XySearch server down for awhile...

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

Bad news. An unsupervised guest of a certain "young adult" member of my
household vomited on the computer that is, or was, the XySearch server. Mostly
dark beer (a great English porter to be precise), foam and molasses and sugary
everything -- about 48 or 60 mostly fluid ounces right into the keyboard of the
old Fujitsu D735X laptop that was managing this task and several other
scheduled, robotic chores (old computers are great for this sort of thing,
because Internet data transmission is fundamentally very slow compared to
anything else computers do, so even the most pathetic piece of junk can "keep
up" as long as there aren't multiple simultaneous users). Anyway, the laptop
is hosed (I'd try to clean it, but can't figure out how to get the case open).

I can put another old junker into service -- I backed up all the data through
2002, although I need to reconstruct a couple of command files that I refined
after the last backup. The PROBLEM is that I'm leaving home for three months
in just a couple of days. I had intended to leave the laptop running
unattended (as it has been for five months or so), but I'm reluctant to do that
with an old clunker desktop workstation -- twice in 30 years they've
spontaneously ignited (smoke, flames), luckily when I was present, and I won't
risk that. Neither do I have time to configure a safe machine before I leave.
It's terrible timing, and I'm thoroughly aggravated.

I may be able to put a different machine into temporary service at a remote
location in a few weeks, but frankly that wasn't part of my plans for June --
we're probably looking at September. (Later: I got the case open, and maybe
it will dry out? Ugh!) My apologies.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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