Life changed and eventually gave up on the hobby while still being drawn to music and the technology behind audio. Then a "golden" kick out the door of one employer meant I could build the speaker set I had in mind based on Siegfried Linkwitz's knowledge. The total cost for the speakers was about 2000,- but it did take between 2000 and 3000 for a fully active setup with two subwoofer towers and two 3.5 way main towers, all open baffle.

I have never heard a more perfect three-dimensional soundstage before and after, and it still sounds like the artists are actually playing in the livingroom even from other parts of the house. This was kind of Siegfried's message about good sound, the speakers are what make it (electronics are more than good enough at low prices) as long as they're made on scientific grounds, and not another heavy set of hyped monkey coffins. I have reached my audiophile end goal without forking over a fortune. Also fun, I came across one of the only two or three Yamaha CD-1 players made for Europe back then as a trade-in, one rarity I kept as souvenir of those early years. ;-)

Unfortunately it doesn't work as well nowadays while the world became more idiotic.

Call me cynical, but I haven't seen any improvement in human nature in 50 years.

Humans are not always social creatures on all social fronts.

There was also nothing important coming to mind. Family and friends is a small group and I have every bit of confidence they'll do just fine without me. I just hope they'll have a fun party as a final goodbye to me. :-)

Besides, death is the ultimate "What, me worry?" as there is nothing left. Can't even experience the void we enter ( unfortunately because I'd like to experience my brain not thinking about anything at all for once :-p ).

When I felt my conscious fading away from a heart attack two years ago, I thought "Ah, I guess I die now. Too bad I can't tell my friend to clear the cache as a last joke."

It confirmed I'm not actually afraid to die, just regretting for a moment before the void that I can't witness what'll happen to the world in the future.

C++ is the opposite of simplicity and clarity in code.

It worked very well with my preceding laptop limited to 4GB of RAM.

Still, it was fun just messing around with the ants, watching the trails, and chasing spiders by calling forth all ants.

(edited several times to try to correct changes in formatting for an example here, but it's just screwed up :-/ )

Unfortunately too expensive and large to set this up in the bedroom to help me sleep nowadays.

I like C because it's a bare-bones language providing only the necessities and nothing more. It's independent from libraries and build environment. Let people who have experience in those things work on that. Remeber the do only one thing and do it well? I think the urge to still add extra features is the reason why there's no real successor to C.

Imagine an environment where ground/walls/ceilings always have gravity and one can build literal city mazes in horizontal and vertical directions. All that traffic going everywhere, oh my..