Mercury goes Direct

So Mercury goes direct on Sunday and on Monday I decide to set up the computer I had shipped from Silver that's been sitting on a table in the living room ever since. It's a 20" Intel iMac and a thing of beauty, but as it wasn't connected to the Internet I'd been using my old G4 eMac instead. I have a wireless broadband connection in Silver and use Airport, so thought I'd have to install DSL connection software on the iMac.

When I'd inserted the very old Earthlink disk I have, it had been unreadable, so I'd called Earthlink and asked for DSL connection software for an Intel Mac. That came sometime in the middle of January, but I'd not felt remotely compelled to deal with it. I don't know if it was Mercury going direct or me suddenly realizing I'd been here three weeks and hadn't used the computer I spent $45 dollars shipping here and would have to spend $45 to get it back when I go back in May. Whatever it was, I loaded the new connection software and found out it was a Windows disk.

Earthlink has a live chat help system, and I got passed from one "specialist" to another, ending up with number three who told me there was no Total Access software for Intel Macs. Visions of my $90 going down a drainpipe dancing in my head, I asked if that meant I wouldn't be able to get online with the 20". "Oh no," he typed. "You don't need any software, just connect the modem." My usual trusting self, I asked if he could give me his phone number so I could call him directly if that didn't work, but he breezily told me it would and to go ahead and do it.

It did work, immediately, without having to put in any new settings other than un-checking Airport and checking Internal Ethernet. So now the clunky old G4 is on the table in the living room and the beautiful 20" iMac in its place in the whatever this room is - the room in between the kitchen and the bedroom. And, of course, I could have been online the day I took the iMac out of the box, while Mercury was retrograde - except I couldn't because I wasn't. All very chicken and egg.