The Anal Philosopher's Computer Woes

Although I sympathize with Keith Burgess-Jackson's computer problems, he is clearly spoiled rotten. It's Jurassic city on my end. Although my old Compaq Presario 5170 Pentium II (manufactured in 1998) sports a 56 K bps modem, the local dial-up connection allows me 28.8 K at best. Usually I bump along at 24 K bps. I understand he gets twice that baud rate on his dial-up connection.

I'm running Windows 98 with an Internet Explorer 5.0 browser. This may explain why the new blogger upgrade has turned into a downgrade for me: I am reduced to putting in all the HTML code by hand.

I could easily go out and buy a new everything including a DSL connection. But my Thoreauvian frugality in tandem with an aversion to wasting time on such mundane matters conspires to keep me where I am. Hell, we still don't even have a cell phone. But wifely pressure is mounting, and I am afraid that the most insidiously diabolical form of telephony is in my future.

To Keith I say: adversity (within limits) is good! I am learning Hyper Text Markup Language, and you have been forced to clean your house.