Well, it's nice to be back on line.

After years of near-perfect service, our ISP has been nonfunctional three evenings and nights since Thanksgiving. And tech support is 9-5, M-F, nowhere near 24/7.

Most irritating was our local provider asserting there were no problems, as he was able to log on just fine as we spoke on the phone.

Wife finally got some free time to catch up her website last night, and what happens? No service. Log on okay, but then no data transfers. No email. Nothing.

So this afternoon the Tech Support returns my calls.

"Perhaps we should give you our new DNS numbers."

Well, yeah, that could be handy. Turns out they've been "new" for about two years now. And just neglected to inform those of us out here in the boonies. Seems they recently installed a new server, and it "doesn't like the '205' numbers."

Really, that's what she said. It doesn't like the "205" numbers.

The new numbers appear to work just fine. There are no "205"s.