At 10:45 AM 1/21/98 -0600, you wrote: never get away with spending My mom once told me that computers were a tool of the devil. I dropped out of college -- I was too busy working to finish. (Actually, I'm only 1 beginning Cobol class away from a 2-year degree.) I've been an independant consultant for not quite 8 years; I went indy when I was 24. About 5 years ago, I bought my parents house (long story; they'd been "renting" for 20-odd years) so they wouldn't lose it. My mom passed away 2 years ago (last Saturday 8^( ) and I moved back home shortly thereafter to care for my dad. I spent about 3 years driving them to work and home when my dad was no longer able to take pubtrans; I was able to do that because my clients didn't mind when I worked, so long as I worked for them. Now I'm working Meanwhile, my older brother (who my folks put through UC Berkeley (BS - Economic Geography) and Golden Gate University (MBA)) once shouted in the middle of a crowded plaza that he wanted nothing to do with my father (and didn't want him attending his concert) because he *smelled bad*. With my dad standing right there. My younger brother (who my folks put through SF State (BA - Speech Communications)) can't be bothered to visit or call his dad -- he's too busy hanging out with friends and going to church. Last time he visited, he stole my CB. The elder of my two sisters, (UC Berkeley, Math, flunked out) is happy being a secretary and, again, isn't interested enough to call or visit. (My younger sister, (Johnson & Wales, Equine Business), lives at home too, and helps out an amazing amount. She's single, btw.) So, the moral is, your parents should either encourage you to be a computer nerd, or a horse nut. My mom, too, came to realize that me and my computers were a good thing (in spite of the fact that not all those "computer club meetings" involved more than one person of each sex...). Let me just add that I don't hire "micro-weenies". That is, if a person doesn't understand that Pentium II *isn't* called that because the Pentium was the first computer, I'm not interested in working with them. There are tons of jobs out there right now for CoBOL programmers (btw, if you want a job as a CoBOL programmer, you better darn well know who Grace Hopper was!). And solid programming, database, and operations skills will *never* go out of style, and they're a lot easier to pick up in the older/bigger computer world. --------------------------------------------------------------------- O- Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know." Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/