Upgrades

A number of you have told me what a pain the Blogger commenting system is, so I changed to a different system today, adding Haloscan commenting and trackback features.

I've also upgraded my home system to DSL from dial-up this weekend, so reading and posting takes a lot less time. Of course, that wasn't quite as painless as Verizon promised. First, I had to upgrade to IE 6.0 so I could run the install tool. Fortunately, they were kind enough to include it on the CD. Then, it told me I needed a Network Interface Card (i.e. Ethernet) to connect to the DSL modem, even though the printed documentation said I could use USB. So, after talking with tech support (yup, they've upgraded their modems and no longer support USB), I trekked to BestBuy to pick one up. That installation went smoothly, as well as the hooking up of the DSL modem.

Next step, turn the computer back on and run the installation CD. This time, it was happy with my hardware and proceeded to the account set-up. Whoops! Error message followed by fatal error and hard crash of the program. Reboot. Rerun. Same error message. So I stopped and called tech support again. After being on hold a few minutes (listening to non-relevant help tips), I was connected to an angel named Brandon, who led me through the manual process for setting up my account and configuring my modem.

Success!

Now, if only stripping 5 layers of paint off my kitchen window trim were as easy...that's my other project this weekend. I'm glad the "distressed" look is in ;-)