September 13th, 2021 — Monday
It was my first US gig, I had wasted lots of time on it, the deadline was fast approaching, and didn't want to fuck it up. My laptop has been giving me lotta issues lately — overheating and constantly hanging while working, so naturally, I wanted to prevent any blocker and decided to fix it once and for all.
So I consult an engineer and was advised to change my Laptop’s Hard Disk Drive to Solid State Drive as a quick fix since I couldn't afford a more powerful laptop at the moment.
Well, I did exactly that and I’m ready to start working. Boy was I wrong? Apparently, if you change a Laptop’s primary storage, you've effectively removed the Operating System and would have to reinstall it on the new drive.
So I have to set up Ubuntu (Linux OS distro) on the new drive, this should be easy, I’ve done this before, several times in fact. I spent a few hours downloading and installing my new Ubuntu setup, a lot more hours customizing themes, fonts —I’m one hell of a perfectionist. Then went on to set up a proper developer environment — installing Yarn, Node, and all that... That was pretty smooth.
Now, it’s time to copy my stuff from the old HDD over to my new Laptop drive, to find out, for whatever reason in the name of God it’s now corrupted so I couldn't access my files! — Oh God! I need to start working ASAP! This was the beginning of what would turn out to be a series of mischiefs.
While trying to fix the damned HDD, I mistakenly deleted the bootloader of my new PC set up, so I couldn’t boot, after several and I mean a looooooot of attempts to fix it, even the 5th page of Google wasn't helpful. I resorted to the very hard decision of making a clean reinstallation of Ubuntu which means starting all over — Now that was a really sad case.
A computer can have more than one OS, a PC can be configured to run Windows or Linux. The bootloader is a small program that runs when the computer is powered on and decides which OS to use. — Redditor
Still have no idea how to recover my precious HDD files. Now I’m starting to panic. Why did it have to be this time? What kind of bad luck do I have? Is it the village people? Nemesis? What? Why?
‘Village people’ is a slang Nigerians mostly use as a joke when something bad happens to you. In Nigeria, there are lots of superstitious beliefs about supernatural beings like evil witches, sorcerers, and that they live in the Village.
At this point, I’m so damn tiredddddd and had to sleep…
September 14th, 2021 — Tuesday
Straight up went to get a pack of Monster energy drinks, I know I’m really gonna need it! (Nope. don’t recommend it, that shit is real addictive)
Well, I spent the whole day trying to fix the HDD, one copy-paste from StackOverflow at a time. Somehow, just somehow, I eventually found a way to access the damn HDD files. Spent the whole night copying it over. — I don’t know which command worked but cheers 🎉)
I don't believe in miracles but this sure felt close.
September 15th, 2021 — Wednesday
Woke up feeling weak, I have a Thursday deadline, so man’s still gotta work. Took a can of monster, ready to conquer the world (and beat the deadline, of course) — to find out the laptop’s WiFi isn’t working! Something Ubuntu not supporting most HP wifi drivers.
Lmaooo. No this isn't funny. dfkm. nooo!
Spent almost half of the day trying to fix the damn WiFi issue. I went to develop a catarrh, headache. — symptoms of Malaria. It’s safe to say this is my worst week of the year yet.
The deadline was delayed to Friday, thanks to the illustrator. God, I love someone that isn't me is late to deliver!
September 15th, 2021 — Wednesday
Woke up early, took a can of monster to start working — it's now a habit.
WiFi isn’t working still, so had to compromise. I know better to try to fix it now. — This boy can’t be stopped.
I borrowed my roommate’s android phone to use as a wired internet connection to my PC, simultaneously connecting the phone’s WiFi to my Router (make sense?), For some reason, you can't do that on an iPhone. Fix up, Tim Cook.
Epilogue
Appreciate the help and being reliable.
We’ll have more projects coming through the last quarter of this year.
I’ll stay in touch
I went on to deliver on time, got a nice overall review and bonus while at it. — like the badass dev I am! Looking back at it a few months away, it feels kinda interesting, but it’s something I don’t want to ever go through again lmao.
