Repairing dual-boot on Lenovo Y500 after upgrading to Windows 8.1

After upgrading to Windows 8.1, my dual-boot on my Lenovo Y500 was messed up. GRUB didn't work, and I wasn't able to boot into Linux Mint for a while. Finally, I managed to get this working.

1. First, you need Boot-Repair. You can get it here.

2. Burn the ISO image into a USB drive. I used Universal USB Installer.

3. Using Notepad, edit the file "/boot/grub/grub.cfg".
Replace "gfxmode=auto" with "gfxmode=1920x1080".
Replace "quiet nosplash" with "nomodeset=1 xforcevesa".
(Actually found this tip here.)

4. Restart the computer into BIOS with the USB drive still plugged in. The easy way to do this is to shut down the computer. Then start up the computer, press F2 once the "Lenovo" screen shows.

5. Under "Boot", choose "Legacy" (instead of UEFI). For priority, choose "Legacy" too. Save changes and exit (press F10), which will restart the computer. Press F2 again to enter BIOS because you still need to change the boot priority.

6. Under "Boot", enable USB booting, and in the priority for legacy devices, move USB to the top (using F6). Once again, save changes and exit (F10).

7. The system should now boot into Boot-Repair. Click on "Recommended Repair" and let it run. Along the way, you may need to open up a terminal and run some commands. Do so. Once Boot-Repair has done its work, click on the power button at the bottom right of the screen. This shuts down the computer. Remove the USB drive.

8. Start the computer, press F2 to enter BIOS again.

9. Under "Boot", change priority to EFI.

10. Under EFI devices, there should be two of them. Go to the second one, press F6 to bring it up the list. Save changes and exit (F10).

11. You should now boot up into GRUB.

Hope it helps! Point 3 above should work for laptops using newer Nvidia cards, though you should change the resolution to whatever is your screen's actual resolution.

Becoming overly confident

Success breeds confidence, that we cannot deny. But in a company, when people work in teams, success tends to breed confidence in an unbalanced manner, with the team leader become ever more confident of himself as he rises up the corporate ladder.

The team leader rises up, growing confident in his abilities, when actually, he moved up the ladder not just because he is good, but because his team is good. Few leaders remember that it is the team that got them there.

By the time they get to the top, they have become overly confident of themselves. They make decisions without consulting others, they base their decisions on what they know, what they think should be the way to do things. They run things by themselves, thinking that is the best for the company. Instead of a team effort, it becomes a one-man show. They forget that they got there because of the team.

That is all the more so when the team leader moves up the ladder at a fast pace. Each success is built upon the brilliance of the team, yet he moves up the ladder too fast for this to sink into his head. Drunken by success, he thinks the world of himself.

Power corrupts. Successful leaders can sometimes do more harm than good. As we succeed, we need to guard against becoming overly confident. We need to remain humble and remember the people who helped us get there.

China's new ADIZ in the East China Sea

Recently, China declared an air defence identification zone in the East China Sea, overlapping existing ADIZs in the region. ADIZs are not new, many other countries have them, and they extend well beyond a nation's territorial airspace. In declaring her own ADIZ, China is not doing anything new, especially when you look at her neighbours, who have their own ADIZs that extend beyond their territorial airspace.

What is different, though, is the media attention given to this, and how China's ADIZ continues to be misrepresented as an "air defence zone", which connotes that China has a right to defend the airspace in that declared zone. Nope, sorry, that's not what an ADIZ is.

But here you have someone create a small flame out of nothing, and the rest of the people fanning the flames. Even Channel NewsAsia, supposedly a leader in regional news, is not spared. It uses the term "air defence zone" and "air defence identification zone" interchangeably, even though they obviously refer to different things.
China creates air defence zone over Japan-controlled islands

Moving ahead, since there is no international law governing ADIZs, those who are fanning the flames should stop, before they put their own ADIZs' legality at risk. After all, if you are going to challenge China's ADIZ, there is no reason why China shouldn't challenge your ADIZ. A healthy debate would be how to come up with international legislation to govern ADIZ (and subsequently realigning existing ADIZs to those rules).