Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ; -))

This is *so* true. When I and my now-ex first arranged our mortgage, at one point we asked the loan officer how much we'd pay in interest over the entire amortization period, given certain parameters. We knew the number would be somewhere between two and three times the principal amount. The fellow punched at his calculator and came up with a number that was _way_ too low - later, our own calculations led us to suspect he gave us the total over just the term, not the full amortization period. When we pointed out that it was unreasonably low, he steadfastly stood by the number his calculator had churned out, not even realizing that it couldn't be anywhere near the answer to the question we wanted answered. I've always thought that was an excellent example of using a tool with grossly insufficient understanding. He not only didn't sanity-check the number himself, he didn't even acknowledge how unreasonable it was upon being called on it! I also was unable to ever get the bank to tell me exactly how interest was calculated - I had to juggle possibilities myself until I came up with one that tracked the bank's numbers exactly. (Today, I likely would not sign until they coughed up such information, and most certainly would be more insistent about it.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B