You can certainly tell when it's getting near the end of the quarter around here at RIT, as the servers grind to a halt. Great timing. As if we have the time to be sitting around waiting for our requests to be processed—or timeout as is more so the case.

So, if you've been trying to access the blog lately, it's likely you've been seeing a lot of this picture in the status bar of your browser.

If it's any consolation, just know you're in good company: 15,000 RIT students are all doing the same thing.

Update: I just talked with the campus ITS Help Desk about the problem with web services, and apparently there are so many infected computers on the campus network, with the latest Microsoft-exploit virus (SASSER), that the servers are being overwhelmed by it. So, if you're running any Microsoft OS, here's what to do:

• Copy and paste http://www.microsoft.com/windowsupdate into the address line of your browser and press Enter to start Windows Update (in Windows 2000 and XP) or Product Update (in Windows 95/98 and NT). Your operating system will be analyzed and you will be provided with the number and type of updates (patches) that are available for your system.
• Follow the instructions from Microsoft to download and apply the critical patches.

Thank you, Microsoft, for ultimately being to blame for this latest hit to my productivity.