Not Exactly Groundhog Day

It's still February 1st.

Still.

As far as AOL is concerned, I am stuck in a February 1st time warp.

Amazingly enough, I do not believe that this is AOL's fault.

February 1st is the day I installed Internet Explorer 7.

(OK, that part was AOL's fault, as I was merrily going along with IE 6 quite happily, until web-based AOL mail decided to choke on it.  So I upgraded to IE 7, and web-based AOL mail is back to normal.)

But now, every time I log in to AOL, it gives me February 1's Welcome Screen. 

You can't fool me.  It isn't the first anymore.

I try to solve the problem by refreshing the Welcome Screen.  This isn't as easy as it sounds, as the little "refresh" button is grayed out when you're on the Welcome Screen.  I go into AOL help, which tells me I can refresh the welcome screen just by going to Keyword: Welcome.  OK, I do.

Still February 1st.

I try to solve the problem from within IE 7.  This is actually more frustrating than trying to solve it from within AOL.  I go into my Tools, and my Internet Options, and I locate the bit that talks about how frequently it should check for new versions of a webpage.  The option is set to "Automatically."  I'm not entirely sure what "automatically" means (automatically when?), but I switch it to "Every time I visit a webpage."  That ought to do it.  Every time I visit the AOL welcome screen, IE 7 ought to check for the new one, rather than just give me February 1st.  Right?

Wrong.

Internet Explorer does not seem to want to accept this change (no matter how many times I hit "OK") and keeps kicking it back to "Automatically" -- which apparently translates into "No time after February 1."

I finally get annoyed enough to change the setting on how long it keeps web pages cached.  It will now save them for ZERO days.  This will probably slow down my browsing in general, but at least it'll be today in AOL, right?

Yes!  I get February 7!  Success!

Let's see what day it is tomorrow.