I have eventually met the Higher Management. They are considering hiring me to produce a simplified version of the Magic Libram I had mentioned in my previous note, and to provide some amount of Magic Training to my colleague so she can quickly become competent enough to maintain the software I wrote. The only difference with their former 'project' is that I managed to convince them that this isn't going to magically solve the problem, and will only help in 'easy' cases, "but then that's better than nothing" they said. My impression is that this conviction will wear off in a few weeks, but nevermind. They took back all keys from me, and said I wouldn't be allowed to work during the weekend any more, and then only in the user's room, although "this could perhaps be re-considered later". What is certain is I won't have time nor desire to prepare any kind of document during weekdays in the overcrowded user room where you have to file the queue to get yourself a terminal. Well needless to say I wasn't very pleased and set up my price relatively high (ie "unthinkably high for an unexperienced beginner" in their own scale, but since the duration of the work is very short I am confident that they can find the money if they do want to). The Managers are presently "considering" the offer and will produce a return code shortly. Meanwhile I'll be off tomorrow and all of next week because of exams, mandatory courses and similarly rejoicing activities. When I come back ERIC's password might have been changed if the management's return code was nonzero, but the account will be kept alive anyway since they have decided not to remove my software and they'll therefore need it for maintenance. This is satisfactory as it implies that I'll be able to have my mail forwarded later without problem. All of this to tell you that in the future, I will probably appear more often on ERIC@PASTEUR (5 min from home) or ERIC@FRULM11 (20 min from home) than on ERIC@FRECP11 (1h15 from home). I would like to express my deepest thanks to Stephane Accart and Bernard Caudron, who have kindly accepted to create guest accounts for me on their nodes and to take up all the important distribution lists held at FRECP11, thus preventing a possible disruption of traffic (although it would now seem that LISTSERV@FRECP11 will stay alive, this wasn't all that obvious at the beginning). A final note: I can retrieve the stuff in the reader of ERIC@FRECP11 and ERIC@CEARN from either account. I will set up ERIC@FRULM11 likewise the first time I use it, but presently I can't pick up anything from its reader. However mail in the reader of ERIC@PASTEUR can't be summoned from anywhere (that's a HASP-connected ASCII machine, and what mail and message service it provides is already astonishing considering the primitive link protocol that is being used). I would say that at present it would be best to keep sending mail to ERIC@FRECP11, and if it suddenly disappears, just send mail to PASTEUR and binaries to FRULM11. Also, please note that PASTEUR cannot process print files (it does support NETDATA so that's not a problem) - this implies that LISTSERV console logs can't be retagged there. I plan to use PASTEUR for mail since it's on my regular way back home, and FRULM11 only when access to a VM system is required. Cheers, Eric