I went right to work on the Oregon USGS water particle inspection program right after I read aloud to the kids when I got home yesterday afternoon. I fixed a few problems, added a little functionality to the program, and then sat down for dinner with the family. I left the computer running while we ate and during a long talk with the one of the scientists in the USGS lab. When I returned to my computer, it was completely locked up. The computer is a nice Dell laptop that is only two years, so I was at a little bit of a loss as to why this happened. I fooled around with it for quite a long time, but could never really get it going right, so I switched over to the home computer to scan in Betty Blonde and send it up to our server. I found that our scanner was so old, it did not work with the new computer, so I had to get out our old printer-scanner with the printer that no longer works (an ugly sight that takes up too much room on the desk) so I could scan in a comic. After that, I had to download Python, GIMP, and the BleAX (Betty Blonde Accumlator of Comix) program I had written and get that running, too.
By the time I had that all finished, it was after 11:00. Then I had to start trying to figure out what to do about the broken computer. All my water inspection (the Oregon part) programming work is performed with that computer. Fortunately, Christian had figured out that there is a defective graphics chip/motherboard in that particular computer for which Dell extended the warranty. It is something that has happened to lots of people. So, even though I have a good backup, it is a day old and I will have to rewrite the code again if I cannot get it off the system before it gets fixed. I did not get much sleep last night, but maybe this is a sign that I should just stay off the computer through the Fourth of July holiday. It is a pretty good excuse to concentrate on eating hot dogs and watching fireworks, so I am going to take it as a sign even if it is not.
The lesson I learned is KEEP DOING MY BACKUPS!