In case anyone wonders where pianolady is hanging out these days : she's having a strange connection problem lately, not being able to connect to PS whereas other sites work ok. We are trying to work it out. Has anyone else had any connection problems (like: server3.pianosociety.com did not respond in time) ?

Thank you to everyone I've emailed asking to check your connection to the site. After trying about a hundred things in an effort to solve my problem, I finally learned the problem is with my router. I called the cable company and that's how I found out. It did not occur to me earlier that a router can suddenly just block one website like what happened to me. Weird. Maybe my router simply got tired of connecting me to PS so often.

Great to see that you solved the problem...kind of strange that it randomly blocked. Automatic intelligence in the router that didn't act properly?

Beats me. For a few days, my router prevented me from logging onto the site, and my cable company told me I needed a new router (I COULD log on when I took the router off line). Then I learned that I could have the router connected but use a proxy server to connect to PS, so I was connecting that way for a couple days. But all that is the part I don't get. Stranger still is that suddenly one day everything was back to normal. I thought I had to buy a new router but now it's working properly again. Damn aliens....