I just heard again from my ISP this morning and he writes the following:

Cynthia,

That is wonderful news. Lets hope they solve the puzzle.

Mike,

Oops, I started to post before I read Cyntha's latest reply. Hopefully, that will take care of the problem. It explains the St. Louis page you have been seeing.

If not, it still could be a pop up issue - or perhaps a combination of several issues?

Those security settings you mention to allways allow are to always allow cookies from portraitartist.com, not to always allow pop ups. Especially if AOL has a pop up control and you have it set to block all pop ups. Pop ups are not just advertisements - they are pop up windows to allow a second browser window to open up - such as when you click on an artists name in the portraitartist.com site, their site will open up in a pop up window. If not allowed, you will just get a page can't be displayed error.

My isp ended up signing up for AOL to solve the problem, even though he was under no obligation to do so. The communications, starting with the oldest.

From AOL: From St. Louis Internet: From St. Louis Internet:

Up until yesterday I would have said that my success percentage had gone up to 70+ %. Today I have been locked out most of the day.

Once I am logged on to AOL I will either be able to access SOG or I won't. No matter how many attempts I make. The determining factor seems to be at the point of logging in. It would seem that when you log on you are assigned to one of AOL's many servers and you are with that server for the remainder of your session. Some servers are bogus and some aren't.

It's as if they are making modifications very slowly, thus the increased success percentage. I really don't know much about what goes on behind the scenes but this is the way it appears to me.

PS: I'm getting no response from SpelChek.

No luck here, either, with AOL. Cable or dial-up, doesn't matter. I read the email notifications and then go in through Explorer to get to the Forum, but the hassle limits my visits.

Looking into an ISP switch, though it is daunting, as the AOL email address is "out there" in a LOT of places, especially since the family uses all seven screen names, extensively.

Hazardous as a Forum software upgrade.

One day the ISP's will have to let us switch but keep our email addresses, like switching cell phone services and keeping our old number. Wouldn't that be nice....

I have suggested before and I'll say it again, please call AOL and insist that there is a problem and that you know it is AOL because it's been verified with the hosting ISP in conjuction with AOL. Tell them the problem has been somewhat resolved by actions taken by AOL, but not totally.

I post these updates here just for information purposes and to verify that I am not alone in my suffering. I don't mean them to be a complaint against SOG.

I'm convinced that if this problem is resolved it will come from no action taken by me. I have for the past month tried to communicate with AOL on line, by phone and through e-mail. I have become so frustrated that I have threatened them never to contact me again.

I don't have the biggest dog in this hunt. I do, however, try and figure things out based on the very limited amount of information that I am able to muster. I still cannot manuver around the fact that only one site produces these results. It would suggest to me that AOL would have unique code to deal with each site which it tries to access. This part makes no sense to me.

Every web site has a unique IP address and if that IP address is coded wrong in one or more of their name servers, it would affect just that one site.

I had a situation once when I was in St. Louis where I couldn't access my web site, but I could access everything else. Everyone else could outside St. Louis. It was a problem with a name server somewhere along the hops taken to get to the site and it had absolutely nothing to do with St. Louis Internet.