geekybasically this has consisted of unplugging the old stuff and plugging in the new stuff, and staring at a manual whose most technologically sophisticated instruction consists of "make sure power is on" and figuring out for myself what PPPoE might be and how it might work if one is using a router to connect rather than a single computer.
basically PPPoE is a pain in the ass. but i did get everything going with nary a call to tech support. and then i got bold and decided to play around with the router to see if i could get LAUNCH to work through the firewall and ended up crashing the whole network (our big big network of two macs and one printer that is) sufficiently to get me a little worried.
but then i fixed it. i'm not sure what i did differently in the final round of turning things off and then turning them on again but every time through i noticed a screen that i had failed to access or a radio button that i had neglected to click the last time so i guess i finally saw and clicked everything one is supposed to.
we'll see how the next crash goes.
i never stop and ask for directions either. i will however buy a map.
