That week in 2019 when my old laptop died mid-deploy

I was pushing a simple CSS fix to a client site from a coffee shop in Austin when the screen just went black, fan spinning like a jet engine, and I lost the whole afternoon to a broken Ubuntu update plus a dead battery backup. Turns out my 2014 ThinkPad had a swollen battery that I'd ignored for months, and it finally gave up right before a demo the next day. Anyone else have a random hardware meltdown that forced them to rebuild their whole beginner setup from scratch?

2 comments

2 Comments

wright.leo28d ago

My 2015 Dell XPS 15 did the exact same thing except it was mid-merge on a client's staging branch, not a simple CSS push. I'd noticed the trackpad bulging for weeks and just assumed it was some rubber pad thing, then the whole bottom case cracked open like a book when I finally got the back off. I honestly think you got lucky it died when it did, that battery could've popped way worse in your bag or on your lap. Rebuilding from a fresh install is annoying but at least you caught it before it took out the whole drive.

fionam1127d ago

Ugh, that's EXACTLY what happened to me with an old MacBook Pro a few years back. @wright.leo, I ended up switching to an external SSD for my main work stuff after that, and honestly it saved my bacon more than once. Cheap insurance and way easier to just plug into a new machine than rebuilding from a dead internal drive.