Just updated: Never mind. I took another look at my own backup notes. Since the two servers are backed up separately, but folders are organized by date, I found a valid backup from the other server by searching for a date online. It might take two or three days to complete the restoration. Still, I'm out the money for Oracle...

At noon today, I turned on my Surface Pro X and found it failed to boot, showing "Recovering." I suspect I damaged the Windows partition when I compressed it under Linux the day before yesterday. I had to repair it. And so began another streak of bad luck.

In the afternoon, I brought the repaired Pro X to the library to write, planning to finish the draft I didn't complete yesterday. But then I found the Surface keyboard wasn't working. At first, I thought it was a driver issue. After trying to fix it with no success, I was about to detach it when it suddenly started working again. But the connection is flaky—it only works when I lay it flat and press down. Great, now the keyboard is broken and needs repair.

I managed to keep the keyboard in a position where I could type normally. Feeling that the built-in Markdown editor wasn't great, I opened the White Paper Notes app I used before. And then—disaster. It wouldn't open.

I quickly checked my phone. Oh no, the Oracle Always Free instance I bought for 500 bucks was down... The IP couldn't connect to the server. It's done for. That's when I realized I had only backed up some things, not everything. The last backup job ran on July 3rd, and I never made a single backup of the containers or application source code on the 2c12g server. The loss isn't total, but it's still pretty severe. Just the day before yesterday, I was thinking of promoting White Paper Notes, so I posted a video about it on Bilibili, and today I spent an extra 50 yuan on a guaranteed promotion. All that code I wrote, the AI Agent that had been running for so long (on that server), and the video I spent three nights making—all gone to waste...

And without the source code, fixing White Paper Notes is basically the same as rewriting it from scratch. Plus, the AI part alone is extremely difficult. I think there's a good chance I won't bother fixing it.

So, don't spend money on any server that's easy to get banned! Especially Oracle and Azure! So, don't spend money on any server that's easy to get banned! Especially Oracle and Azure! So, don't spend money on any server that's easy to get banned! Especially Oracle and Azure! So, don't spend money on any server that's easy to get banned! Especially Oracle and Azure! So, don't spend money on any server that's easy to get banned! Especially Oracle and Azure!

If you're planning to do so, make sure all services run in containers, all data is saved and uploaded to object storage at the same time, and every 2 days, package all containers and upload them to object storage. This is a lesson learned the hard way...

Of course, I also saved some other data. But ironically, the data I was worried about—except for my blog—is all fine, living on safe servers. Meanwhile, my blog, as you can see, I moved to Alibaba Cloud because I found the access too slow... All those painstakingly backed-up files are completely useless.

Heaven has no mercy!