rsu mailing list problem (starting around 12:00 CST Dec 17)

All rsu mailing list members,

Several hundred old (up to 18 months old) rsu messages were sent out
starting Dec 17 and ending around Dec 21.

Sorry, it was several days before I was aware of the problem.

The problem:

My ISP was purchased by another ISP and they switched the news servers
without notifying customers. (I wasn't even notified of the purchase.)
Progress in gating the rec.sport.unicycling messages via a local news
server variable. When they switched news servers, the new server had
the last 18 months of rsu on it and its local news server variable told
mailman that the last message gated to the mailing list was dated around
23 June 2003. (Note that this variable is meaningful only on its own
server; it can be way off when used on a second news server.)

So, mailman proceeded to queue all messages from the new server newer
than about 18 months. The total number of messages queued was around
70,000. Fortunately, the processing of queued messages is throttled
so mere mortals have a ghost of a chance of looking at each message
and so people with limited mail box space will not receive several
thousand messages per hour, etc.

Before I noticed the problem, about 250-350 old messages dated anywhere
between 20 June 2003 and around Nov 2004 were actually sent. I give my
sincerest apologies to every one that had to deal with these messages.
I'm grateful that it was only a few hundred rather than the potential
of several tens of thousands.

Again, please accept my apologies for this problem.

To be sure no messages were lost since about Dec 17 when the problem
occurred, I restarted the rec.sport.unicycling gateway to Dec 16.
So, for the past day or two, the rsu mailing list has been catching
up to today and it may take another day for the queue to completely
empty. You may have already received a few of these messages,
especially the ones dated Dec 16 (I've error'ed on the side of
duplicating a few messages than omitting them).

Hopefully, my new ISP will be more reliable than the first one and
the rsu mailing list will see no further disruptions (crossing fingers).

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs
unicycling (rsu) mailing list owner & rec.sport.unicycling proponent
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