Gnumeric works very poorly/freezes when network mounted directory is stale

This report describes a situation in which losing connection to an nfs mounted resulted in Gnumeric not responding anymore.

1. I have nfs mounts with directories from the mount symbolically linked in my home
2. The nfs mount in the client got disconnected because of server issues
3. Gnumeric would take 1 min to start and when it started it wouldn't respond.
4. A previously opened Gnumeric didn't respond. Trying to save the file resulted in the file being lost
5. I was not opening files from the nfs mount.
6. ls in the home directory would not immediately return
7. This bug might not be a Gnumeric-only issue, but how Linux handles disconnected network mounts so awfully poorly. However, other programs (everything else, really, web browsers, music player, terminal, etc) worked fine, so it might be a Gnumeric-only bug.