It takes more than spoonful of sugar

Tonight's blog entry is brought to you by the computer in the apartment's front office because my Internet connection at home is dead. How dead, I do not know, but I am hoping the network Gods bring it back online tonight. How hard can it be for Ma Bell to keep an entire city's phone lines functioning and numbers working, hmmm?

That being said, the apartment's computer has Net Nanny on it. Which is rather annoying considering I deal with a Net Nanny at work and then to come home, and there, there she is again! And Net Nanny is no Mary Poppins; like the work Net Nanny, she decides to block off sites that are decidedly not ############* or reprehensible in anyway. The annoying thing then is even after Net Nanny has wagged her finger at you, she won't let you leave the offending site. So you're stuck on a half-downloaded page (in this case, Dooce), with a beepy Net Nanny and if you click "okay", she goes away for the second it takes to continue downloading the page Net Nanny doesn't want you on anyway. You say, "Well, then, close the window." I would do that but because Net Nanny's warning keeps popping up on the still downloading page, it's impossible. Hence, this awful, awful vicious loop. I can't get off the page Net Nanny hates because Net Nanny won't let me; talk about mixed messages.

Net Nanny's insistent and incessant beeping combined with the ISP's annoying 5-note chime and "Thank you for your patience, we'll get to you shortly" repeated at thirty-second intervals, has slowly eaten away at any remaining sane brain cells I may have when it comes to technology. If you don't hear from me, it's because I've done away with Net Nanny and run off to South America; I hear the weather's great there this time of year.

* Word censored by Net Nanny; I'll give you a hint -- it starts with a P, is followed by an O, has an R in there, and an N, and ends with the word 'graphic'. I'm not actually sure whether the word is censored on your screen, but just in case. Obviously, Net Nanny means business.