Though it’s not widely known, the Internet is good for far more than providing a bazillion sites offering genius, silliness, information, inanity, hatred, beauty and personal expression. There are also a multitude of online calculators out there, each eager in its own little way to help you resolve some dilemma or other.
Wondering how to gauge your child’s development, how far your salary would go in Paris or why you’re always searching for a restroom? Plug in some numbers and get some results by reading on …
http://www.primusweb.com/fitnesspartner/jumpsite/calculat.htm is a great way to find out how many calories you burn while engaging in a slew of activities (158, to be precise), ranging from cathode ray absorption — which sounds slightly more engaging than mere television watching — to, for example, firefighting. And yes, there are more effective ways to retain calories, if that is your goal, than tubing out; studying the insides of your eyelids — otherwise known as sleeping — for beginners. I wonder why they overlooked the physical demands of web-surfing, however.
http://www.babycenter.com/growthchart gives new parents something else to stress out about during those first three years of utterly blissful overwhelmedness by enabling them to compare their sweet little progeny’s growth progress to that of his or her peer group. All you need is a tape-measure, scale, bambino and the desire to know which growth percentile the little one can call his or her own.
http://www.drkoop.com/tools/calculator/ You remember good old former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop — how could you forget him, when his likeness seems to beam out at you from every box of Quaker Oats in the cereal aisle? The good doctor has hired a bunch of folks to put together this medical-information site, which sadly tanked last year. Bankrupt though the site may be, it somehow still lives on — or at least the calculator page seems to. Wondering if your teen smokes too much pot, or why you’re always looking for a restroom? To these and numerous other pressing questions, the doc’s calc offers answers.
http://www.prufn.com/home/Prudential Financial offers numerous finance-related calculators. Hit the link to “tools” in the upper right corner, and be transported to an impressive array of devices that will gauge your insurance, banking, wealth planning, and mortgage expenses and needs. Nice to know that my savings will accrue to Gatesian dimensions in 75,000 years or so.
www.oanda.com/cgi-bin/ncc Going overseas, or perhaps just curious about how many Albanian leks or Algerian dinars there are to an American dollar? This neat little site has it all — conversion rates for most, if not all, the world’s currencies.
www.homefair.com/homefair/cmr/salcalc.html is a salary calculator that compares cost of living information for hundreds of cities within and outside the U.S. (I was surprised to learn that Ouagadougou is nearly as expensive as Chicago. So I won’t be leaving for life in the Burkina Faso lane anytime soon). You can also determine relocation expenses, finances and community information from links on this helpful and fascinating page.
http://www.improvenet.com/projecttools/estimators/ allows homeowners to estimate the costs associated with remodeling their bathrooms, kitchens, decks, doors, windows, etc. Hundreds of options to chose from too. Who knew there were so many kinds of windows? Not I.
babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn is one of my favorite sites — and it doesn’t have a darn thing to do with finance, either; c’est une page qui traduit d’un langage a l’autre. Impressive, non? . . . especially considering I barely parlez francais. Babelfish enables you to translate text from one language to another, thereby creating the impression that you’re a worldly polyglot. Seriously though, this is a wonderful site, and it’s always amusing to see what happens when you retranslate your message from the second language back to the first.
http://escalus86.hypermart.net/complain.htm is another long-time personal favorite of mine (the Web address as published has been corrected in this text). Scott Pakin’s automatic complaint-letter generator has to be seen and deployed to be fully-appreciated. Enter some noisome and deserving person’s name and let ‘er rip. You’ll be amazed at the incendiary, yet nonsensical, screed that emerges. When you lay such a note upon said individual’s desk, sit back and observe the ensuing hilarity/paranoia. Most impressive of all is that there seems to be an endless supply of scathing variations.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/calcs/n-expect/main.asp. There’s no shortage of life expectancy calculators online, www.deathclock.com being the most famously morbid with its presentation of one’s precious stash of allotted seconds tick-tick-ticking away. The MSN site above takes a more positive and yet more serious approach to mortality by asking you to fill in many health- and lifestyle-related variables. From this data, an estimate of one’s remaining time is yielded. What does one do with this information? Obviously, generate and submit a complaint letter to one’s maker.
