Deep Silence

[Mike Muuss]

You probably all think that I have dropped off the face of the earth.
Very nearly right.  Life for me these past few months has redefined
the term "frantic";  a workaholic's dream, perhaps, but overall a bit much.

Our major preocupations have been the preparation of the first BRL CAD
Distribution, a task which has required enormous expenditures of time, and
the recent arrival of our Cray X-MP/48.  Not only was it necessary to make
the front-end preparations for the Cray, but we had to get all the CAD
software ready for use on the Cray.  (Alas, the Cray won't be running UNIX
until January; watch for a jubilant announcement in this space early in 1987).

What this means for you, the subscriber, is that mail to the -Requests list
has been getting weighed, but not answered.  Fortunately, the list runs
fairly well on auto-pilot.  (In the words of W.  H.  Huggins, "It's amazing
what you can do with a Shell script and a few editor commands").  Two big
exceptions to this were (a) converting the Gould that transmits the list to
"4.3 BSD", and (b) the recent re-naming of the USENET news groups.  Probably
fortunately, (b) prevented the backlog from (a) from being astronomical.

Dec  5 20:08:22 brl-sem vmunix:  Volunteer Detected on Long-Range Scanners!

Fortunately for all of us, Bob Reschly <Reschly at BRL.ARPA> has volunteered
to slog through the current backlog, and to hunt down the obstructions in
the USENET news relay.  If you have a request pending, relax, and Bob will
take care of things.  If you are still having problems by the end of next
week, please re-send your request.

	Best,
	 -Mike