Host technical support responded with: PHP has been successfully recompiled with curlSSL support and the error message you were seeing is no longer occurring.
I checked it and the script returned: Took 9.070009 seconds to send a request to www.webassist.com/
I was able to get to the setup screen in the wizard.
Thanks for your help!
One more question after I configure the store I turn off all the write permissions correct?
Mike