A stark reminder that the digital is physical
Of course that'd cause a power surge
For the longest time, a few months at least, I've been keeping both the laptop that served my selfhosted infrastructure, as well as the desktop computer I use as my personal machine, on for 24/7. That and the decades-old electrical wiring of our current apartment is just a bad combination, and I shouldn't have been surprised when one day it would've lead to an out and out power surge.
The first time it happened, the old outlet burnt, and the sickening, waxy smell of burnt plastic permeated through the room. It was a straightforward outlet replacement, but then it happened again.
Repairs and new electrical stuff
The second time it happened scared us even more and forced us to set up new electrical lines up here in my room, directly connected to the apartment unit's circuit fuse box. The new electrical lines are also hooked up to their own circuit breaker and four heavy-duty outlets.
Total costs added up to a pretty penny, but the peace of mind it gives is priceless.
Damage report
After getting the new electrical lines set up, it turns out the main HDD on my machine is broken. Between the power surges, and me literally pulling the plug on them to immediately stop the outlets from burning any further, not sure which one of them done them in, but it was obvious it wasnt long for this world. It's gotten so bad that Linux mounts it as a read-only filesystem.
The love of my life was kind enough to pitch in some funds to buy a replacement drive, and we've decided that at this point, a solid state drive would be better for our purposes at this point.
Contingencies
When this was all happening, I was seriously thinking about moving all my computing to my phone via Termux . Using it with a regular keyboard connected via OTG cable was a surprisingly good experience. If you put aside the small screen and the overhead of running on top of Android (not to mention the security implications of that), it's a pretty workable solution in a pinch.
I'll have to consider that moving forward once I begin downsizing without access to SBCs like Raspberry Pi's and the like. That means always having a USB OTG cable on hand and a keyboard to connect the android device to.
Fallout
I'm not proud of admitting this, but not being able to use my computer for a few weeks and not being able to access my notes is... Pretty disconcerting. I feel like I've developed a dependency on my exocortex as a way of externalizing my anxieties. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but then what about when I dont have access to a computer like what happened recently?
I admit that having a large, interlinked set of notes allows me to be able to take in more information that I normally wouldn't be able to process, not to mention helping me get over my anxieties by allowing me to name and list out my worries and get a better perspective on things.
But that also means that losing access to that information would be all the more harmful for my own mental well-being.
That's not even counting how I couldn't use my selfhosted infrastructure during the time. What's worse, is that I'm afraid of having all of my machines running, I haven't even turned my server back on. I seem to have developed a slight phobia of having too many computers on at the same time. Kind of fucking ironic, but true.
I've got a lot of growing to do.