got a new Dell G16 gaming laptop

First some bad news: the MSI GL75 Leopard laptop that I got in 2020 went "kaput" all of a sudden two days ago. It suddenly shut down and will not turn on again. I also heard a popping sound before smelling some smoke. As you can imagine, this is not a good sign.

Based on what I found online, the most likely cause is a blown capacitor. But because computers are relatively cheap these days, my dad figured it would be better to get a new one as opposed to taking the MSI laptop to the repair shop. We settled on the Dell G16 because it both had great specs and wasn't too expensive.

To my surprise, the G16 showed up on my doorstep after just two days even though the ETA was three days. I just finished setting it up. The laptop has a Core i9-13900HX CPU, an RTX 4070 GPU and 16 GB of memory. One thing for sure is it'll be quite useful for my AI projects. I do have re-install everything and recover the files from my old laptop, which I'll probably do in the next few days. Crossing my fingers that the hard drive is still in good condition.

Another thing is that Windows 11 will take a while to get used to. Of course, this is a relatively small inconvenience. In any case, getting a new computer is always nice!

June 2 update: Some bad news. I'm not able to access the data on the hard drive. Even though there is no visible damage, the PCB was likely fried in the power surge. Looks like I'll have to send the drive to a data recovery service. Based on the information I found online, this will not be cheap.

June 18 update: I send the HDD to a data recovery company and was told the data was unrecoverable. However, the good news is data may actually be on the SSD. It turned out the laptop actually had two drives. Hope the SSD didn't get fried too.

June 22 update: Good news — the SSD was in working condition. I was able to grab all the data without issues. But as you can imagine, the past month or so has been stressful. Serves me right for not making backups. :\

Currently listening to: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by the Tokens

I saw the northern lights!

As you're probably aware, there were a series of solar storms over the past few days. Due to the intensity of these storms, the resulting aurora was visible in much lower latitudes — even as far south as Texas. It's not often this happens!

The cool thing is that I got to see the northern lights on Friday. I didn't actually see the aurora with my naked eye, but did catch a faint glow on my iPhone. You could see the unmistakable colors in the photos.

Mom and I tried to look for the aurora again last night after hearing the solar storms would continue into the weekend. The two of us stayed up pretty late last night but didn't see anything as there was a bit of a cloud cover. We had heard there was yet another chance to see the aurora tonight at around 10 p.m. However, there again wasn't much to see as the moonlight was too bright this time.

Even though I only saw the aurora once — on Friday evening — this was a neat experience. The next time this happens may be decades away. Seeing the northern lights was something that had been on my bucket list for a long time, and I'm glad I finally got the chance.

On a side note, happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. :-)

Currently listening to: Clair de lune by Claude Debussy