well, I appreciate the advice and suggestions, and you are all correct, now if only Fairpoint would comply!
here's the update (not a Fairpoint bashing, just the facts as I see them)...
Friday night - 2+ hours on hold waiting for "the next available representative" before hanging up in frustration, 1+ hours on "live chat" waiting in queue for a rep, only to be told "we can only handle email issues on chat"
Saturday - only a little over an hour to get to a live rep... a lot of questions, keyboard clicking in the background, "for some reason your site was not automatically migrated from Verizon so I have put in a manual migration request, and it should be done within 24 hours"
Sunday - what a beautiful day for a walk to the island and repoint ftp to my site on fairpoint. I met Misty Blue at the Y-Landing at noon, almost 50 degrees and sunny! We trekked out to the island (pretty slushy on the ice, like walking through wet concrete, but the snowshoes helped). Changed the ftp settings, but alas, the site was not up on Fairpoint yet (technically it had only been 19 hours)... but we had a great time and glad to report the ice eater is working just fine!
Back home Sunday night, it had been over 24 hours and still no "pineisland" user site at Fairpoint, but now only 38 minutes to get a live rep! And he said "I'm sorry for the miscommunication from my colleague, but your site is not set to migrate from Verizon until 2-14-09" (happy Valentine's from Fairpoint). "You should call Verizon and they will "unlock" your account until then"... Quick call to Verizon, rep on the line without a wait, and all set to go... now only if I hadn't changed the ftp settings on the webcam, or if I'd taken the time to set up the inbound port on the router I could change it back to Verizon... but instead I had a great time visiting with Misty Blue's family...
So, we'll see what happens next, but my experience so far with Fairpoint has been anything but "fair" (just my opinion)...
PIG
p.s. note to self - set up a port for remote access, maybe in the spring
