For those following activities in The Dad Zone, you’ll know that I was planning on getting him Verizon DSL soon. That day came today. The setup was a breeze and Dad’s now surfing the web infinitely faster than before. He’s so thrilled that his internet polka stations are playing smoothly, every last one of them. He can’t get enough of this new (to him) technology, he’s going to get right on the phone and brag to all his friends that he’s using broadband now. Good for him!

So after getting DSL configured and working, I decided to try migrating him over to Mozilla Firefox for times he’s reading his news websites and playing the radio feeds, simply because AOL does a lousy job of rendering these sites and doesn’t always know what media players to use for the stations. Firefox is so much easier, plus he knows how to quickly enlarge text on screens with a touch of a button. Something else AOL sucks at.

After moving all his AOL Favorites over to Firefox and getting him used to the new interface, he asked me a question I’d been wanting to hear for years: "Now that I’m using Firefox, what do I need AOL for?" I told him all it’s good for now is playing Slingo.

What he said next made me want to both strangle him and hug him at the same time.

"I don’t need Slingo."

"WHAT?!?!?!?!?! It’s ALL YOU TALK ABOUT!!!!! And if you stop playing it on AOL, you’ll lose your lifetime score!"

"Eh…. I can live without it. Besides, I can’t get higher than 108."

So, incredibly, I’m in the position to get him off AOL, stop paying the insane $250 annual subscription fee, get him browsing the internet the easy way, and stop hearing about how he can’t crack the Top 100. What a glorious day this is. I only wish I’d asked him years ago if he can live without Slingo. As crazy as it sounds, no one ever thought to approach him with that question. His Slingo score was all we ever heard about.

I intend to download a "free standing" version of Slingo for him, which means he can still play the game. It just won’t know about his AOL lifetime score and he’ll have to start anew. We also have to wait until Slingo Deluxe works on Windows Vista. Right now, it’s not compatible, but I expect it will be in the next few months.

Rot in hell, AOL.

Stumble it!