Dante's Seventh Level Of Hell...

...is computer hell. Knock on wood, but after WEEKS of travails, I'm slightly back on my feet. Still can't get my backup hard drive to work (Maxtor One Touch II), still haven't rescued all my email and for some reason earthlink ain't communcating with the online version so I can update my address book, can't find the bookmarks I tried to save for Firefox, can't find the emails I tried to copy to disc and a million other details. But I seem to be able to go online without being kicked off after a few minutes, having to reboot etc and I've got the latest version of Norton Firewall/Anti-Virus installed and -- boy, was this difficult -- actually got the online update service to work so it's actually functioning properly. All I had to do was rebuild my computer from scratch and spendi days and days on the phone calling earthlink and dell et al and pestering my computer savvy friends (especially biboy) with pleas for help until they learned to just not answer the phone. I spent literally 14 hours on the computer today alone just trying to get things working. This has been going on in one form or another since I moved on Feb 28. If only I could have afforded a Mac. I'll be popping and surfing again on Monday.