Steamed by Steam!

OK, I give up. How do you make steam leave you alone after installing Half-Life2? I get REAL tired of clicking "offline" mode every time I boot up the PC. No, I won't buy a 24/7 connection to solve this problem.

Where is the setting to tell steam to leave the Internet alone unless I want to go there for multi-play (if ever) and STAY in OFFLINE mode?

I don't mind the registration per say, but the invasive nature of this third party program is maddening.

rower30@earthlink.net

The box explicitly states that it requies an internet connection. I can understand it not having an option to just run in offline mode due to the frequent updates.
Just set it to not launch with windows so it doesn't pop up every bootup.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

I don't need to be on 24/7 to play half-life. IF I WANT to update, or look for them, I'll do it myself thank-you. I don't need to tie-up the phone line playing OFFLINE games, or have to answer STEAM just to use my computer.

I went into the MSCONFIG start-up and disabled STEAM. Now, IF, and only IF, I launch Half-Life2 it then loads STEAM (not at EVERY boot). At that point I can smack the offline mode button and play away. This is what it SHOULD have been set-up to do in the first place. Start the game, select offline or online, play as you please. Not decide for me that I need to be online every time I boot the PC for any reason at all. Some may understand steam, I don't. Not to mention, why eat-up the RAM running STEAM for no reason at all UNLESS you're using it?

As far as 1st party,second party, or third party...who cares. That's not the problem and knowing it won't solve it.

I've looked in steam in "settings" and never saw a thing. How do you get to "interface? I haven't seen that window on my steam software. The installation of this game was confusing enough that I could veruy well have set it to start with windows. It does, so duh, I guess I must have. But, I've yet to figure out how to shut it off except through msconfig.