I am still not able to get on despite spending 2 hours on the phone with my internet provider tech support last night. Talk about frustrating! They don't seem to have any idea what the problem could be - the tech said that since I have a secure wireless connection and a land based connection for the pc, the modem will have a built in router which means I don't need the external router connected. With or without the router I can't get on. I turned off all the security (briefly) - nothing changed. I can see my wireless connection in my list of available options and it says I am connected to it. But I can't get to a webpage. Thankfully my bank has a computer anyone can sign in to to do online banking, my daughter has this pc which I can use a bit and I can check my mail at work. The tech is coming over tomorrow - maybe I'll get some answers. If he's stumped, I am wondering if there is a way to feed the landbased connection to my laptop - anybody have an idea on that? Thanks for the ideas so far, I appreciate it. Suzan J

lukki - It took us *months* to get AT&T to send someone who really looked at the problem, and then multiple visits to fix it. I've got a direct number to their St Louis tech support office, and the cell phone of the latest (and greatest!) local tech, so I can skip the overseas people unless I really need to put in a trouble ticket (then it has to go chain of command). I got tired of hearing them ask me to cycle the power on the modem and tell them which lights were blinking too! This AM the guy in St Louis asked if I worked for them b/c I seemed to know so much LOL! But I'm still waiting for tech to come and test my lines - it seems to have settled down a bit, was getting 2.2Mbps pretty reliably b4 I went to Verizon store, now I can still connect but speed has dropped to about 1.7M - still good, but makes me wonder if we'll have service at all by the time DH gets home. Oh, and I found I'm on a "secondary" ($9.99/mo) line on my mon's contract, my dad was "primary" (I thought he and I had the same plan) so that's why he got a free phone. I'd have to pay for mine (with rebates, but still not free). So I'll hold off and see if DH's company is going to stop paying for his Blackberry. He said it was possibility in next couple of months that they'd cancel and just tell people they'd remiburse them for their own plans (minutes?). If that happens I can drop out of my parents' plan for no penalty (found I'm month-to-month now, if I got a new phone I'd be locked in), then DH and I can get our own plan - if they take away the company device, we can get 2 Blackberry Curves for $50 after rebate. At least if they keep running the same promotion they have now. We'd have to get insurance though - DH is hard on them, esp. the holsters, but he did drop one device in the gutter and break it running across the street a couple years ago.

I still have fingernails! It didn't really start rising until after 2 hours! I put a pan of hot water in the oven with it, and that helped. I wonder if buttermilk isn't a great liquid for dissolving yeast. The buttermilk was almost as thick as yogurt. I used half for the crumb cake and tried to shape the other half into balls for buns, but I could see it was too wet and would just meld together. So I put the other half in another pan and sprinkled coconut on top. I'm going to try to recreate what we called coconut buns growing up. They are glazed after baking. I'm letting them rise overnight in the fridge. I think they'll be all right. I just hope they taste good! I'd hate to waste all that butter, sugar, etc. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. If it's anything to be proud of, I'll take photos. ;)

nextel/sprint is THE best for coverage in my experience. from 2006-late 2007 i used their aircard in my laptop while on jobsites all day w/o ever once having coverage issues not to mention i sent massive files. my co-workers got stuck w/ verizons' card and emailed me their design files to forward to their clients because verizon was toooo slow. nextel/sprint used to have cheap plan that linked into your regular cell minutes back in 2005-06 but now they don't do that. i think their cheapest plan is $60 which is not bad, i'm not sure of the allowed minutes thou. ~ liz