I spent a good part of my day at work troubleshooting a problem with one of my graphics computers. If you have enough computers at your desk, something will always be wrong with at least one of them. There are 14 here, working off two KVM switches (and there’s room for a few more).
Without going into tedious detail, a program which displays rainfall amounts wouldn’t display. The culprit: the clock thought it was tomorrow!
How do you even look for this kind of stuff? You can be diligent, but there comes a point when things are so esoteric you’d never even consider them.
In this case, I noticed (by accident) some files dated in the future! But, it really was an accident that I found them.
Once I found the problem, the computer had to undo its mess – and it wasn’t too happy about it. It chugged and sputtered for nearly a half hour. I could see it was working, but it wasn’t responding to my mouse clicks.
If I’d drag a window across the screen, nothing would happen for 10-15 seconds. Then, the window would jump into place. Very disconcerting. One program, running deep within the bowels of the system, would bloat to 750 Mb or more, then crash. It did this a half dozen times or more.
Anyway, it’s fixed now and I just needed someplace to vent. I’ve already tried screaming at the computer, but it doesn’t listen. I wonder if it reacts to the sight of water nearby?