Chinese New Year and new laptop

This was a disastrous week. Firstly, internet network cable broken. Secondly, my laptop went wild. Internet network cable broken, I still can online through mobile hotspot. But my laptop, it was catastrophic problem. Because I have a lot of valuable data, and I have to work.

Chinese proverb, 旧的不去，新的不来, but it was damn pressure. Because the old laptop had unpredictable behaviour. The problem was that, the keyboard will trigger some keys unintentionally, especially Alt key. I thought it was software problem, but until I reboot, and saw the GRUB menu cursor moving by itself. Damn! This means, (i) I am not able to work, (ii) I have to spend money to buy new laptop, and (iii) I need to get my data out.

First problem means that, I may not able to earn money during the period, as I am a freelance software engineer. Second problem means that, I need to spend money, with the possibility that I am not able to generate income, and the new laptop may not be Linux compatible. Linux compatibility is important to me, due to the familiarity and the working environment. Third problem means that, I may have possibility loss the data. I have done backup, but not frequent and not all data were backup. Though those data which I didn’t backup were less important, they are still valuable as I spent time on them.

Surely most important data are family photos, personal data, and those work related things. Though we use “git” and commit our source code, setup everything again spends time. Your employer doesn’t pay you to setup, but pay you to work. That is why I felt very pressure.

I prayed, I prayed, and prayed. Luckily keyboard problem was partially solved with USB keyboard, and Linux command “xinput float” can disconnect the built-in keyboard. And the new laptop can be used to work now (since yesterday). Though new laptop has higher hardware specifications than the old one, it is not perfect, as I failed to make it able to hibernate. NVIDIA and Linux combination is sh*t. But I still need NVIDIA, just in case I have to do machine learning with CUDA. So, for the moment, I have to sacrifice hibernation. Also, during the testing when resume from hibernation, it showed a freaking behaviour, I cannot type in the LightDM login. Damn, I cannot bear it if new laptop also broken.

Hopefully this is the end of the accident. I pray that this year will be new as this new powerful laptop.

祸不单行昨夜行，福无双至今日至。祝大家新年快乐。