Panther is still down, and as a result all the services it hosts (IRC, various websites, e-mail, etc) are still down. In another 30 minutes I'll be escalating the issue with ValueWeb since the ticket claims remediation in 24 hours or less. I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt, but thus far they haven't done much to impress me.
It's a good start having a machine I can reach again, things become immeasurably more simple when you're actually able to connect to the server. Now I just have to go through and clean up the mess. Once all the services are running again I'll buckle down to try and find out exactly what happened here. That'll be time-consuming and difficult for sure, but it is what is of most concern to me at the moment.
Happy birthday, chebutykin. Sorry that I couldn't be there to hug you in person, so I'll have to hope the 29 zombies I sent you for that purpose get there intact! You know how fragile they can be in subzero weather.