stressedThis morning was supposed to be a work day for me. I went over to my father-in-law's house and started up my computer. Blue Screen of Death. Oh, no. I tried again. Same result. I ran diagnostics: 0F00:0244 Uncorrectable data error. That's the sign of a dying hard drive. Oh, no again.
I brought both laptops with me. I could use the spare. I'm using it right now to read e-mail and LJ. But I forgot to install VPN on the spare machine, and that's what I need to access my company's network and get at my modeling computer back in San Mateo.
The diagnostics on the hard drive found only one bad sector. I'm running CHKDSK /r on that drive right now in the hope that it might possibly be able to patch around it and at least get it to boot up for a while. (That would at least get me a chance to pull off things since the last full backup. And why didn't I do a full backup before taking this trip? Arrgh.) But if I can't get at VPN, I'm totally screwed and will have to turn around and head back to California today and possibly drive all night and work all day tomorrow. Double Arrgh!
Lisa did have an idea, however, and if other paths fail I will try it. The company's VPN software is up at the Portland office. There's a chance I could just drive up there tomorrow morning and get a copy of it from someone there. That would still put me behind, but not nearly so badly behind as having to return to California today.