WELCOME, LAPPY

I've been quiet here at Message In A Bottle. This entire week I've been burning the midnight oil bringing my new Dell laptop up to speed while keeping a sharp watchful eye (the kind a parent might give to a troublesome child) on American Idol after the LaToya London debacle.

The laptop is a major splurge of the I'll Pay For It Somehow kind; certain personal factors made 'now' seem to be the right time for the purchase, and so it sits on my table and demands to be fed. 

First, Lappy [no relation to Rappy or even Tappy] wanted to be Connected, so out came the new Wireless Router. This is my 4th computer that has the ability to connect to the internet so it's the fourth time I've had to struggle through a maze of badly written and not quite correct modem, network, and communications instructions. Is it too much to ask for a comprehensive 'walk through' for this procedure? Better yet, why can't communication hardware providers create a Smart Wizard that can diagnose all the protocol issues involved. This stuff is greek (or perhaps I should say geek) to me.

After about an hour I got the basic router set up so both computers are working with the interned. It should have taken a few minutes, but I misread a simple step and spent the next 50 minutes 'troubleshooting' until I walked through the procedure correctly. This was the easy part.

Now I'm trying to set up a Home Network that will allow me to file and printer share. Here is where the instructions and Set-Up Wizard let me down big time. Parts of the instructions seemed to match my system, but they were incomplete or confusing. I spent several hours on it last night without success and now it must wait for the weekend.

In the meantime, I fed Lappy most of the software I want on the system. I'll be using a new screen name [littlelife12] on AOL and AIM as a requirement for AOL's use on a network; RealPlayer 10 and Rhapsody were downloaded and installed; Microsoft Works with Word 2002was finally installed despite some annoying difficulties with the software disks, another crummy partly inoperable Wizard.   It still needs Photoshop Elements and a mouse I can actually use because I hate the touch pad control for daily home use. Both of these items are en route thanks to my boyfriend, Amazon.

Soooooo, these technical things just have to be accomplished before the play can begin. I can't wait to move from my home computer chair to the comforts of my recliner for TV/chat nights and this summer's Big Brother 5 Live Feeds.   I also have another project that I hope to reveal by Thursday night, but much work needs to be done.