They promised to be down for 4 days, and I guess they are sticking to
it.  But now every submission will be a breeze!
-----------------
Here is a message sent by NIH.  There was also a big posting on the
front page of Grants.gov site

eRA Update: Grants.gov Downtime Planned for Feb. 6 - 9, 2010
January 13, 2010

We wanted to take this opportunity to inform you that Grants.gov will
be offline from 12:01 a.m. (Eastern Time) on Feb. 6 until 11:59 p.m.
(Eastern Time) on Feb. 9, in order to complete a major upgrade to the
Grants.gov system. If you are working on an application intended for
the Feb. 5 deadline, we encourage you, as always, to view the status
of your on-time submission in eRACommons, which will be up and running
normally during the Grants.gov downtime.

Because of this downtime, on-time submission of any application
intended for the Feb. 5 deadline is of the utmost importance. You will
be able to take advantage of NIH’s temporarily extended error-
correction window to address any eRA system-identified errors/warnings
in order to complete the submission process within five business days,
by Feb. 12. You can find further information about the temporary
extension of the error-correction window in the recently issued Guide
Notice NOT-OD-10-042—“Error-Correction Window Extended for Electronic
Applications Intended for Submission Deadlines On and Between January
25 and May 7, 2010.”

If you find that you are experiencing problems with Grants.gov or the
eRA Commons that threaten the timely submission of your application or
your ability to obtain the tracking number and timestamp necessary to
verify on-time submission, please follow the directions and adhere to
the policies outlined on the “Need Assistance?” page of the
eSubmission Web site.

eRA Communications
Division of Communications and Outreach
NIH Office of Extramural Research

Bob
------------------------------
Robert Beattie
University of Michigan
xxxxxx@umich.edu   (734) 936-1283

On Feb 8, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Elise Mills wrote:

This is indeed a surprise -
I knew there was some scheduled maintenance going on, but not that
it would be down until Wednesday... (& next Monday is a holiday)

Website says: "Grants.gov is currently unavailable due to scheduled
system maintenance that will improve your Grants.gov experience.

The system will be back on-line by February 10 at 12:01 EST.

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