Sorry about that guys!

some process was thrashing the crap out of the CPU & nw & hd's, not sure entirely what was going on there, anyway it was an easy fix, but unfortunately i was at work and couldn't login remotely due to the networking being unresponsive.....

tried to guide somebody through fixing it remotely, but not being experienced with linux they didn't notice what was going on; i thought it was a repeat of the modem dying like happened at xmas...

Thanks for getting it back up when you did. I was relieved to see that I didn't lose any turns! :)

suicide!

EE FTW !
no need to apologise ... the explanation is plenty :)