Early last week I fell victim to a brief bout of flu, but the fever was intense. It kept me away from the newswriting screen for the Newswire, and so we appeared to be off the air and away from our regular schedule.

There is a way to prepare for something like that outage, by simply banking stories in the CMS engine that powers the Newswire. I say simply with a little shudder, because writing ahead of developments is the heavy lifting that goes into sustaining the only HP 3000 news information resource.

A genuine chain of succession, in a pinch, would be to have another writer-editor at the ready to call or text and say, "take the helm for today, Brian." And Mr. Edminster, who's written and researched articles, would kick into gear. But that's still in the planning stages, as people like to say who don't have a plan finalized. There used to be other news resources for the 3000 world. But the likes of Interex, HP Professional, HP User and other former competitors has vanished. A lot like the raft of companies who wanted to help you migrate in 2003.

To draw the focus away from this weathered keyboard artist, a chain of succession works well if you have people in your network who could do your job. At least half as well for a little while, or a team of them to call upon serially, until you're back in the saddle. Your special knowledge of your company's business operations? Probably close to impossible to succeed, unless you work in a team where tribal knowledge is shared religiously.

The MPE-style backstop is an independent support company. In time, this sort of resource could even learn your business practices. We just got a request from a long-time 3000 customer who's started to look around for this help. Things as basic as "where in the world do I get patches" come up on the succession to-do list.

I am instructed to learn what kind of  software support is available for MPE. We are on 7.5 already. What this means is how we get important patches, especially network subsystem patches. This is to try to prevent systems being penetrated. Is anything available from HP, for fee or for free? Can third parties obtain and provide these to us?