00:12
Hello, Len.
Hi, Asami.
What has been going on in your life?
That's a hard question to answer.
But how has yours been going?
Both of us are going through stuff.
You opened this with the hardest question,
I think, in hopes that we would just transition.
See, it's a loaded question.
It is a big question, yeah.
That's why everybody defaults.
It's like, how am I?
Do I know how I am?
Be introspective is what somebody is asking you to do.
Is the way I feel an accurate and objective reflection
of the reality of the situation that I'm in?
Or is it just a lot of conjuring up my own suffering?
But in my case, at least,
Yeah.
It was an objectively bad situation.
Whereby, everybody else who's going to listen to me here,
please take it as a sign to back your shit up.
Triple back up on your cloud, on your hard drive,
on your hard drive number three, you know, what have you.
Because, well, you know,
and I am no stranger to these kind of incidents.
This is not the first time I heard it.
Nor is this the first time I had a real sort of like,
scare that this might happen.
Sure, sure, sure.
When you are working on a big project like your thesis,
or something where you can anticipate a big damage in the future,
I think it's fairly easy for human minds to be preventative
and plan ahead for things.
But when it comes to daily, you know, tasks, test codes,
little bits of experiment here and there that you are doing,
little notes that you had in your mind,
it can feel like it doesn't deserve that kind of attention.
And learning from my experience of one day waking up
and opening a laptop to this screen that I have never seen before,
it's not even like a blue screen of doom.
It's just like, I've never seen this screen before.
Is this the picture you sent to me?
Yeah, I did send you the picture.
All right, all right. Just making sure.
Yeah, we can talk about it after. That's a scary screen.
I have no idea what to do.
But, you know, I am a calm, cool, collected, level-headed scientist.
03:07
So the first thing I would do is just Google.
Like, what the fuck is wrong with my laptop?
And I looked around, was relieved to know
that this does not seem to be an unfamiliar problem.
Like, lots of people have had the version of the similar problem.
What I was not relieved, though,
is that I found out that this tends to happen
when there is an issue with your SSD or HDD,
like whichever one that you have in your computer,
that, like, your computer cannot recognize your disk
for one way or the other.
Again, I was like, okay, well, you know,
I don't remember, like, smashing my laptop into a wall out of frustration
or any sort of violent incident like this.
I don't think it's mechanical.
You know what? It's probably just a connection issue,
like, you know, drive cannot find each other kind of thing.
And I looked around, futzed around for, like, another half an hour,
trying out these, like, easier solutions
that internet people were providing me with,
and none of it was working.
And at that point, I was like, okay,
I have a fellowship application I'm working on.
It's due in about a month,
but, like, I want to submit it before Christmas.
Currently, when this happened, it was, like, December 9th.
I'm like, okay, I have about 15 days.
I would really like to not waste my time on this.
So I called up my university's IT support
in hopes that they might be able to help me or give me two cents.
But no, I just was faced with a cold,
if this is your personal device and not the XYZ University device,
there's nothing we can do.
I was like, great, super helpful, you guys.
Yeah, it's not like this isn't part of my entire role here,
that, like, you should be supporting me so that I can still function.
Yeah, I'm, like, a full-time staff here,
and my laptop is a critical integral,
if not more important part of this research than I am.
Yeah, seriously.
Like, just... Well, wait, hold on.
You are, in fact, the more critical part of this.
I was not agreeing with that,
but the idea that they should at least be trying to support you
by helping you make sure that the things you need to work
are, in fact, working,
and the lines between personal and work are not going to be clear.
It's okay, Benjamin from IT, you did your job and just told me
that you could not help me.
Oh, man, called out.
What he did do was give me a list of local repair shop vendors.
06:01
All right, that's okay, fine.
It's okay, you know, he gave me three or four options.
I called each one of them and went to the guy
who sounded most sincere and looked less busy,
because I wanted a fast turnaround.
I was like, I wasn't going to leave my laptop for a week, right?
And I think I made the right choice.
And this mechanic came through,
he looked at my stuff immediately and said,
hey, I'm going to have to take it in.
A few hours later, I got a call saying that,
hey, it looks like you've got to replace your hard drive.
Is everything backed up for you?
And I was like, well, as much as I can, what can I do anymore?
He's like, because I can dig around deeper to try and recover your data.
But from the look of it, it looks like your entire drive is corrupted.
So there's probably very little thing I can do.
Yeah, okay.
And so that was yesterday, right before his shop closed.
And sorry, not yesterday, the day before.
And then yesterday, I got a call again saying that,
hey, my laptop's ready for pickup.
So I spent an anxious 24 hours without my laptop,
having to work at the university library like an undergrad,
which was an experience.
I forgot that university libraries exist.
I mean, I was a regular inhabitant back in those days.
It doesn't help that it's like a finals season over here.
It's like, because this university operates in like a quarter system,
it's a little bit strange schedule of finals and midterms.
And so everyone is like stressed,
but they're also like giddy stressed in a way
that only 18-year-olds can be.
Like they can somehow enjoy the united suffering, I guess.
Solitary suffering, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I guess solidarity or just, you know,
instead of studying for the exam,
they would much rather spend half an hour
bitching about the professors, their grading schemes.
Well, yeah, way more fun.
I think, was I one of those? Probably, most likely.
But like only a short, you know, decade after,
I'm completely unable to relate to them.
Just like, dude, it's just Calc 1, you know,
put your head down and get it done.
09:00
Oh, man.
Like, none of you are probably going to use calculus ever from this point.
This is, man, you got that harsh, that harsh, firm,
you know, sort of like attitude just rolling right out.
You're like, just do it.
Just take care of your stuff.
You know, your finals are set.
Your fate is decided.
You have to take this class and take this exam,
or else you might have to take it again in the next semester
or completely change your major.
You know, some larger consequences await you.
So it's already decided for you, you know?
There's something...
Half a year ago, I don't know.
Well, like you at the beginning of a quarter
decided that you're going to take this class and, you know,
too late.
And you've had several weeks of opportunities to withdraw or drop.
You didn't.
And now it's your time to actually follow through
with the promises that you made for yourself.
Asami's got no sympathy for this.
Absolutely zero. Maybe even negative sympathy.
Anyways, yeah.
But it was an interesting experience.
Like, you know, I feel like I should talk about this at some point,
like going back to university setting.
Oh, we can definitely talk about that.
Yeah, that can be fun.
Yeah, it's...
Short answer, I am uncomfortable.
Okay, yeah, fair enough.
That can be the name of the episode.
But that's just that.
But anyway, so yeah,
I have happily reunited with my laptop.
I was told that the machines, like laptops, you know,
or like all of the parts,
generally, you know, five years turnover is pretty typical.
And like, it's not just a drive, like your, you know, CPU
and your all the other parts can just have like a mechanical tear and wear.
And I should really be every five years spend about,
you know, 1000 to like $1500 on a new laptop, apparently.
And unfortunately, my job being tied extremely closely
to my laptop's performance,
I feel like I cannot like, you know, be stingy on this.
So, the mechanic gave me a discount,
I got fixed for a decent price,
but I really feel like, you know, since I bought this machine,
what, in 2020, I think it's time
to look for the new machine for the next five years.
Yeah, that might be the case.
Sometimes a failed hard drive is, or a solid state drive
is certainly one fairly big signal to say,
maybe check the health of your computer.
So, you see, the last time I had to change my laptop
12:02
was completely my own fault,
whereby I submerged my laptop in my bathtub
while I was trying to watch Netflix.
So, like, that was a completely voluntary,
entirely 100% my fault.
So, I guess I didn't really register that, you know,
to think about the lifespan of laptops.
Yeah, usually you would just kill it,
is what you're telling me.
Well, not usually, I've only had so many laptops in my life.
I know, I know, I know.
And, you know, it's n equals one incident.
I don't know if you can say that as a usual occurrence, but...
For comedy, I can.
Maybe not for statistics, but...
Well, it's true.
It's like, you know, from my recent behavioral data,
I am prone to breaking my own laptop
before it reaches its natural lifetime.
So...
But anyway...
In other words...
Take one thing away from this episode,
go back up your data.
I have fully committed to the Google ecosystem.
I've signed up for Google One.
I mean, I also want to use Colab,
so, like, it makes sense to have this, like, whole, like, work...
Sure, you're within the work environment, okay.
Yeah, thing.
When that happened, my lab mate was like,
Asami, something like this happened to me as well.
He was like, I lost a lot of codes.
And so, ever since then, I'm just, like, you know,
paying Google to do this for me.
And I was like, you know what?
You're a really smart boy.
And if you think you need this,
I definitely need this.
Look, if it's good enough for you and it makes sure you're safe,
I definitely...
Yeah.
You know, even though I got my one terabyte local drive restored,
you know, I...
I am not going to keep much in my local drive anymore.
No, no, and you don't need to, right?
Anyway, go back your shit up.
Don't be me. Don't be Asami.
You heard her, folks.
Go back your shit up.
Take that as a take-home message, so...
All right.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C.
See you next time.
