the horror...the horror...
I feel your pain. There's no way to make it right when your primary machine craps out on you, but having backup computers can ease the suffering a little bit. Between my wife and me we've got 4 computers (2 new, 2 used) and our 3 kids each have one of their own (all hand-me-downs). I still worry that they'll all go on the fritz within a single afternoon. Sure you can write code with pencil and paper, but compiling by hand is obnoxious at best.