Monitor Calibration???

I "calibrated" my monitor with Photoshop 5.5 and now everything looks like crap. My photos are now way over exposed (and so are everyone else's), web pages look like crap (hard to even read text), and I really think I've done something wrong.

I adjusted contrast to maximum (which seemed strange to me...but I just did what I was told), brightness down until the box was almost black, ect.

Ive heard to set all my RGB settings on my monitor to 75 but didn't...is this just common knowledge the program expected me to know?

Did you use 'Adobe Gamma'? Do you have an LCD monitor?
The instructions are intended for CRT monitors and don't really work for LCDs If you want to calibrate an LCD monitor, you really need to use a hardware calibration device.

It is an LCD. I suppose I'll have to reach into the old pockets then. :: sigh ::