Nearctic Spider Database Dead

With great sadness, I will no longer be serving the Nearctic Spider Database unless something remarkable happens.

On March 17, 2010, the power supply sparked in my server, shorted out the motherboard and as a consequence, the hard drives seized up. While I of course have back-ups, unbeknown to me the incremental drive image for the applications portion of the server was corrupt. The latest working drive image was January 2007 - hardly useful to rebuild the server. This means I have to reconstruct the server from bare metal, which would be a significant financial hit and a significant consumption of time away from family.

The website currently serves a flat html page where one may download the code and data until March 31, 2010 at which time it will evaporate.

I estimate it would take a solid week to re-install and iron-out the kinks. But, if it takes that long, surely it would be better to have a fool-proof system. And, in particular, one NOT dependent on Microsoft software.