Code is also fun when it breaks

The downside to running code all day is that there's not much to do while it's running. Tomorrow I'm bringing a couple papers with me to read.

My job this week is to run the computer model, screw it up, and learn how to fix it. I'm pleased to announce that the screwing it up part has been a smashing success! Today I not only managed to make a bunch of small, easy to figure out mistakes, I also managed to break the code in two ways that have never been seen before. I discussed the problems with a few different people, and we still have no idea what I did wrong. The best error was when everything seemed to work, but there was no output in the output folders. Turns out you fix that by restarting the computer, and then restarting the experiment in a new directory. In the learning how to fix it category, I have learned how to find the files containing error reports, but that hasn't helped me much. I've figured out a couple small errors though, and managed to troubleshoot the whole afternoon by myself. My biggest issue has been a subroutine listed in an input file. If you forget to change the subroutine name to the new one, the program can't find it. Normally, this would be a pretty normal problem, but the code does something sneaky. It just keeps looking for the old subroutine forever, and doesn't tell you that anything's wrong! So everything looks fine, but it's not. I'm tempted to write CHANGE XX SUBROUTINE in giant letters on a sticky note and put it on my monitor. Only I don't have any sticky notes.

That problem is why I'm still here. I was planning to leave at 5, or whenever the code finished running. I restarted the code at 4:43, after noticing it had been working on the same thing for an awfully long time. It seems to be doing better now. I think.

My tentative week plan is totally cracking me up. I was planning to finish up about 8 test runs today and plot yesterday's data. I don't seem to have the data plotting software, so I'll be asking someone about that tomorrow. I have successfully completed 1 test run, and I'm waiting on a second.

...and I broke it again. Which means I can leave! Just as the rain is starting up.

There was totally a lady on the bus with bright yellow headphones. I was amused.