The Silence of the LAN

I've been in Chicago on a contract for some time now, and had come back for two weeks to get some stuff done. Last Saturday, an hour before we left, everything was fine. On the way out, Steph mentioned that her webmail wasn't working. I figured I'd check it when we got back to Chicago.

Except that I couldn't get into the server.

After a long conversation with Brian, it transpired that there was no bootable drive on the machine. And I didn't have any Linux boot CDs here. And the only CD burner left at home was in the garage. And the machine it attaches to was disassembled.

So here I am in Texas again this weekend, and thankfully was able to recover the data off the dead drive (the system wouldn't even recognize it at first). So I'm back - or at least the system is, and all is well, or soon will be.