Technology

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters... They would market the Reverse Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If IBM made toasters... They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Xerox made toasters... You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Radio Shack made toasters... The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If Thinking Machines made toasters... You would be able to toast 64,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

If Cray made toasters... They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.

If the Rand Corporation made toasters... It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If the NSA made toasters... Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

If Sony made toasters... The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If Timex made toasters... They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a licking and keep on toasting.

If Fisher Price made toasters... 'Baby's First Toaster' would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like a jack-in-the-box.

If Microsoft made toasters... Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster '02 would weigh 15,000 pounds (requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters... It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but five years earlier.

Finally God said, "Cool it. I am going to set up a test that will run two hours and I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away. They moused. They did spreadsheets. They wrote reports. They sent faxes. They sent e-mail. They sent out e-mail with attachments. They downloaded. They did some genealogy reports. They made cards. They did every known job. But ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured and, of course, the electricity went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed. The electricity finally flickered back on and each of them restarted their computers.

Satan started searching frantically, screaming "It's gone! It's all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours. Satan observed this and became irate.

"Wait! He cheated, how did he do it?"

God shrugged and said, "Jesus saves."

$ Michael Jordan having "retired," with $40 million in endorsements, makes $178,100 a day, working or not.

$ If he sleeps 7 hours a night, he makes $52,000 every night while visions of sugarplums dance in his head.

$ If he goes to see a movie, it'll cost him $7.00, but he'll make $18,550 while he's there.

$ If he decides to have a 5 minute egg, he'll make $618 while boiling it.

$ He makes $7,415/hr more than minimum wage.

$ He'll make $3,710 while watching each episode of Friends.

$ If he wanted to save up for a new Acura NSX ($90,000) it would take him a whole 12 hours.

$ If someone were to hand him his salary and endorsement money, they would have to do it at the rate of $2.00 every second.

$ He'll probably pay around $200 for a nice round of golf, but will be reimbursed $33,390 for that round.

$ Assuming he puts the federal maximum of 15% of his income into a tax deferred account (401k), his contributions will hit the federal cap of $9500 at 8:30 a.m. on January 1st.

$ If you were given a penny for every 10 dollars he made, you 'd be living comfortably at $65,000 a year.

$ He'll make about $19.60 while watching the 100 meter dash in the Olympics, and about $15,600 during the Boston Marathon.

$ While the common person is spending about $20 for a meal in his trendy Chicago restaurant, he'll pull in about $5600.

$ This year, he'll make more than twice as much as all U.S. past presidents for all of their terms combined.

Amazing isn't it? However...

$ If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 450 years, he'll still have less than Bill Gates has today.

$$$ Game over. Nerd wins.