telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (11/19/90)
This past week brought numerous problems my way in the moderating/editing and distribution of the Digest. For starters, two days in a row we were literally flooded with messages, receiving about a hundred new submissions each day. Under a best case scenario, postings would run about two days behind. But what actually happened was that (1) the editor here (EMACS) got into some hassle and would not work right until delta.eecs.nwu.edu got rebooted. Two or three issues this past week were very sloppy, in my estimation, and in fact for a couple days issues were taking *two or three hours* -- per issue -- to process and get in the system because the system kept crashing, knocking me off line, etc. So a big backlog of stuff, combined with very slow processing meant some messages this past week have been three or four days later than usual in getting out. Sorry. To compound things, (2) the Usenet gateway here is a machine called 'accuvax' and over the weekend it shut down ... or at least it would not accept postings. At one point I had about fifty messages waiting to go to comp.dcom.telecom which finally had to be rerouted through my backup account at cs.bu.edu. To make matters still worse, (3) after I got all the messages rerouted over to cs.bu.edu I lost a major portion of my directory there, including the poster.daemon program, and had to spend a few hours reconstructing that. Finally, and although it is of no direct concern to you, I've been obliged to spend about 60 hours per week at my office for the past two weeks catching up on a huge backlog of stuff *there* -- so the Digest has been getting out when/if I have had time to work on it. Maybe this week will be better. I again urge you to please: *** READ THE RESPONSES OF OTHERS BEFORE YOU WRITE *** You do not have to be the first person to answer everything posted here. If you see others have written virtually identical messages, then please forgo your posting. At present I can only post about a quarter to a third of what comes in; please don't force the ratio even lower than this. I like printing your stuff, but not in the quantity it came in this past week. Another True Confession! The next issue of the Digest will contain an article of interest to all: 'Confessions of a Telemarketer' ... yes, one of our regular readers has been thus employed, and will make his public confession in these columns later today. Watch for it. Last, I wish a happy Thanksgiving Day this Thursday to our USA readers! It'll be a nice four day weekend for some folks, I'm sure! Patrick Townson TELECOM Moderator