> I wonder if they went back down again, until today----as Ron
> announced----

Yes, they went up briefly on Friday and again yesterday, but the database
was unstable and kept crashing.  Today everything worked all day long, so I
think it's over now.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

> Should pehaps be thinking about investing in some new electronic
> equipment---

Ironically, that is exactly what precipitated this whole mess.  You should
see the motley conglomeration of geriatric computers that made up our
network.  Most of our workstations were old Pentium 100 desktops (which were
already well-used even when we bought them), some of them still running
Windows 95.  Even the "server" was an ancient Cyrix based Packard Bell, all
we could afford at the time.  But the duct tape and chewing gum that held
them together was starting to wear thin.  So, in order to prevent a
catastrophic crash caused by one of these dinasaurs melting down, we bought
some real computers and started replacing one at a time, to minimize
downtime.  It was supposed to be a seamless and gradual upgrade. Then all
hell broke loose.

Anyway, our company database is now running on a shiny new Windows 2000
server.  Now I have to migrate the rest of our software to it.  But not  for
a while.  I need a breather before I dive back into it.  Boy am I frazzled.

The good news is, I think that the impact on customer orders will be
minimal, with very few isolated exceptions. The guys at the shop really came
through, and put in a lot of extra time and effort to keep us generally on
schedule despite everything.  So I think most people will be blissfully
unaware of the sheer panic and pandemonium that we went through during the
last few days.

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  (215) 234-VWVW
  www.busdepot.com

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