Brightness of my desktop has been increased what to do??

I've recently come to the realization that my computer monitor screen is not properly calibrated. In different web forums where photos are posted, I'm noticing that I can't make out a lot of the pictures people are talking about - they're too dark. I've also noticed this when printing out CD covers - detail in the shadows that I never saw on the screen. Also, every time I show people digital photos, I have to turn up the brightness (in Photoshop) to anywhere between 25 - 50 %! Needless to say, I need to calibrate my monitor. For a test, I downloaded one of those "black level" graphs whrere the squares go from dark to light and you should be able to see every square clearly - I can only see half before they disappear into all blackness.

I have one of those old "turn of the century" big Dell Monitors that came with my original computer back in 2000. It has two "select" buttons (- +) and two "adjust" buttons (- +) with a row of icons (showing which parameter you're adjusting) with lights underneath on the left. I know that the "sun" icon is brightness and the "half moon" icon is contrast, but I don't know what the rest are.

After selecting "brightness," I hit the adjust "+" button a couple of times and I expected to see a bar graph showing my adjustment, but there was nothing, so I left it alone. I don't want to screw up my monitor so I want to make sure that I'm doing this right. It says "recall" under the select and adjust buttons with "arrows" pointing to two buttons. I assume that you press these to go back to your default settings.

So, how do I go about doing this correctly? __________________
Paul

In the moniter click the menu button. Select brightness and edit