[VOA]

I've convinced myself that it's almost useless to search for ET.

Not if you can build a full career and retirement out of it!
Assuming you can get money from tax-paying suckers and from folks so rich they've
run out of other projects to fund (e.g., Paul Allen of Microsoft $$$ just gave some
more funds to the ET search.)

[RadioAstronomer]

Assuming you can get money from tax-paying suckers

Sigh! SETI is privately funded. No tax-paying "suckers".

[BlazingArizona]

Assuming you can get money from tax-paying suckers and from folks so rich they've run out of other projects to fund (e.g., Paul Allen of Microsoft $$$ just gave some more funds to the ET search.)

Not only is SETI privately funded and far bigger than the crappy little federal program it replaced, but it is producing so much radiotelescope data that a whole new computational form, grid computing, had to be developed to reduce the data. This technique, setting millions of scattered PC's to work on small chunks of the data set, is now being applied to similar problems like protein folding. If you don't like lending the spare cycles on your PC to SETI, you can apply it to cancer research.