Another Series of Unfortunate Events

Good Morning!

Its Monday Morning here in the lab, and this weekend has been something of an adventure in Operating Systems.

As an old-school developer, I take a bit of pride in taking care of my own tools.  My primary development work happens upon two dual-monitor Linux desktops that are linked together at the hip... and I've configured and maintain these machines myself.

There are two windows machines as well, but they are definitely special-purpose machines.

So, a seriously Snicket-y "Series of Unfortunate Events" took place early Sunday morning...  A sleepless night, a power outage, and an Ubuntu Linux OS update, in sequence.  I can handle that... not a problem!

I have overpowered battery backups on all my machines, so the power outage was easily handled... although it did break my concentration on development coding I was doing at the time...

So, I wasn't working when the update popped up.  I figured, why not.

so after the update, I also upgraded the Nvidia proprietary drivers for my linux machines, as well.  I mean, why not, right?

No.  Don't.  always check the interwebs before doing anything third-party on Linux.  The universe is inherently evil, and when it comes to freeware operating systems, explicitly so.

So, after all this and a friendly reboot... I got nothing.  Nuttin... Zero, Nada, Dead boxes.  Single blinky cursor with no response to keyboard input.  Dead in the water.  (I'm trying to express the frustration I was feeling... How my Do'in?)

After considerable lost energy and time, I called on an expert.  I don't care who you are, someone out there knows more about a particular thing than you do.  When you get stuck, call for help.  If you are any good at what you do, you are they person they call, so its only fair!!

It took Joshua 45 minutes to restore my boxes.  He knew about bypass tricks that I had never heard of.

So... thanks to Joshua Bisiaux.  I appreciate your help, and you'll be getting something special in your mailbox soon.

And for the audience... Remember... take care of your tools, and keep your speed-dial handy, and populated with folks who know more than you do!