Staving Off Senility, One Day At A Time

Vicki's a big believer that one of the tricks to fighting off various forms of mental deteriorations that can ruin your Golden Years, such as senility or Alzheimer's disease, is to keep your mind active solving puzzles as you age. I'll admit that I don't know enough about how the mind works to have a strong opinion in favour or against what she claims, but since I like mental challenges, I'm happy enough to buy into the notion on spec alone! The occasional Java programming that I've done at home (Comic D/B, Book Inventory System, and Meal Planner) have been one way I've kept my mind somewhat nimble over the past several years when there've been few if any opportunities for me to do any coding at work.

What made me think of this is Hinckley's habit of posing math challenges on his blog. I haven't had a stellar record so far, and yet it's still almost a compulsion when I see one to try my hand at solving it. I always think about the fact that maybe, just maybe, I'm actually doing myself some good by sitting down for half an hour and working my way through some analytical thinking in pursuit of figuring out the total of all the digits when counting from 1 to 1,000,000,000. Knowing Hinckley, he'll probably expect me to thank him for putting me through this, but screw that!