Whew, Ann Marie, that was a good long posting. As for going to China or India, I didn't mean me, I meant my job! I was in China last year and was astonished at what was being accomplished in the manufacturing plants. The average wage in the factory I visited was 18 cents/hr for the assembly workers and there were people lined up outside waiting to get hired on. The engineers were making 80 cents/hr and they were doing amazing work with the latest 3D CAD systems and all the documentation was in English! I realized then that any products that are consumed in high enough quantities will eventually be made there, at least until the wages rise to some level that makes it competitive to move elsewhere. I'm sure that you've noticed that more and more of the items we buy are stamped 'Made in China' and I think it's because there's such a disparity between their wages and the rest of the world. China isn't the only place with low wages, of course, there are the Phillipines, Malaysia, Taiwan and other countries almost as inexpensive in which to manufacture.

So the reason I may have to find a new gig is because I work with high volume, high tech manufactured goods. I like Doc's gig, high finance, because they need you around to count the losses just as much as they need you to count the profits .

As to Ann Marie's frustration about paragraphs, remember that the composing window lets you put in some rudimentary HTML commands and so I just use a < p > (without the spaces) to get a new paragraph. A new line can be forced with a < br > (again, without the spaces). Also, if you want to add emoticons, here is the link to that page.