Oh, yes I do!! I recently had to replace a very old and very sad cooking range. It was hard enough to choose which one I wanted from all of the brands and styles available but the internet let me do hours of research from the comfort of my jammies and my hot cup of coffee. So I chose the one I wanted, the store I wanted to buy it from and off I went. All I had to do was wait for delivery and installation.

A little wrinkle in my perfect plan occurred when the delivery man “discovered” I had a propane and not natural gas hookup. This little snag sent him into a frenzy and me to the phone to call a contractor friend of mine to come to my rescue. The first guy was very courteous and cleaned up the mess he made in his first efforts and off he went—and so did my instruction book!

Oh boy! I have no stove in place, I have a contractor coming and the first guy says he didn’t see the book after he looked at it once but it is not here!! The only thing I could do was call the manufacturer and order a new instruction book to be overnighted which is a pricey way to do it but I was stuck. They agreed to send it right out and charge the shipping to my UPS account but I needed to give them a credit card for the fee for the booklet.

Wait a minute—only three pages of that book were in English so only three pages are costing me $15.00. NO! I sweetly asked if they had the instruction books on their website and when they said yes I canceled the order and fired up my laptop. Oh yes the cooking gods were smiling!! There it was—all three pages for FREE! I bookmarked the pages and even to this date I have not printed them.

My point here is that even if you are an ‘old dog’ like me the net is for you. It is a boundless resource of information, a port in a storm—whatever you call it I urge you to not fear it but embrace it.