I had to load "Ad Block" and "Script Block" on Fire Fox just to keep this site viewable. It is a shame when such a great site would rather sell out to commercials and harass its real supporters. I have joined Jon's site and hope to see all the wonderful folks from here over there too. I will still visit here but will shift my loyalties to the "Encanto Forum". Herman you should have your web site back up, you have just as much right to it as they do to their site, you are not competing with GW or its advertisers. Just this incident should have generated enough publicity to get you started and hopefully by word of mouth and email create some business for you. Don't give up! Woody.

I have one of my email accounts with my ISP. I currently can receive mail but not send it. I am sure the problem is with a setting. I need to get to the ISP website to look up the proper settings. My phone company is a co-op. I don't think they merge with anyone. They have been here to stay since 1953. Locally owned. I did manage to connect using a proxy service. (link below) Pooh Bear Here is a link that might be useful: http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html

First I have to confess that I have not gotten to backing up the hard drive - or working on the start up programs. Other computer issues in the family took priority - and then we had non-technological family difficulties. So my focus has been elsewhere. The internet connection still sometimes drops. Less often but it happens. I can just buy a wireless dongle. The laptop had been running cooler after getting all the bogus programs off. But lately it's sluggish again and running hot. The hard drive is making a bad noise. Not sure how to describe it but kind of like a car struggling to turn over. It does it just occasionally - some times if it's just trying to perform some action - and just now when I started the laptop. (It has not made the sound since it started up). Since hard drives are mechanical, does this sound like the hard drive might be failing? if it's hardware failure, is there any point in running chkdsk? or any other test? If the hard drive is failing, could that be causing it to run hot and slow at times? seems logical to me but I have no idea. I could inexpensively replace the hard drive. And get a wireless dongle. I imagine all that could be done for under $100 and just a small amount of time. The other troubleshooting I did was partly to learn. Here's what I like about the computer and why I may want to save/keep it: great size - 13", light - but has a great, great keyboard for such a small laptop. like the trackball and no touchpad. includes a free upgrade to Vista (so it could be used after XP is not supported) What I don't like: ongoing wireless adapter problems, sometimes running hot, possible failing hard drive, no web cam. Not sure if I'll put it to sleep soon - or try to resuscitate it. If I decide to let it die a peaceful death, there's no need to back up the HD. If I decide to replace the hard drive (if it needs it) or keep it if the HD's fine, I will back it up and make that a priority. And of course, now that I'm writing this post, it's behaving absolutely fine. Quick, cool, no noise. Thanks. Lynn.

I've got clients using the free space that came with one of their DirecTV subscriptions, and they are (relatively) happy with it. On the (nearly) free hosting packages, often access to expanded features is harshly limited (or services a web server normally provides by "default" are turned off), and more fully featured packages at those same sites are substantialy above industry rates. If (when) you move to a better hosting package, look for something in the $99 a year range with a good feature bundle including PHP, MySQL database, and a variety of pre-configured scripts you can integrate into your site. UNIX based hosting will suit your needs just fine. Many plans in this range will support FrontPage, but I'd suggest staying away from Frontpage in the first place. Using Frontpage (or Express) ties future development of that site to Frontpage software on webservers supporting Frontpage because of all the proprietary junk it crams in. When I inherit a site that was previously developed in Frontpage (or with MS Office products), its often easier for me to paste all the site text into a plaintext editor (to strip the formatting) and then back into new documents, rebuilding the site and all its links and formatting from scratch. That's a lot more labor that my client gets charged for, when using a less obnoxious development program (and Netscape Composer is fine) would ahve let me either cut and pasted directly (preserving the internal links) or just modifying existing pages to incorporate the new "look and feel".