This site has been blasted by a spam generator for a couple days, which is why it was down most of yesterday and may be down a few more times over the near future. Hopefully not.   The spammer is being partially blocked, enough to defeat his message but enough is left to just post random-worded messages. It's an irritant mostly in that it takes valuable time to deal with it at a time of year none of us have extra time.   I hope you'll shoulder through any ups and downs and keep visiting. Thanks for your readership!   UPDATE: Allowing comments is the attraction for spammers, even posts that are months or years old. Very few people are ever likely to discover a valid new comment that is that old. There is no real service to readers to leave posts open for extended periods. Anyone whose sole purpose is to leave me a note can do so by e-mail much more effectively.   It will be my practice in the future to leave comments open only for a relatively brief period. Once a post rolls off the opening page (currently set to 10 posts), chances are that comments will be disabled soon after that. Depending on the topic and whether a post has been hit by spammers, it could be sooner.   I encourage anyone wishing to comment on a post to do so early. I simply don't have time to always be monitoring comments and I would be mortified if a totally inappropriate comment was left in place for an extended time (read: something we wouldn't want our children to see). I appreciate everyone's understanding.