Yes, this is my new official term for the server going up and down. It seems that some part of the system causes 100% CPU usage on the box it's running on, and in fact is so nasty to the system that it even makes the serial console lag. This, for those who are not server geeks, is Bad.
I'm on the case, and have brought the full force of monitoring tools to bear to see if I can track down the cause. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for any downtime.