After getting newsgroups back online for a few minutes,  I understood that
Floyd decided to take down our power...  No problem, the UPS's will handle
that - the Energy company in these here parts tend to get power restored within
a couple of hours, tops.

WRONG!

13 hours later...

Power restored to both home and office (they are 700' away from each other),
and quite a bit of water needed to be pumped from my home, as well as the
replacement carpeting and the tossing of other things.  Interesting end of the
week and weekend.

All in all, Newsgroup gateway is up and operational (I checked it this
morning) -- it's been up since yesterday afternoon.  We will be changing
providers within a few days or so, but this should be seamless except for the
path, which will no longer go through CCCD.  Since Mark is no longer with CCCD,
we've been looking at ways to wean ourselves off of their servers.  CCCD has
been good enough to continue services until we find another feed.  We have
found it, but are trying to ensure that filtering is not put into place.

Thanks for your patience.  It's been an interesting weekend here in BSEPA...
and for those contemplating HPWorld 2000 --- Floyd was the exception, not the
rule, for this area.  By the time hurricanes *usually* hit this area, they've
weakened considerably and just produce a lot of rain and some wind.  Our county
(Bucks, just north of Philadelphia), as well as Philadelphia and other
surrounding counties were declared disaster areas by Clinton so this gives you
an idea of what did happen even this far north.  A group of counties running up
New Jersey toward New York were also declared.

We've lost bridges and roads, many places area still flooded even in this
immediate vicinity and this far north.  Makes people stop and think, and pray
for, the folks in the Carolinas and Virginia, which took the direct hits.  We
were lucky - I have friends down there, and I know MARUG was to have their
meeting at Myrtle Beach, SC in a month.  Here's hoping that cleanup can occur
fast enough for MARUG to still have their meeting, as they are always good.

Regards,
Joe (The house is sort of taken care of --- now today, the office, and sorting
that out!)