I maintain my Embird Software which is more than adquate - and unless I pay out somewhere in the region of $70,000 (AU) I don’t think we could do any better.

My 2c Worth. and hope this is of interested to you.

Women: To prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for paternity, go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to
have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems:
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
3. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes.

Test 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5 door wagon. And don’t think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
2. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the cd player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6
Get ready to go out
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
15. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8
Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child. A full-grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your weeks groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.
7. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old child.

Test 10
Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower beds and then rub them on clean walls.
4. Cover the stains with crayon.
5. How does that look?

Test 12
Make a recording of someone shouting “Mummy” repeatedly. Important: no more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy - occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet if> required. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above. You are now ready to have a
conversation with an adult while there is a small child in the room.

Test 14
Put on your finest work attire. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now:
1. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
2. Stir
3. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
4. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
5. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
6. Do not change, you have no time.
7. Go directly to work

You are now ready to have children, ENJOY!!

How to shop on-line Safer & Cheaper than off-line - Embroidery Tips from A.B.C July 27, 2007
1. Buy from reputable sellers:
This is the BEST rule to follow, that almost replaces the others. Because when you buy from a reputable business with lots of happy customers, clearly it will cherish it’s reputation above all, and take all possible and impossible measures to protect your personal information. It will also make sure that you receive exactly what you have ordered, in the promised time-frame.
A great way to check the reputation of an on-line store is to read it’s guest book, or any other alternative “public place”
where existing customers share their experience. Take a few minutes to read these feedbacks. If there are plenty of great recent comments from customers and subscribers, and you feel they’re real - it’s a very good sign.
The vast majority of good online stores have a guest book, AND/OR use a 3-rd party store feedback services like BizRate, e-PublicEye, Better Business Bureau, Trust-E, e-Opinions etc. Yet, there are some good online stores that just didn’t guess to offer such “evaluation” feature to their potential customers. You may still do some great shopping there. Just be sure to follow all next rules carefully.

2. Buy from stores that “look like a well-maintained, fully functioning business”: First, take a look at the site. Forget the stupid idea about not judging by appearance. Appearance is important, because a good business person would never allow his storefront to scare away customers. It doesn’t need to be a piece of art from a designer’s point of view. But if the site is absolutely uncomfortable for navigation, or just looks like a 10 year old kid’s masterpiece - STAY AWAY from that store. Another great indication is the language used to describe everything - from products to help section. All texts should ‘read’ like they’ve been written by a normal, literate person - not an obvious senior school dropout. If half of the web site images or pages aren’t loading, it’s also a big sign saying “NEVER BUY HERE”. Of course, we’re not talking about temporary ISP problems that every site faces once in a few months. But if a store looks neglected - it’s a bad place for shopping.

3. Make sure that you can contact the store. A contact form or email address must be listed. A decent store will also list the company address. Also, if you’ve emailed a relevant question about a product, ordering procedure or shipping, and the merchant doesn’t respond within 2 business days - it may be wiser to order somewhere else. But keep in mind - we’ve noticed that really large stores often don’t answer their emails at all. It does not necessarily mean that you will experience any problem with their products or delivery. But still, it may be wise to buy from smaller merchants, and benefit from better service.

4. Most “safe shopping” instructions say that one should read each store’s Privacy Policy and other documentation, to ensure that they respect your privacy and don’t sell or share your information. In theory, this is very legitimate advice. But personally we never read all these papers, because from our experience, no business in it’s right mind shares it’s customers info with anyone. If everything else looks good, we rush to order, without wasting time on reading endless legal papers. Usually just check that these pages exist. But you may think in a different way, and read these documents more carefully.

5. Take a look at the return policy. For tangible items, a normal store that stands behind it’s products would offer at least a 30 days m-oney b-ack g-uarantee. Of course, for software products all sales are usually final, for understandable reason. In this case, appropriate guarantee for technical support is more than enough. Also, if a company sells software - see if there is a downloadable Demo version. Many companies offer 15 to 30-day demos and evaluation freebies, to let you see the level of their software products. Like our free designs archive.

6. Be sure to check that product delivery information is clearly stated, and fits your time-frame needs. Some shops even gift wrap, so if you want to mail a gift directly to a recipient - consider buying from a merchant that offers gift-wrapping.