I'm still dial-up, but it's a matter of choice. All the other stuff is available, but I just don't want to bother with making changes. Of course, there are times when I really want to see some pictures, and they are very slow to come up. When that happens, I just close down and come back another time (on the assumption that there's a lot of traffic that's bottling up the line), or I get out my knitting and work on that while waiting. It really saves me a lot of frustration. I do think that some of the photo files are probably bigger than they need to be, but I also know that my dial-up is the main problem. It's possible that if I ever get myself a digital camera and want to post pictures of my own roses (providing they ever bloom), I will change my mind and switch. Laura

Thanks Wayne. It was a great snake. I was telling someone else that it really stinks to find something so great when you're by yourself and there's no one to share the great find with. This was probably my best trip to the gorge due the variety. I have found all these species there before, but not on the same day. Now if only those timbers would make an appearance...

Matt, My wife agrees with yours about the lack of normality. She doesn't like snakes at all, the other herps she's okay with. I think I've got my 2 yr. old son on my side. He seems to have already developed an interest in herps. But he and I have a hard time convincing her that we're normal. Thanks for your posts, always enjoy them. Evan

First you need to determine what is "slow", assuming you haven't already. First you would like to have a V.90 or V.92, I'm not sure what the difference is, but they are the last versions of dial standards produced and operate up to a maximum of 56,000 bits per second (56KBps). Given what you said, you haven't changed anything, you just note a slow down, let's assume your computer modem and AOL are up to the V.9x standards. If the twisted pair of wires running around your house and down the road to the telephone office are in great shape (short is good, that is if the telephone office is along way off, several miles say, that will degrade the speed). I normally get 52.0 KBps from my computer in the basement, near where the telephone wire enters the house, my wifes computer upstairs gets a few KBps less, maybe 48 KBps. I associate the loss in speed is due to the "poor" quality of the wiring in the house, running from the basement up to her computer. What I noted in my post is my best rate of 52 Kbps went down to about 40 and 36, respectively, basement and upstairs. After contacting Worldnet and learning they had not degraded the service, I decided to start taking loads off the telephone lines in the house (I have two dial up lines) and started by unplugging my fax: bingo, speed came up to 52 Kbps. So, that's what I shared. If you've got a good speed in he idle state (you can see the speed by simply placing the mouse arrow over the tool bar's data set logo), then something else is slowing you down. The next thing I look at is: is the ISP (service) giving me any data. It is also easy to start a big download from a web site, say, and click on the symbol for the active dial up connection. Watch the received count, it should steadily increase, if it has period of no movement, then the ISP isn't giving you service. Software accelerators can also help, Worldnet offers one free, and I bet AOL does as well.