(2012-01-18)
As many of you know, today sites including Reddit and Wikipedia are
&quot;going dark&quot; to protest two Internet censorship bills.  We at
ASSTR, of course, are vehemently against censorship as well.  To learn more
about this issue and what you can do to help, visit
http://sopastrike.com/strike/ (http://sopastrike.com/strike/) or Google's
site at https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
(https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/).  

(2011-11-24)
From the East Side to the West Side, Happy Thanksgiving to all our fellow
Americans, and Happy Holidays to all our friends across the planet!  

(2011-07-27)
It's that time of year again, folks!  The ASSTR administration is making
its (mostly) annual Labor Day Site Upgrade trip to perform maintenance and
hardware upgrades on our servers.  You can read all the details here
(http://www.asstr.org/fundraiser_201107.txt).<BR/><BR/>We are requesting
donations to fund this trip - with airfare, lodging, and cost of equipment,
the trip budget is around $5000.  If you have any spare change - even $5,
please consider making a donation.<BR/><BR/>Donations can be made quickly,
securely, and easily by credit card
(https://secure.asstr.org/cgi-bin/donations/ccdonation.cgi) or by mailing
cash, check, or money order to:<BR/><BR/>ASSTR<BR/>PO Box
583<BR/>Alexandria, VA 22313-0583<BR/><BR/>We thank you in advance for your
support!  

(2010-12-25)
To all our friends across the globe, MERRY CHRISTMAS/HAPPY HOLIDAYS/HAPPY
NEW YEAR!  We wish Everyone a Safe and Happy Holiday Season!!!  

(2010-11-29)
We've scheduled a trip for Dec 3-6 to make upgrades and repairs to site
equipment.  ASSTR services may be disrupted during this time, but we will
make every effort to minimize downtime.  

(2010-11-23)
Unfortunately the power problems gave way to our primary firewall server
failing.  Luckily we were able to get most of the site back up using our
backup firewall server, but we are still working to get email services
restored.  We hope to have everything functional again by next weekend.  

(2010-11-23)
We apologize for the recent site unavailability over the past few days; our
Internet service provider has been experiencing power issues at its data
center that we hope they have resolved.  

(2010-04-01)
Happy April Fool's Day!<BR/><BR/>We have finished transitioning to a new
Account Application system that will help get new authors and their stories
available for your reading pleasure quicker than ever before.  Already the
new system has helped get accounts set up for a plethora of new authors
(/authors_new.html).<BR/><BR/>In other news, we are kicking our our first
annual Spring to Support Donations Campaign.  Our goal is to raise $10,000
to help cover the costs of running the site.  You can read more about our
costs on our donations page (/donations/), where you can also find details
on making a donation by cash, check, or money order.  The quickest and
easiest way to donate is online via our secure credit card donations
(https://secure.asstr.org/cgi-bin/donations/ccdonation.cgi) page.  Either
way, please consider helping out.  Remember, every dollar counts and YOU
really can make a difference.  Thank you!  

(2008-12-13)
ASSTR wishes everyone across the globe a very happy Holiday season!  As
you're buying gifts for family and friends, please remember to put us on
your list!  A donation - no matter how small - is needed and very much
appreciated.  Make a Donation (/donations.html) 

(2008-11-26)
The ASSTR team wishes all its friends celebrating Thanksgiving a most happy
one!  

(2008-09-01)
The Labor Day upgrades were a great success!  Thank you to all those who
made a donation and helped us accomplish all that we did.  

(2008-07-29)
Good news and bad news folks!  The bad news is that our firewall is
experiencing some problems that are preventing us from sending or receiving
any email.  This means no new account applications will be accepted or
accounts will be created...  until...  The good news: we are making a trip
over Labor Day weekend (8/29) to repair the firewall and install a
redundant firewall to mitigate any future problems.<BR/><BR/>We are
requesting donations to fund this trip - with airfare, lodging, and cost of
equipment, the trip budget is around $3000.  If you have any spare change -
even $5, please consider making a donation.  Donations can be made by
credit card (https://secure.asstr.org/cgi-bin/donations/ccdonation.cgi) or
by mailing cash, check, or money order to:<BR/>PO Box 583<BR/>Alexandria,
VA 22313-0583<BR/><BR/>We thank you in advance for your support!  

(2007-12-03)
Happy Holidays from ASSTR!  We wish everyone a safe and happy season!  

(2007-03-02)
ASSTR will be performing upgrades to its equipment the weekend of March
23-25, 2007.  During this time we will be adding two additional servers to
our arsenal as well as making some performance tweaks to some of our
existing equipment.  While we will make every effort to prevent any service
interruptions, we anticipate the need to take the search engine offline for
some amount of time during the weekend.  Thank you to our many donors for
making this upgrade possible.  

(2006-12-19)
Happy Holidays from everyone at ASSTR!  As year 2006 winds to a close, we
want to remind you that there is change going on behind the scenes at
ASSTR. We're working on a facelift for our web site that will make stories
easier to find and enable more communication between our visitors.  Stay
tuned for more!<BR/><BR/>In other news, we've been hurting recently for
donations; what we've received has been less than our expenses.  If you
have anything to spare after buying presents for loved ones, please
consider making a donation (/donations.html).  

(2005-12-16)
The search engine remains partially broken pending a fix to one of our
backend servers; we are currently working with our ISP to resolve this
issue.  Meanwhile, the ASSTR team would like to wish all our visitors a
safe and happy holiday season.  

(2005-10-04)
The memory upgrade is now complete, so things should be smooth sailing for
at least a little while.  We appreciate everyone's patience and support.  

(2005-09-19)
Great news: the search engine is back online!  We appreciate everyone's
patience.  We're still having some trouble with our new server due to lack
of memory, but an upgrade is on the way and slated for installation next
week.  

(2005-09-07)
Overall, the upgrades performed over the past weekend were an enormous
success.  However, as often happens, some complications did arise.  Most
notably, our search engine is currently unavailable.  We are working
diligently to restore search functionality to the site and appreciate your
patience.  

(2005-09-01)
The ASSTR administration wishes to express its sympathies for the victims
and families affected by Hurricane Katrina.  We encourage people to
consider making a donation to the American Red Cross
(http://www.redcross.org/).<BR><BR>In separate news, we would like to
remind everyone that we will be performing upgrades this Saturday. 
Unavailability of various services is expected starting around 12pm EDT and
lasting for several hours.  We appreciate your patience.  

(2005-07-02)
ASSTR wishes its friends in the United States a safe and enjoyable 4th of
July weekend.  We couldn't have asked for better weather on the East Coast.
On a more site-related topic, progress is being made with our new server.
We hope to get it installed and online in the coming weeks.  

(2005-05-25)
We are experiencing severe problems with our main server that are causing
numerous problems site-wide.  We are working to get the server fixed ASAP.
Please bear with us in the meantime.  

(2005-04-11)
This week (April 11-April 17), ASSTR celebrates National Library Week.  As
one of the largest online libraries, at least for its specific genre, ASSTR
invites you to take a moment to appreciate all the libraries you use on a
regular basis and the authors, librarians, and others who make them
possible.  

(2005-03-26)
ASSTR wishes all its Christian friends a Happy Easter!  

(2004-12-14)
ASSTR wishes all its visitors around the world a safe and happy holiday
season!  

(2004-08-12)
Today ASSTR is pleased to release a major update to its search engine. 
Readers can now search many of the works hosted at ASSTR by author, title,
story category/code, and more.  Just follow the Advanced Search
(http://www.asstr.org/search.php) links throughout the ASSTR site to check
it out.  

(2004-07-31)
We're planning a trip to California to upgrade the ASSTR site hardware over
labor day weekend, and we need your help
(http://www.asstr.org/donations.html).  If you're interested in the
details, take a look at the email we just sent our interested donors
(http://www.asstr.org/email_2004-07-31.txt).  

(2004-05-09)
The Reader Spotlights (/reader_spotlights.html) system is up and running
again, as is our ASSTR News mailing list.  To keep up with the latest ASSTR
news, be sure to sign up
(http://lists.asstr.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/asstr-news) if you have not
already done so.  

(2004-04-28)
We just upgraded the memory in our search engine, and it's now running
faster than ever before.  Thanks to our donors for making the upgrade
possible.  

(2004-03-22)
We are having some problems with some of our new hardware that may cause
the site to go down for periods of time.  We are working as quickly as
possible to resolve the problem.  

(2003-09-13)
If you have recently read a story worth recommending to others, now's your
chance to speak up!  New to ASSTR is the Readers' Spotlights page
(http://www.asstr.org/reader_spotlights.html), listing stories recommended
by fellow readers.  If you know of a good story at ASSTR, tell the world
(http://www.asstr.org/cgi-bin/reader_picks.cgi) about it.
   

(2003-09-02)
ASSTR can once again accept donations via credit card and needs your help
(https://secure.asstr.org/cgi-bin/donations/ccdonation.cgi)!  If you can
spare some change - even as low as one measly dollar, please consider
supporting one of your favorite, starving web sites.  Remember: All
donations to ASSTR are tax-deductible to the maximum extent allowed by law.
   

(2003-07-16)
A new study
(http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=health&cat=prostate_cancer)
says masturbating lowers the risk of prostate cancer in men.  

(2003-07-04)
ASSTR wishes all its friends in the United States a safe and happy
Independence day weekend.  

(2002-06-09)
Several users requested the ability to set a maximum and minum range for
the size of stories returned by the search engine.  We have implemented
this feature.  

(2002-05-26)
You can search the author profiles to help you locate stories by authors
who write stories that match your interests.  A profile search can be done
from the authors pages (authors.html).  

(2002-04-08)
The transition to our new ISP went fairly smooth, but unfortunately the
search engine server's power supply died...  again...  So, regretfully the
engine will be down until the PS can be replaced.  

(2002-04-04)
ASSTR learned yesterday that our ISP was recently bought out, requiring
some changes to our setup and relocation of our equipment.  This will
result in a site-wide downtime beginning sometime tomorrow and hopefully
ending by Friday night.  

(2002-03-15)
Having finally recovered from a hard drive crash, the search engine is back
online for your enjoyment.  We're taking measures to minimize the effects
of future hardware failures.  We appreciate your patience during the search
engine's downtime.  

(2002-01-01)
ASSTR would like to wish all its visitors a Happy New Year!  Here's hoping
for another year of excellent stories to read.<BR><BR>Some of you have
written us about problems with our search enginge.  We're having problems
with the server crashing and are working to resolve the problem as quickly
as possible.  

(2001-11-04)
ASSTR is back, and so far it is significantly faster than it has been since
about last year at this time.  We hope you enjoy the improved service!  Our
new ISP is more expensive, though, and if ASSTR is to continue running
smoothly, we need your help.  If you enjoy ASSTR, please consider making a
donation (donations.html) today.  

(2001-10-26)
<B>Scheduled Downtime Notice!</B><BR> All ASSTR services will be offline
starting at approximately noon on Saturday, November 3rd through late
afternoon on Sunday, November 4th.  This downtime is required to move our
servers to a faster ISP.  When ASSTR comes back online, it should be faster
than it ever has been before!  

(2001-04-18)
Check out the New Authors (/authors_new.html) page which offers a
chronologically sorted list of both new authors and authors who have made
recent changes to their account.  

(2001-03-17)
The site should be running much better now.  The second server installation
seems to have made a noticeable improvement.  In other news, ASSTR now
accepts donations via PayPal.  Click here (/donations/paypal.html) for more
information.  

(2001-02-16)
Reminder: ASSTR will be down for most of the day tomorrow for much needed
upgrades that will improve the quality of the servies we provide to you. 
ASSTR thanks those donors who have made these upgrades possible and
appreciates your understanding during out downtime.
   

(2001-01-17)
February 17th is the tentative date for the installation of the the second
server that will help offset the bandwidth problems that have plagued ASSTR
since early November.  The administration thanks everyone for their
patience and is especially appreciative of those who have donated to help
the cause.  

(2000-12-16)
The ASSTR administration would like to wish everyone a safe and happy
holiday season.  We have a lot planned for the new year, not the least of
which is taking care of the slowness problems.  One of the admins heard on
the radio that according to a major motion picture studio survey, the thing
women want most for Christmas isn't fine jewelry, flowes, or presents. 
Yes, the #1 thing women want this year is S-E-X.  Here's hoping all those
women get lots of it.  

(2000-11-10)
The ASSTR site will be running much slower than usual for the next couple
months due to a limitation in bandwidth our ISP recently imposed on all its
customers.  We're working to address the problem, but a solution will
require both time and money.  The more you help out, the more bandwidth the
site can afford.  

(2000-10-04)
ASSTR has finally made the news (and in a good way)!  Salon.com has an
article
(http://www.salon.com/sex/feature/2000/10/04/mind_control/index.html) about
mind control erotica that mentions both ASSTR and the ASSTR-hosted
MCStories.com (http://www.mcstories.com) site.  Whether you are into mind
control works or not, the article is an interesting read.  

(2000-08-27)
Changes have been made to the Authors pages (/authors.html) to indicate
when an author has updated his/her web or FTP site.  In other news, ASSTR
will be down around 9AM EDT this Monday for hardware upgrades.  

(2000-08-15)
Another new page has been added to the ASSTR web site.  The latest addition
is the Proofreaders and Editors Center (/proofreaders.html), a place where
authors and proofreaders can come together.  

(2000-07-30)
A new page has been added to the ASSTR site - the Site Map.  This page
details all the areas of the ASSTR site, including some of the lesser known
parts.  

(2000-07-07)
The ASSTR systems will be undergoing hardware upgrades tomorrow morning
(Saturday) at 8:00AM Eastern Daylight Time.  We expect the upgrades to be
complete by 9:00AM.  

(2000-06-30)
ASSTR would like to wish all its visitors, authors, and supporters in the
United States a safe and happy Independence Day.  We have a lot planned for
this summer, so stay tuned!  In the meantime, be sure to check out our new
Teasers (teasers.html) section.  

(2000-06-05)
Due to abnormally high usage this week, the site is running a lot slower
than normal.  We appreciate your patience as we try to cope with the ever
increasing number of visitors to the site.  

(2000-02-14)
ASSTR is pleased to announce that after years of waiting, a new search
engine is finally available for our visitors.  Like the old engine, the new
one supports full body searching of all the texts.  However, the new engine
is faster, searches the ASSTR authors and collectors web sites, allows for
"not" words, and supports consecutive word (phrase) searching.  You're sure
to find it useful.  

(2000-01-01)
At ASSTR, Y2K means a big web site overhaul.  If you find any problems or
have other comments, please be sure to email us.  

(1999-12-24)
The administration would like to wish all of its visitors and supporters a
safe and happy holiday season.  We have lots in store for the new year, so
keep checking back!  

(1999-12-18)
A guy going by the name of fRy emailed the ASSTR administration this
evening with a link to his web site (http://freeweb.pdq.net/fry/laid/). On
it, he tells the story of how the Internet got him laid.  Yes, ladies and
gentlemen, to the best of our knowledge, this is a true story of how
someone was able to obtain sex as a result of the Internet.  I read it and
loved it.  The natural language and truth to a lot of what he has to say
impressed me.  Anyway, if you have a spare 10 - 15 minutes, take a read. If
nothing else, it's good for a few laughs.  

(1999-10-02)
Eli the Bearded's QZ.TO erotica site is now hosted at ASSTR.  The address
is http://assm.asstr.org (http://assm.asstr.org),
   although the old www.qz.to addresses will also work.  

(1999-09-16)
ASSTR can now accept VISA or Mastercard for donations.  For those of you
who have been waiting, the time has finally come. Please head on over to
the credit card donations page
(http://www.asstr.org/donations/ccdonations.html).  Credit card donations
can be made anonymously, as the only personal information collected is your
street adddress and zip code.  The administration and thousands of visitors
who use the site can not thank you enough.  

(1999-09-15)
Progress with the ASSM newsgroup is coming along very well.  Credit card
donations should be available either tonight or tomorrow.  A new section
has been added to ASSTR - the Authors' Spotlight Page
(http://www.asstr.org/spotlight.html).  This page will feature
"advertisements" for some of the latest and greatest works here at ASSTR.
If you're looking for something new, check out these recommendations
straight from the authors themselves.  

(1999-09-08)
For those of you who frequent alt.sex.stories, Janey98 and BronwenSM have
created an A.S.S.  "Hall of Fame" (http://www.asstr.org/~ASSHoF).  In other
news, the Alt.Sex.Stories.Moderated Archive Site (formerly known as
www.qz.to/erotica) should be returning (at ASSTR) in the near future. 
Following the return of the archive site will be ASSM newsgroup moderation
services.  To speed up the server and allow for future expansion, we plan
to add a second processor to the server in the not too distant future.  

(1999-08-08)
Welcome back.  Hopefully this will be the last time ever that the site is
down for an extended period of time.  For those who don't already know, the
site was shut down in June, 1999 by its host (a college) due to a
complaint. The site is now hosted at a (very) professional Interent Service
Provider.  This is costing a significant amount of money, and so if you'd
like to see the site remain online, we need _your_ help.  To find out more
information about donating, visit http://www.asstr.org/donations.html 

(1999-04-28)
All planned hardware upgrades have been completed.  Pending the purchase of
a UPS, the system should have almost 100% uptime.  We hope all problems
noted below regarding random crashes have been solved.  

(1999-04-17)
Many of you are probably wondering why the site has been down so much as of
late.  We are experiencing severe problems with the server crashing,
sometimes several times daily, and are trying to resolve the issues as fast
as possible.  In diagnosing this problem, we may have to take some services
offline to eliminate them as a possible cause.  

(1999-03-12)
On behalf of the entire ASSTR Administration, welcome back.  We apologize
for the long amount of downtime and hope it never happens again.

   We've moved equipment again, reinstalled all the software, etc.  so if
you notice any problems, please do everyone a favor and email us at
admin@asstr.org Thank you, and welcome back!  

(1998-12-20)
Our new address is asstr.org ...ie we now own that domain!  So please
remove the ml when using any of our addresses.  To summarize:

   - Email: admin@asstr.org

   - Web Site: http://www.asstr.org

   - FTP Site: ftp://ftp.asstr.org

   The old addresses still work, but may stop working at any time, so we
stronly encourage everyone to start using the new addresses.  Thank you!  

(1998-11-27)
I hope everyone (in the US) had an enjoyable holidy.  As you can see, ASSTR
is once again online.  The reason for the downtime was a combination of a
power failure and a problem with our network switch.  It seems that the ATX
machine ASSTR is running off didn't boot back up after it lost power. 
We're looking into fixing that problem.  As for the switch, expect some
periodic downtime while the problem(s) with that are investigated.

   On a brighter note, the server has been upgraded to a K6-2 300mhz chip
and another 64mb of memory for a grand total of 128MB.  This should give
better response time and allow us to up the total # of simulataneous FTP
users.  

(1998-10-22)
Great news!  ASSTR is now online utilizing a K6 300mhz machine w/ 64 megs
of RAM and a new FTP server.  Please report any problems should be reported
to the administration.  The new server permits us to limit the number of
users per IP address, so those users downloading 30 files with Netscape
simulatenously, your days are over.  This will permit fairer use of the
server for everyone.  We also have a 100 megabit/s connection will will
accomodate the increase in simulatenous users.  The web site (including
author's web pages) will be operational in the very near future.  Look for
the search engine to be online soon as well.  As mentioned below, a mirror
of Eli the Bearded's ASSM is also in the works, complete with search
engine. 

(1998-10-14)
More good news...  Assuming all hardware is here by Friday, ASSTR will, by
this weekend's end, be running on a RedHat Linux Beowulf cluster.  The main
machine will be a K6-2 300MHz machine, soon to be upgraded.  We are also
eyeing a dual pentium-II 333mhz machine as well.  One definite is that
ASSTR's connection to the Internet will be 100 Base-TX, connected almost
directly to a T3.  We should also be connected to "Internet 3" in January.
All these hardware upgrades mean probably 1000 concurrent FTP users instead
of the current 100, search engine results almost in real time, advanced
search engines (al la Alta Vista), and much more.  We have received a copy
of the Alt.Sex.Stories archives courtesy of Eli the Bearded, complete with
search engine, and will have that online soon if all goes well.  The web
site should also be back up assuming the new hardware arrives
(http://www.asstr.ml.org) Stay tuned for more details!  

(1998-09-30)
Wow...  long time no news.  Sorry about that everyone!  We are happy to
have ASSTR back online.  There's of course a lot of news since it has been
so long, so "have at it": First and foremost, mail to admin@asstr.ml.org is
once again working as of a few hours ago.  Apologies go out to those whose
mail bounced back.  Please resend.  The FTP site is currently only allowing
100 simulatenous users.  Good news, however...  we are going to set up a
Beowolf cluster with various machines we've collected, including a K6
200mhz machine.  This machine will have a 100 megabit/s connection to the
Internet, as well as host all files, so transfers should fly. 
Additionally, the cluster will allow for some very fast web hosting, and
hopefully decent search times on complex searches al la alta vista.  If
anyone has any recommendations on good search engines that support complex
searches (and/or/ + / - like Alta Vista) we'd love to hear from you. 
Anyone that would like to donate hardware to our cause is invited to do so.
Email the administration for details.  In other news, ASSTR has found a new
home, so it should be more stable than ever before.  In otherwords, the
quarterly downtimes should be shorter or nonexistant from now on.  No
guarantees, but we're hoping.  The web site should be back online in a week
or so, as soon as the K6 motherboard arrives (it's stuck in Florida what
with the bad weather down there) That's about all the news for now.  If you
are an author and would like ASSTR to host your works, please read the
author's readme in /pub/Authors/ We offer unlimited ftp/web space,
absolutely free/no obligation :) ...and no limitations on hits.  As always,
and comments/complaints/questions should be mailed to admin@asstr.ml.org 

(1998-06-03)
Welcome back.  The administration is happy to bring ASSTR back to the
erotic literature community.  We apologize for the downtime, but in all
honestly it was not completely our fault :) Most of the problems were due
to domain name server problems beyond our control.  If you encounter any
problems with ASSTR, please feel free to email the administration.  

(1998-05-15)
On Wednesday, May 20th, 1998, ASSTR will be going offline for approximately
one (1) week.  The reasons for this include some of the administration
relocating, a scheduled power outage, and vacations for some of the
administration.  Thus all services, INCLUDING EMAIL to admin@asstr.ml.org
will be completely unavailable until approximately June 1st, or as soon as
possible (whichever comes first).  We apologize for the inconvenience.  

(1998-04-22)
The web site is once again operational.  Everything should be working,
including the search engine.  Stay tuned for the implementation of the more
comprehensive search engine.  

(1998-04-21)
Good news!  All data from ASSTR's SCSI drives have been successfully
recovered by an incredibly brilliant Linux guru.  Ergo, the web site will
be up within the next week.  Additionally, a new search engine is in the
works that will be capable of consecutive words searches, enabling users to
search from story authors, titles, phrases, etc.  Three different user
interfaces will be available, including a basic (old style), intermediate
(with pull-down choices for and/or/not) and an advanced (like AltaVista).

   In addition, a new computer is being put together as a second FTP
server. This will allow even more users to log in simultaneously.  And
finally, it has been confirmed that ASSTR WILL HAVE A SUMMER HOME.  Thus
the site will NOT go down this summer (like it has in the past), if all
goes as planned.  

(1998-04-12)
Happy holidays!  The administration would like to wish everyone a safe and
enjoyable holiday, despite the fact that we at college have received
nothing but extra work for our break (our college gives us no time off for
Easter/ Passover/etc.) So those of you who do have a few days off, enjoy
them!  

(1998-04-10)
The administration just learned that the buildings housing the ASSTR
network will lose power from 11pm to 5pm Saturday, April 11th.  In
preparation for this all ASSTR services (email server, web site, and FTP
site) will become unavailable at 10:45am.  We apologize for the
inconvenience.  

(1998-04-05)
For those people living in a timezone that observs daylight savings time,
remember to set your clocks forward!  On a more site related note, the web
site is coming along and should be online shortly.  Also, Celestial Reviews
will be added shortly from the very first to the very latest.  

(1998-04-03)
The web site and search engine should be back online within the next few
weeks.  If all goes as planned, we will be using a Pentium 133mhz machine
for the search engine, thus enabling much more comprehensive searches. 
Stay tuned for more info.  

(1998-03-25)
Call him stupid, but when our sys-admin went to install a new hard drive,
he blew the motherboard.  Ergo, no web server and no search engine until we
get a replacement.  If you would like to donate an old 486 montherboard, or
better yet, a Pentium, please email us.  Rest assure the aforementioned
sys-admin will have no physical contact with any ASSTR hardware donated
from this point on.  

(1998-03-25)
ASSTR is extremely proud to announce the addition of the Celestial Reviews
directory (/pub/Collections/Celestial_Reviews) ...for those not familiar
with Celeste, she is an erotic literature critique famous for her wonderful
reviews.  While at this time the stories reviewed by her are not available
on ASSTR, the reviews all have URLs where the stories reviewed can be
obtained.  

(1998-03-23)
Attention!  Translator needed!

   A Russian author contacted us today and is looking for someone who would
be willing to translate his works from Russian to English.  If you would be
willing to do this, please contact the ASSTR administration at
admin@asstr.ml.org 

(1998-03-08)
Well I hope all the college students enjoy(ed) your spring break.  Just a
note to let everyone know that our ISP will be updating the router software
on March 14th from 4am to 5am.  Therefore ASSTR will be DOWN then.  There
is nothing we can do about it, although we don't expect too many people to
be on ASSTR at this time anyway.  We apologize for the inconvenience.  

(1998-02-14)
Happy valentine's day everyone!  As our gift to you :), we've upped the
maximum number of users to 250.  We're hoping the server will be able to
handle it under the new operating system (we're now running Debian Linux).
If you'd like to donate some memory or other parts, please feel free to do
so.  Email the administration for details.  

(1998-02-06)
Ok, the site is back up running FreeBSD!  Yeah!  If you notice any serious
problems, please email admin@asstr.ml.og.  Thanks 

(1998-02-05)
The administration of ASSTR would like to apologize for the downtime of the
site this evening.  In the process of upgrading, we blew up a power supply.
Unfortunately, there was a significant cost involved in replacing the power
supply.  If you would like to make a donation of any kind, please contact
our public relations supervisor at admin@asstr.ml.org.  Thank-you.  

(1998-02-03)
The administration would like to foreworn all all users of some system
downtime this weekend for software upgrades.  We feel this is necessary to
alleviate some preblems we've recently been experiencing.  We thank you for
your patience and understanding.  

(1998-02-03)
We've been having some hardware problems with the web server/search engine,
which have resulted in periodic downtime.  We apologize for the
inconveniences, and promise that we are working as fast as possible with
what we have available to get everything back to normal.  We thank you for
your patience.  

(1998-01-18)
Our search engine is temporarly down for some upgrading of the system
hardware.  The administration apologizes for the necessity to take it down
so soon after it went online.  Stay tuned for further details.  

(1998-01-17)
ASSTR Press Release ------------------ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

   Our SEARCH ENGINE is HERE!!!  ...the administration is extremely proud
to announce that the entire site is now searchable via the world wide web.
Point your browser to www.asstr.ml.org/search.html and follow the
instructions.  Just be ready to wait in line, as the system is running
rather slowly due to a shortage of RAM.  If you'd like to donate some to
speed up the engine, send some email to admin@asstr.ml.org 

(1998-01-10)
We have been making changes to the DNS entries in order to accomodate an
ASSTR "network" of computers.  We are pleased to announce we now are the
owners of the entire asstr.ml.org domain.  In other words, you will soon be
able to reach our web site at www.asstr.ml.org, while the FTP server will
remain available at asstr.ml.org AND ftp.asstr.ml.org.

   These new DNS changes may make the server unreachable to you at times,
because of the nature of DNS.  Please be patient as we try to squeeze out
all the bugs.

   Additionally, we have made some changes to the site.  Kristen's
Collection, Old Joe's Collection, LEXtext, and Elijah the Bearded's
Collection have all been placed in the /pub/Collections directory.  Because
the directory formerly known as Sorted_by_Category was Old Joe's
collection, it has been placed in with the other collections.  We hope
these changes hope make your visit easier and more enjoyable.  

(1998-01-07)
For those interested, we've added two new authors today.  David L and
Cowgirl are now here at ASSTR for your reading pleasure, although as of yet
they haven't had a chance to update their accounts.  You may find both
authors in the /pub/Authors directory.

   In other news, we're working on putting a full text search engine up on
the web site.  Details will come as we progress with this project.  The
latest updates to this project will be posted here first.  

(1998-01-05)
Welcome back everyone!  We hope each and every one of you had a wonderful
holiday.  The administration apologizes for the downtime starting on Dec
29th and ending just yesterday.  It was due the scheduled power outage
noted below, but the system ran into problems booting back up when the
power was restored.  If anyone wants to donate an UPS, we can ensure that
won't happen again :)

   On another note, a fellow user suggested moving the collections hosted
on ASSTR into a /pub/Collections directory.  We're working on this now, so
if you notice things moving around a little, just look there.  We hope this
makes things easier for everyone.

   And finally, we welcome the addition of LEXtext, available in the new
Collections directory.  If you like stories centered around television
shows, be sure to stop and check it out.  

(1997-12-25)
To all our Christian friends, the administration would just like to wish
each and every one of our guests a most sincere Merry Christmas.  As a
tribute to the great day, OddManOut has written a story for us, which you
can find in /pub/Authors/OddManOut/OddManOut.A_Very_Rejected_Christmas
...his humor in this latest piece is wonderful if you appreciate his comedy
:)
   

(1997-12-21)
Albeit almost a bit late, the administration would like to wish everyone a
very happy holiday season.  The site has been up now for several days at
200 users, so we're beginning to feel confident that it will have no
problems supporting this load.  Also, our mail server has crashed. 
Actually, somone turned it off.  We're now 300 miles away, so turning it
back on would be a little tricky.  So, in the meantime, please direct all
correspondance to admin@asstr.org Thank you, and we apologize for that
inconvenience.  Please note that this does not affect the site in any other
way.  

(1997-12-19)
Today we are very happy to announce we recieved our memory donation to the
site.  While we couldn't use all of it (a four and an eight megabyte SIMM),
we were nonetheless most appreciative.  As mentioned below, we recompiled
the system's kernal and otherwise optimized the server.  So far it seems to
be happy.

   Several users have asked for a search engine.  We simply can not do this
with our current processor, a 486DX/100mhz machine.  If we obtained a new
motherboard, we would be able to put on more memory and hopefully upgrade
to a Pentium machine.  The administation, being mostly college student,
simply does not have the funds to donate to this project.  However,
donations of hardware by users of the site of course help implement a
future search engine.  Any donations are compensated with an account not
subject to the user limit (currently 200 users) as an expression of our
appreciation.  

(1997-12-18)
You may notice the site going on and offline periodically over the next few
days.  We are trying to improve server performance and ultimately raise the
maximum number of concurrent connections.  We appreciate your
understanding.

   *** UPDATE ***

   After much optimization and help of a Linux guru, we have been able to
up the amount of users to 200 while maintaining system stability.  We are
still testing this load, however, so if something goes wrong, it may
necessitate a decrease in the 200 user limit.  

(1997-12-16)
Attention!  - On Monday, December 29, the electric service to the building
housing ASSTR will be shut down from 1400 EST until 2100 EST.  Thus the
site WILL BE DOWN FOR THIS TIME!  We obviously can not avoid this outage,
so this is simply an advance notice.  Thank you for your understanding.  

(1997-12-09)
Today is the official start of Thirteen Days of 007 on TBS.  For all the
James Bond fans, turn on the tube every weekday starting at 8:05PM EST.  

(1997-12-03)
The administration hopes everyone had a wonderful holiday.  The Christmas
season is upon us, so be sure to take some time to relax and enjoy some
erotic literature.  In other news, the web site is coming along, but we
here at ASSTR are all extremely busy and hope to have something online
soon. We would like to thank everyone who has helped us out so far and
invite others to send us their ideas if you have any.  Once the web site is
online, we will continue to welcome your comments and suggestions.  

(1997-11-20)
The following news was just obtained from ASSTR's ISP:

   "The Network will be down from 11:00 PM on Friday November

   21, 1997 until 6:00 AM on Saturday November 22."
   The ASSTR administration apologies for the inconvenience.  

(1997-11-01)
Jet Software released a new version of StoryUtils today.  This version now
comes in two flavors - the DOS installation package and a Windows
installation package.  The Windows version makes using StoryUtils in
Windows as easy as any other Windows program!  ...if you've been reluctant
to try the StoryUtils because you didn't know how to install it, now is the
time to give it a shot!  And best of all, they are 100% FREEWARE.  The new
version has some major bug fixes as well as improvements, such as an HTML
filter.  The true Windows version is under development and should be
released by the end of the year.  

(1997-10-28)
Another administrator and I were talking, and being the engineers that we
are computed the following statistic for all of you:

   The site has over 22,000 stories on it, and with your help, is growing
every day.  Assuming the site is up to 23,000 stories, if you read just one
a day (and remember, some of the files are over one megabyte!) ...it would
take you OVER SIXTY THREE _YEARS_ to read every file.  Happy reading!  

(1999-10-26)
It seems the server does not want to run happily with 100 users on. 
Perhaps this is due to the server's memory limitations, so we're going to
upgrade ASAP and then give the 100+ user limit another shot.  We apologize
for the inconvenience but hope you will agree that a working server with a
60 user limit is better than no server at all.  

(1997-10-24)
Welcome back again!  Sorry the site was down today, but two things
happened. First, ml.org appears to have gone down sometime today (Friday).
Thus "asstr.ml.org" did not "exist" on the Internet for most of today. 
Second, because we could do nothing about this problem, we decided to
reinstall and upgrade the server, which should help things run smoother. 
The administration apologizes for the downtime, but alas this time it was
not our fault and totally out of our control.  We appreciate your patience
and understanding.  

(1997-10-22)
The server is now running with a PCI 10-base T ethernet card for your
reading pleasure, although that has not entirely solved all our problems.
As time allows we will attempt to fix these problems which means downtime
for the site.  We will do our best to keep these times to a minimal,
however.

   Also, if you would like to subscribe to the Alt.Sex.Stories Text
Repository mailing list, send an email to admin@asstr.ml.org ...this is
only sent out once every few weeks, and will keep you up to date on the
site.  Rest assure your email address will never be sold, given out, or
otherwise compromised for any reason.  If you do decide to send an email,
your comments and suggestions about the site would be appreciated to help
benefit the site in the future.
   If you have any extra 72 pin SIMMs, feel free to make a donation!  

(1997-10-19)
Well, the server upgrade never happened because computer engineering at the
Rochester Institute of Technology is a HELL of a lot of work...  I metric
fuck-ton as some say.  But the site is still up, we have the new PCI
ethernet card, and it will be in ASAP.  Additionally, I was told today the
site IS permitted by my school!  ...the school actually has nothing against
this site, since it does not violate any laws!  ...so we all can sleep
better at night now, huh?  This means when we install the new card and get
some more memory, we should be able to up the users to 150 or 200.  

(1997-10-16)
Expect some downtime this weekend due to server upgrades.  For those
interested, we will be installing a new PCI ethernet card to help handle
the high volume of traffic.  Additionally, we will attempt to run the
server under the world famous wu-ftpd, which is much more configurable than
the server we are presently using.  These system updates should not take
longer than six hours at a time, so if you can not access the site, simply
try again later.  The administration thanks you in advance for your
patience.  

(1997-10-07)
We were able to add 16 megs of memory to the server today, thus allowing us
to increase the user limit to 100 concurrent users.  HOWEVER, I would just
like to remind everyone that we still do NOT want people making multiple
connections to the server!  This means no downloading 20 files at a time in
your web browser.  Someone from Sweden tried that for days in a row and
didn't give us a valid email address to warn him, so needless to say he is
no longer with us.  

(1997-10-03)
The Official Story Reader of the A.S.S.  released an even newer version
today.  This version fixes a few bugs and adds some new features not
present in v1.51.

   For those not aware, StoryReader is a freeware bookmarking story reader
for MS-DOS and Windows platforms.  It remembers not only what you were
reading, but where you stopped!  Great for readers who need an electronic
bookmark.  

(1997-09-24)
The A.S.S.  is proud to announce its latest author on the site, the famous
DG!  Please take the time to welcome him by visiting his directory and
checking out his works as you browse the site.  

(1997-09-20)
The administration would like to apologize for the fifty user limit on the
site.  At this time, the lack of memory on the server will only permit this
many simultaneous users.  We are working to upgrade the memory as finances
allow us to do so.  

(1997-09-07)
To our guests, we here at the Alt.Sex.Stories FTP Text repository would
just like to say:

   _ / \ / __ \ \ / __ \/ _ __ _____ __

   \ /\ / \/ /\ / / /\// / / \/

   \/ \/ _/\__/ \__/\__/_/ / / /___/\_/

   2 0 , 0 0 0 S t o r i e s . . .

   . . .  f o r y o u r e n j o y m e n t !

   ___ /

   / / __ _ /|_ /

   /--/ / / / \/_|

   /__/___/_/__/\___/|\__/ o

   Guests both new and old will benefit from the README.TXT in this
directory as well as the SITE GUIDE in the /pub/Site_Guide directory.  

