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WITandWISDOM(tm) - April 6, 2004 ISSN 1538-8794 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "You have no idea how big the other fellow's troubles are." - B. C. Forbes Source: Quotes of the Day, mailto:rheamo@centurytel.net?subject=Subscribe_Quotes_of_the_Day ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: The Cost of Children The government has calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition! But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into $8,896 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That's a mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice says don't have children if you want to be "rich." It is just the opposite. What do your get for your $160,140? Naming rights, --- First, middle, and last! Glimpses of God everyday. Giggles under the covers every night. More love than your heart can hold. Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies. A hand to hold, usually covered with jam. A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sand castles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain. Someone to laugh yourself silly with no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day. For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to fingerprint, carve pumpkins, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and never stop believing in Santa Claus. You have an excuse to keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watching Saturday morning cartoons, going to Disney Land, and wishing on stars. You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day. For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off the bike, removing a splinter, filling a wading pool, coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless. You get a front row seat to history to witness the first step, first word, first bra, first date, and first time behind the wheel You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. You have all the power to heal a booboo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. Enjoy your children. Submitted by Kent Thomas ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: What are the Odds? That you'll grow up to be president: 10 million-to-1 That you'll ever date a supermodel: 88,000-to-1 That you'll marry a millionaire: 215-to-1 That you'll marry royalty; 60,000-to-1 That you'll win an Oscar: 11,500-to-1 (for people working in the film industry) That you'll be struck by lightning: 576,000-to-1 That you'll catch a ball at a major league baseball game: 563-to-1 (if you attend a game) That you'll become a professional athlete: 22,000-to-1 That you'll ever be shot into space: 2.4 million-to-1 That you'll be audited by the IRS in your lifetime: 3-to-1 That you'll strike it rich on "Antiques Roadshow": 60,000-to-1 Source: The Oregonian, Copyright (c) February 5, 2004, http://www.oregonian.com/ Submitted by Barbara Henry ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: Dick Turpin (renowned for his stick ups) Was hopeless at girlie type pick ups; Forsooth, it's the truth, He had had since his youth A continuous bout of the hiccups. Source: Judy's Jokes for Sunday, mailto:JJs4Sunday-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: Morse Code For The 21st Century The 160-year-old communication system now has a new character to denote the "@" symbol used in e-mail addresses. In December, the International Telecommunications Union, which oversees the entire frequency spectrum, from amateur radio to satellites, voted to add the new character. The new sign, which will be known as a "commat," consists of the signals for "A" (dot-dash) and "C" (dash-dot-dash-dot), with no space between them. The new sign is the first in at least several decades, and possibly much longer. Among ITU officials and Morse code aficionados, no one could remember any other addition, not since World War II. The change will allow ham radio operators to exchange e-mails more easily. That is because -- in an irony of the digital age -- they often use Morse to initiate conversations over the Internet. Source: Nybble Bi-Weekly Newsletter, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nybble ~~~~~~~ A reader comment from Chad Mercer regarding Spybot: I'm a "computer technician" myself, and I've used Spybot for a long time, on many different machines. I have never had a problem with it. Maybe someone would see a problem on a machine that has already been damaged by viruses or other malware, but on "mostly clean" machines, it works great. I've never seen bad results from either program, and would hate to see Spybot get bad press. |