"I do question everything.
(...)

No problem as long as you don't question my advice. "

Yeah.

"The default IP
is 192.168.1.254. Point your browser at this IP address and see what
you find on the status and diagnostics pages. "

Did it months ago when this was an ongoing problem. Everything was fine. It said anyway...

Then later there was a real outage and I somehow screwed something up royal because then it took my sister over half an hour on the phone to get it back up. tha tis when the network cable to the Man cave failed and I saw the MODEM was turned upside down. Looking it the really poor condition of the wires going into the RJ45 connectors and knowing the cable has beeen throgugh hell led me to believe it has an open wire. That plus the Man cave PC says "A network cable is unplugged". Amd I ean that cable really has been through hell. tomorrow I find out if they recrimped it for me. If not I might jjust walk out of work and tell them I am going to Walmart to get one or some ****. I no longe put up wioth lip service from employers. In fact even when I was a teenager the boss once said "You act like you are doing us a favor coming in here" to which I replied "Isn't that why you pay me ?", and since then I have only grown bigger. And badder, and more sharp. Actually, iot is almost time to contact my old employer, after a year when he ****ed me off, see if maybe they could use some of my time. these people were a trip, nice I guess, mostly, but dumb. Bring me an effects box that is clearly meant to work in an effects loop of a mixer r amp and trying to use it straight off the guitar, and the complaint ? "Noise and clicks when changing modes".

Usenet is different, but out here in the real world I have very little respect for anyone. Out here I have only met one tech I could really havee a discussion with.

"I just checked out Google Groups on my DSL line using Firefox. It
seems to be going VERY slow. I click on s.e.d. to list the available
messages and it's taking 2 minutes to load a page. Some of the
obscure groups never seem to load."

My problem doesn't seem to be speed, but that error. But then I have probably a doifferent OS, Vista here, you probably have 10. But I am actually on IE8 right now and it does bitch, but then it works. My FF is a very old version, below 20. What I have heard is tht 23 is about the best version to have but I was having trouble finding it. Even the places that have older versions said here is the file but then when I went ot install it it says "Veersion 45" or whatever it is in. I want 23, no higher from things I have heard. Plus the fact alll I see in newer versions of software are features remove that I used to use.

But then sometimes FF works jusrt fine. I'll have those numbers soon. should I close al browsers and start fresh or will this work OK with my usual half dozen or more tabs open, and now two browsers because of this horse**** ?

"Like I said, I don't want to go into a public troubleshooting exercise
on this, at least not now. Bizzzeeee. "

Fine. So far so good, you gave me some pointers and now I have to use them. I'll get back to you, that is if I can of course.