 week old kitten.

Having been a loner all her life, she wasn’t so happy to have the kitten around, but left her be. My only concern was the kitten was so small she might kill her.

By 18 months, the kitten was larger than my senior cat, but had been put in her place so many times they mostly left each other alone.

Occasionally they’d scrap a bit, but that was just the kitten wanting to play and the old one hissing and swatting her away. Honestly, I think it gave her some needed excercise to be chased around a bit and stalked.

I made sure they each had their own food, water, and litter box, and there never was any real issue.

They both had their spots, the kitten up top of the cat tree, and the old lady in her bed. I think so long as they have enough room to get away from each other it will be fine. They never became friends, but they learned to live and let live well enough. It even reached the point they could both sit with me on the couch and not fight.

Had to put the older cat down a few weeks ago, and as sad as that was, it was very nice to have the kitten at home so the house didn’t feel so empty.

I use three at the office, and two at home.

In both setups the laptop is my keyboard and small screen, above it is a 34 inch 21/9 aspect ratio curved display. At the office I also have a standard monitor off to the side.

The large screen is my primary work space, with various code editors, UI dev tools, web browser, reference docs, and terminal windows.

The laptop screen has email, all my short cuts, and a virtual version of the UI I’m working on because it is also a touch screen.

When I have the third screen I use it for teams, a few system monitoring tools, and youtube for music.

I used dual side by side monitors for years, but found that having the split in the center meant I was always sitting with my neck turned, and this lead to a lot of pain and headaches. Having them top / bottom is a lot more comfortable and my large screen is high enough I now sit up straight.

A curved screen at the right distance also means a lot less eye strain.

I was going to cut off at 2014 as well. I have a manul transmission '14 Subaru and even with all the whistles it has no touch screen, back up camera, etc.

1996 is when US cars standardized on OBD2 computers due to emissions, so to find a truly dumb car you’d have to go earlier than that.

Oh, I agree, but this was one on one with someone I trusted, and I know my body pretty well.

We went through the books and talked about each excercise before trying anything. There was a pretty good percentage crossed off because they may have caused more harm than good.

I am certianly not recommending yoga in place of medical treatment, I can only speak to the results I had.

Can’t speak to all yoga, and I specifically avoided the woo woo side of things, but it really did help as far as posture, flexibility, and various chronic joint pain.

The way it was explained to me was that various muscle groups were locked up trying to protect for example, my knee injury, so now my hips, back, shoulder, neck, etc where all out of whack.

The process involved working backward through the various muscles and joints, loosening them up so that we could work on the next group, until I could finally move and strengthen around the original injury.

I haven’t gone for about eight years, but keep up with basic stretching and breathing excercises enough to maintain mobility.

In the end I’m going to require knee surgery to actually fix the root problem.

A friend of mine offered me a yoga lessons.

At the time, my body was in a real bad way from decades of skateboard and snowboard injuries. I had just accepted that this was how things were going to be.

I figured what the hell, it can’t make things worse.

Over the course of about six months, I was able to walk, move, and sleep almost like normal. While it couldn’t fix much of the actual damage, my range of motion greatly increased, I have a lot less headaches and neck pain, and the pain in my joints has greatly diminished.

Now at almost 50, I am back on the boards, though since my landing gear is fucked it’s a much more mellow style of riding.

Mine was a Tandy TRS 80 in the early 80s, which had both a cartridge slot and an audio cassette drive. Most all the programs I had were bootleg tapes though I don’t know where they came from, I’m guessing my father through work.

I can remember a few of the arcade clones, Zaxxon, Pac Man, Donkey Kong with a terrible 8 bit version of in the hall of the mountain king.

The two that stand out were a painting program I learned to glitch by fluttering the reset button while it was doing fills, and an ascii adventure game call Nahga or something similar that felt like the biggest world ever.

One day home sick I was using it and vomited an entire strawberry milk shake on it, it was an all in one unit w built in keyboard, and I messed it up good.

Taking apart and cleaning it was my first experience working on hardware and certianly left an impression in me.