Up and Running Again
I am back online, thanks to Scott who provided me with expert technical support in the form of handing me a pile of computer CDs, operating system updates, and diskettes and reminding me to "back up everything first."

Thanks also to Mark, who tried but never got me up and running again. He kept stopping by, however, with Winsock "fixes" along with his basic computer guy attitude of "let's run this and see what happens."

The bottom line is that with some luck I can now go back to using my computer and accessing the Internet everyday while once again being completely oblivious to how any of it works.