2:47 a.m. My lucky numbers, but you wouldn't know it. I have a computer situation here. I can't get my server to work or my old pages to come up. I type this, therefore, totally in the metaphorical dark because who knows? If this attempt will ever see the light?

I shout into the void. I would try to write to the server people, but since the server seems to be broken, and ... and the camera software isn't working either. My lovely picture of frozen corn is stuck in the camera. I will have to reconsider my whole approach this evening.

Ok. I'm back. Still trying to cope. I've eaten all the corn and I've found a nice photo of Roy that I'd already scanned. It's autographed to Gruskin and Birnes -- that would be Igor's father and someone named Gruskin. It's a very long story and it's too fragile to trust to these few strands of hair-thin fiber.

Can I tell you that everything possible has begun to go wrong electronically tonight?

3:16. I just checked in again with the server and now suddenly, it's back to normal and there is the hope that I can continue to work tonight and upload my stuff in relative peace and comfort and safety. The irony here is not lost on me.

I have become totally dependent on this web exercise. I write, I post, I write, I post. We are now leaving the cold white landscape of January behind, and I want to celebrate that fact. Not privately, but here. Here on the frontier. Here at the rocky border to tomorrowland.

I have old five-and-a-quarter disks -- lots of them. Black squares they are. Black holes. Optical disks and a few Syquest cartridges. As mute and incomprehensible as the quartz crystal hanging in the window that may or may not project a rainbow if you turn it just so.

We keep choosing new ways to preserve the past and then we lock up the technology with the keys inside. Newspapers full of acid are shredding along the sloppy, casual fold of some other busy morning and the words are brushed away like crumbs.

We've done a little better with Trigger. He's perfectly preserved, I've heard. Mane combed, nostrils flared. You can actually pet him and look into his spun glass eyes. Whereas my words? As substantial as those clouds on a fading black and white photo.

And I hope you get this message. I hope there's no varmit in the snow outside your office gnawing on your phone line right this very minute. I hope you've paid your electric bill, plugged in your surge protector, and figured out how to activate the hard drives.

We are riding all night to beat the dawn. February is right over the horizon. We'll make a hard copy and stuff it under the mattress, just to be sure.

Yee-haw!