I know Thrush, i know you are never having a dig ... Just wanted to explain that when a thing like this occurs during less than 10 seconds (and it was the case ) it means i'm working on the site, and there aren't many solutions : else i take the site offline each time i got to work on the code, else you have those kind of messages from time to time during a few seconds
About your notification problem, it's odd... mine are working fine Aren't PF emails thrown as spam when you receive them ?