Verizon DSL install hijacking Safari and Apple Mail

Question

This is my first post.
warning: it's long, just trying to include details
I lost all my bookmarks/folders in Safari -- after a Verizon DSL install-induced browser hi-jacking. See http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/?p=78
for a story that captures my own experience nearly to the last detail. But, unfortunately, unlike the blog author my bookmarks.plist was not a back up of my extensive bookmark collection -- it was a big zero, like some other responders to that reported.
I am just your basic user, and couldn't follow the code discussion toward the bottom of the blog, it's over my head. But, although not knowledgable, I am desperate and persistent and rarely accept "can't be done" answers, even if I don't really know what I'm doing and keep getting that same answer.
I tried all the standard suggestions so far, searching .plists, searching my hd for anything safari, anything bookmark, anything .html. Read many of the discussions on lost bookmarks, tried everything I could understand how to do.
I stumbled upon in the ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari over a thousand files with crazy number/character names that all have suffix ".webbookmark" I probably did have over 1000 bookmarks. When I double click one of those .webbookmark files in that folder, a webpage springs forth in Safari, one of my former bookmarks. Also, click in the finder on one of those ~.webbookmark file and 'get info' and it shows the .html file name and bookmark name for it.
I believe this is somehow my old bookmark collection, and not a history cache, for various reasons: upon clicking, I recognize the webpage that appears and I know bookmarked anywhere from a few months ago, as well as some oldies, but have not visited recently. Random spot checking seems like sites I recently visited but did not bookmark are not showing up.
Would not be fun to double click every one of the 1000+ .webbookmark files in the metadata/Safari to open the page it represents and then "add bookmark" in Safari, to restore my bookmarks. Is there some automatic way of doing that? Am I not understanding the metadata folders enough and have tricked myself into believing they are my real bookmarks and not history or useless stuff. It's totally possible my ignorant forays and fleeting glimpses (but not, out of the corner of my eye....) are fool's gold.
Can someone let me know whether this is worth pursuing, and if so, how, and if so how so in plain terms because of my limited knowledge and floundering around without understanding what I'm doing and what it means.
I know, I know, I should have backed up before I did the *&^@! install, I should back up before I do anything, and do it regularly anyway. Don't laugh too hard now, but get this, when I did back up before, I didn't know what I was doing and just backed up "documents" folder (see, told you I was ignorant; but, older and wiser now...) But I had no idea something like connecting DSL would screw up my browser (and my apple mail -- that's a different awful story too, still unresolved) and who knows what else.
No, I have not used another browser since early 2005, and wasn't as 'bookmark crazy' then as I've been the last few years (or my life wasn't as complicated then and I didn't need to bookmark a lot of important, and I mean important, as well as obscure sites, that I don't need on a daily basis, but do need, but don't want to search through thousands of google hits to find the right one, when I realize I need it again...). Yes, sure, i will salvage what I can from IE and Netscape although they're way incomplete and frozen in time of simpler days.
A thousand curses upon evil Verizon DSL provider who thinks browser/mail/etc. hi-jacking is fun and smart PR. After this disaster, do they really think I'm enthusiastically telling everyone to use them?
I will appreciate any help. (and it's understood if the real answer is "can't be done;" worth trying here though) Just point me to the right discussion if this has already been attended to.
Thanks!
G4 15" power pc   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

Hi Starman and Rachel, many thanks for replying, although I was praying someone was going to hand me the magic bullet! Nonetheless, it was useful you confirmed my suspicion that the mysterious metadata cache I stumbled upon while floundering around in desperation, did have some bookmark information for me, but also, unfortunately, that there was no quick and easy way to transform it back into a bookmark list, or know whether it really has what I need. Rats. Seemed worth asking the experts though, and it was.
Starman -- yes, in 2005 I used IE and Netscape, so I was able to salvage bookmarks from there, but unfortunately since 2005 my life became extremely complicated and the most important bookmarks are from that lost window of time. (Why didn't Verizon trash those browsers and bookmarks too, or instead of, Safari? Figures. They somehow just knew how to go straight for the jugular.)
Rachel, thanks for the suggestion about using BBEdit, etc., but I'm too amateur to know what those are or how to use them, but if I did, it didn't sound like it would necessarily be easy or a guaranteed success.
The IT helpdesk at the university I work for mulled it over and they too told me basically what you two did -- no obvious solution; some custom scripting might be able to do something, but that was beyond the scope of their help services.
So... looks like I am just going to have to open that metadata cache folder and start clicking and bookmarking if I want to find out if it is even worth doing and restores the most important bookmarks from the past 2 years. Maybe do 20 a day or something when I'm brain dead anyway after work. If not, there's always plan B -- spending a lot of time googling to find lots of little obscure needles in thousands of haystacks.
Such is life.
I haven't had the strength yet to deal with what happened to my AppleMail and have resorted to using webmail. Time to search the Mail discussion groups. I've had a lot of Mail problems since I started using it 2 yrs ago and the thought of disentangling another Mail problem makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It's even more infuriating when the problem isn't even related to something kooky in Mail, or something crazy I brought on myself, it is sheerly the result of Verizon's malicious activities.
Thanks again for your help, it is wonderful when people freely and altruistically donate their time to share their knowledge, and their brainpower, to help each other.
G4 15" power pc Mac OS X (10.4.9)