I'm back

This is crazy. I can't believe my last post was in January! This post is going to be short but I just had to get something down. Every day for the last three months I would say to myself, "I'm going to write in my blog." Then, something would come up and I would put it off. So, this morning I said, "Whether I have the time to write anything meaningful or not, I'm going to write something in my blog!"

Just to catch up:
The big project that we had been working on for over a year finished in January and shipped. It has been mostly successful and customers are pleased with it. But right after that was done, I was put on a project that was behind schedule. It was supposed to have been released in January, also, but the hardware wasn't ready yet so there was some breathing room. Now, that project is finished, too. Then, I was given a brand new, fast computer with a 24" wide screen monitor, 300 GByte disk drive and 3 GByte memory! I was really pleased but I immediately had trouble moving my files, settings and programs from my old computer to this new one.

After installing a few programs, the new computer would fail to boot - the hardware boot screen, black and white, would show and the Windows splash screen would show but then I wouldn't get the log in screen. I would have to hold in the power button to force it to shut down. Then, when I reapplied power, it would come up in Safe Mode where I could attempt to run System Restore to get the computer back to an earlier, stable state. That wouldn't always work, though.

This happened a few times. The first time it locked up, I had to restore to the point when the computer was first given to me (after company-mandated programs had been installed). I would be able to install a few programs and then it would lock-up again. Then I'd restore and it would work for a while but it got harder and harder each time. I made plenty of Restore Points whenever the computer seemed to be running correctly and had been stable for most of the day. Finally, one day, all the Restore Points just disappeared. The guys who set up the computer took it back again and just wiped out everything and we started from scratch. Now it looks like things are working OK but I'm approximately three weeks behind schedule. I thought I was going to be able to relax a bit before the next big crunch but things aren't working out that way.

Anyway, there should be plenty of exciting things to write about in the coming weeks. So, this entry wasn't as short as I'd thought it would be. Note to self: Once you start writing, things come into your head to put down. The lesson to be learned: JUST START WRITING!