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March 3, 2002

Today's Reading
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

So, Verizon came and tested the line, replaced stuff, gave me a new phone jack (with a funny little childproof door on it although I have no children around the house) on Wednesday. I bought a used USR 56K modem equipped for Mac serial port connectivity from a coworker who recently de-Macintoshed a relative (convincing him to join the pod people who pray towards Redmond, WA every day). I replaced the phone cord, the serial cable, and the modem software. I upgraded the antique Mac to 8.6 again (had already done this but was unsure what all got corrupted during the power surge and things were flaky). I reinstalled the little settings script fill in thingie from my ISP. Oops. That was a mistake. It took me three days to find out that the reason I could no longer connect to the ISP was that the script fill in thingie for 8.6 is not updated to support their new national dialin service and hence was filling in my username and stuff incorrectly. See I had manually changed this as directed by them many moons ago and forgotten about it. I assumed their own software had been updated to support their new stuff. Assume. Never do that. So, anyway, at long last, I am connected to the www (and I don't mean World Wrestling WFederation) again. Is it worth it? Will it help stop global warming? Will it keep the Merrimack from running dry in my lifetime? At least I can read all that spam about how to consolidate my debts, regain my male potency, attract women, grow hair, and work at home ... Surely that is what Al Gore created the Internet for?!?