My apologies to all contributors... This site experienced a serious breakdown last week, between Monday/Tuesday 15/16 October. I was in Berlin at the time.

My provider still can't explain what happened, although there should be logs for everything. Well, as Wolfe says (in Over My Dead Body, I think), "No matter how many tricks you learn, life knows a better one."

So that the catastrophe is sufficiently bad, the back-ups of this site partially failed us, too.

What does "partially" mean? Well, all pictures added to this site over the last 18 months or so are lost irretrievably. I should have made a second backup of pictures, too, of course. But, who knew?

Among the things lost are Danielle's fantastic book covers for Wolfe stories. I hope she has a copy of them somewhere (in fact, I should have a copy of them, too) and that we can restore their display on this site later on. Among other things lost are all your fine Wolfean avatars in this board. I trust the contributors can upload their amazing avatars once more to their profiles; I apologize for the inconvenience. And yes, from now on I'll have multiple backups made of everything (including pictures) ever posted to this site, so that this kind of outage never happens again.

Fortunately, all texts have been preserved. Not a single word or letter ever posted here or on the quotations pages got lost – I had made multiple backups of all texts on this site, as it's obvious that texts are the most important aspect of a site concentrating on quotations. What I had apparently underestimated was the danger to the pictures posted on this site – only one backup of them was made, and it failed us.

I apologize for all the trouble.

I'm so sorry, Alex! You've had one of the top sites for Stout/Wolfe on the internet for ages and I'm relieved to see that you still do.

One might be inclined to suspect Zeck for causing this mishap but judging from the poll here, I'd say it's a case of cherchez la femme -- Dora Chapin.

Oh yes! Just to reassure you Alex I have my Nero Wolfe cover artwork still, of course. So, do you want me to send them to you, or did you find copies on your computer? Just tell me what's up! Good thing you didn't loose everything on this site. Technology...it is so untrustworthy!

Thanks a lot, Danielle! I'll be restoring your pictures to the webpages later on, don't worry. (In fact, anyone can restore them, but I don't want to bother you or anyone else with this.)

I think I'll find your pictures somewhere on my computer, too; after all, I was editing some of your pictures to "allay copyright concerns".

If you wish, you may also email me the files to a@avenarius.sk or upload them to the quotations pages themselves. After a user logs in, an Upload file link appears in the left-column menu under the Search box. Once the files are re-uploaded to the site, they can properly be integrated in their former locations again. I'll make sure this will be taken care of.