<div dir="ltr"><div>Aw, Steve . Get those hips done! I waited to long to do mine. <br></div><div><br></div><div>NIck<br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 12:02 AM steve smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Nick -<br>
<br>
> God, Steve, am I 20 years older than you???? But you're so OLD1<br>
<br>
I know man.<br>
<br>
I have an 83 year old buddy who I share a huge number of strange <br>
coincidences with, but once we get into the "good old days" I find that <br>
I often wasn't born when he was already carousing hard. His first car <br>
was a (rusted out, ratrod) 53 Corvette convertible, mine a 64 T-bird <br>
(T-boned) we each paid $25 for our respectives... his maybe double <br>
mine's value given inflation... but he was traveling between Las Vegas <br>
NM and MIT when I was 3. I was born months before Sputnik made it up <br>
and he was helping his father build a tuner circuit to tune in the <br>
Beep-Beep-Beep as it went overhead. We both bought and learned to fly <br>
the virtually identical antique airplane (47 Luscombe) as young men (he <br>
just out of a BS in Socorro, and me after my Sophomore year in Casa <br>
Grande AZ... we neither obtained a license, flying in and out of fields <br>
without towers and avoiding busy airspace... or having a licensed <br>
pilot with us (he flew to MA and back... me not so far ranging). But I <br>
was 6-7 years old, living not that far from where he was flapping his <br>
wings).<br>
<br>
When I was a young man I used to brag that I was 43 when I was 17 as a <br>
virtue signal of my maturity... now those extra 16 years feel upon me, <br>
especially when reading your description of the room-crossing. But <br>
damned if I don't feel old... you and Frank are great examples, him with <br>
his tennis playing and sports-car racing.<br>
<br>
I didn't have any hip infection but I recently gave up on my denial and <br>
let an X-Ray tech take some pictures of my hips which had been vexing me <br>
more and more for each of nearly 10 years. The radiologist joked, after <br>
seeing the condition of both of my ball-joints that "if you sit still <br>
for more than a few hours, this bone will fuse to that bone and you will <br>
never bend at the hip again". The Ortho Surgeon I saw to invite to do <br>
highly invasive surgery to implant some cyber-parts said, "I didn't know <br>
they made ball-joints square like that"... sure enough, totally <br>
flattened on top, both of them. Worst he'd ever seen? He probably <br>
says that to all the old men. He reminded me of Doogie Howser. <br>
Testimony to my ability to live in denial and/or make a virtue out of <br>
suffering.<br>
<br>
I WAS holding out for when they could give me telescoping drywall stilts <br>
in place of legs, but the ortho said "nup, not anytime soon, if for no <br>
other reason than the time it takes to get such a thing through HIH <br>
regulations". I *really* wanted a set of snap-on sockets so I could <br>
switch out the fancy runner-springs, or manatee class swim-tail, or the <br>
drywall stilts. who *doesn't* want to be able to clean their gutters <br>
without a ladder and pick a penny off the floor without bending over? <br>
My Hypershell lower body exoskeleton has been delayed (Yay kickstarter) <br>
so I won't be finding out if *it* would have obviated the need to do <br>
this for a few more years (decades?) with a weight "offset" of 60 lbs <br>
specced (transfer from belt above hips to lower thigh above knee?), with <br>
(supposedly) adaptive gait control and hopefully "regenerative <br>
braking"... which is part of the delay (according to the company)... it <br>
wasn't part of the original spec... but their recently launched <br>
competitor has it in their spec so... arms-race?<br>
<br>
><br>
> i am grateful for your kind words, particularly coming from one of <br>
> the best noodlers in the business.<br>
<br>
Glad to see/hear your noodler (i.e. the Dear Biden letter) is still <br>
working well... My noodle is aleady atrophying under the <br>
(mis)augmentation of LLMs. I can still wayfind with a map but any <br>
month now I may forget how to construct a sentence without help. GPT <br>
keeps his/her/their sentences down to only one or two clauses or <br>
conditional phrases... maybe this is a good thing. Also eschews <br>
parentheticals and this/that/the-other superpositions. Go GPT!<br>
<br>
- Stave<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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