Bad News: I'm using Windows again

[aleteoryx]

sigh.

a couple days ago I spilled coffee on my main laptop, my primary machine for everything. ...and in trying to air it out my clumsy ass gouged a resistor on the mainboard. so it's in the shop. I've had good experiences with uBreakIFix in the past, and I'm hoping they can repair the mainboard without the $700+ replacement cost I'd be looking at for a new part.

the result of this is that I have gone from strictly using an archlinux install to using a fresh windows 10 install, as I've decided to use this event as an excuse to fix up my desktop, which will be running windows until ALVR stops bugging out on me or such a time as I can afford a non-standalone VR headset. this is my first time daily-driving windows in about a year and a half, and it's weird to be back.

a short list of what's stuck on that laptop, at the moment

• all of my SSH keys. this is fine for most, on account of them being to VPSes with VNC support, but I cannot access the amehut box, unless I feel like walking someone through the ssh key creation process over the phone, which does not sound fun at all.
• all of my obsidian notes
• quite a few saved games that don't have cloud sync (my GTNH save particularly stings)
• quite a few unfinished pixel art projects
• some projects that were never checked into source control (I recently started syncing one of the most critical to amehut, luckily)

the backup plans that worked

• vivaldi sync is the reason I am able to write this with a proper keyboard. annoyingly, the mobile app refused repeatedly to export my backup key. luckily, I was able to export from my other (very slow) windows machine. when my laptop is up again, I will be reinitializing sync and keeping careful note of the password.
• many of my non-sensitive files are already synchronized to my phone, so that's handy.
• I had a spare computer computer with me. this whole ordeal would have been significantly worse were it not for that.

so, what have we learned?

well, I do in fact regret not having proper backups. there's no good reason the data on my laptop won't be mostly recoverable, but it's going to suck to be without my development environment and servers for a bit. nothing absolutely 100% critical is missing, but it's going to be profoundly inconvenient for a while.

I also clearly need to have a solution for accessing SSH without my primary machine. I may end up putting together some sort of backup keystore that can be securely accessed in times like this.

next steps?

no device of mine other than my laptop currently meets my standards for encryption of sensitive files. I am going to try deploying a solution like veracrypt to my windows systems, and begin mirroring critical files from my laptop to there. I will also be synchronizing my obsidian vault somewhere. time permitting, I will organize and backup my dotfiles somewhere.

well, how's windows going?

good, actually. instead of reaching for choco as a package manager, like usual, I decided to finally try winget. this was the right choice. no longer am I confronted with 20 confirmation prompts and licensing upsells, instead the system Just Works. I have yet to try installing something through winget and have it fail. as in, everything I have tried blindly winget installing has Just Worked. this goes for everything from vencord to 7zip. it's wonderful.

I am also realizing that windows 10 was, in fact, created by UX designers that knew what they were doing. I am appreciating the various small UX optimizations that came about in its 8-year lifespan quite a lot.

I am by no means a windows fan, but I am not some linux evangelist either. it's always fun setting up a new machine.

anyways, I've got to go read the aeneid.

~aleteoryx,
signing off

Comments

[blimix]

What an inconvenience! I'm glad it's not worse, but it's still clearly a pain.