Finally! Things are working okay with my system. I have to apologize for not updating the asylum. My system was giving me a headache— it would crash with a fatal exception and a BSOD within 5 minutes of my connection. I've solved the problem. The Wave driver for my modem was the one doing the crashing (and I have no idea why).
My sem break is about over. I have a lot of stuff to relate to you, but I'll do that another time.
Previously: Reading material