Mil-Veh Members:
I had hoped to make the cutover to the DSL connection a smooth one, but I
learned yesterday that my old ISP is cutting off all ISDN service on Saturday,
leaving me scrambling to complete the transition. I apologize now for the
disruptions you will almost certainly experience. What kind of disruptions?
First, it is likely that www.mil-veh.org will be inaccessible by name for
probably at least a week. The time will vary according to your own ISP (you
could see no disruption, or you might not be able to see the site for a month;
it all depends). However, you should be able to access the site starting no
later than Sunday by its "IP" number (kind of like the Internet equivalent of
a phone number). www.mil-veh.org will live at 66.47.50.227 starting this
weekend, so should be able to access it in your web browser by typing
http://66.47.50.227/ and the main page should appear. I will double check my
HTML code to make sure that links will still work using that address.
E-mail will be trickier. Outgoing mail from the server to you should work, but
sending your mail directly to the list won't work until the domain records are
updated (the ones that connect mil-veh.org to its IP number of 66.47.50.227).
The workaround I propose is this: if you find that mail you send to the list
suddenly starts to bounce (the error will typically be "Can't contact server")
send your post to mil_veh@yahoo.com (note that that is an underscore, not a
dash, unlike the list proper). That is my account on Yahoo and I will download
the mail and redirect it to the list myself. This means that mail will likely
be delayed a bit, but I will try to batch process it at least a couple of
times a day. If you don't want something forwarded to the list, start its
subject with PRIVATE or something equally eye-catching and I'll keep it to
myself, or you can Instant Message me (mil_veh) with the Yahoo IM client. This
"via yahoo" workaround could last as long as a month for some of you, but I am
hopeful that it won't be nearly that long for most of you. I'll keep you
posted. If I need to change these procedures, I will still be able to e-mail
you all.
Again, I apologize for this problem. I should have expected something like
this and managed the process better. Something always crops up at the last
minute. The good news is that this new connection should be much better than
the old. The website should come up faster and mail should get out to you
faster, too. Thankfully, my DSL provider is Covad and my ISP now is
Earthlink/Mindspring, one of the largest ISPs in the US. That's no guarantee
that the company won't go out of business tomorrow, but I am more optimistic.
I am just happy that Earthlink doesn't use North Point Communications for its
DSL service--North Point recently went bankrupt and is shutting down its
network, leaving its ISPs in the lurch. Funny thing about North Point: until
last week, its founder and Chairman lived in the apartment just across the
hall from mine. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Anyway, I'm trying not to let mil-veh sic transit, so to speak, and expect
things to get better after the bumps. In the meantime, I hope you stick with
the list and keep it a solid, on-topic, and friendly information resource for
everyone.
--Arthur, Mil-Veh List Admin in Absentia
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 04 2001 - 08:10:49 PDT