Today, Yandex Cup 2025 Qualification Round was held, that a wonderful foreign onsite contest is at stake. Top 20 can participate in the onsite finals which is held in Istanbul on December. For the first two hours (out of four hours) during the contest, it was going well. At 01:49, I solved a problem which was solved by only two participants at the time I solved, and my rank went up to 18, which is inside the qualifying-zone. Furthermore, it was not just an 18th place; I solved a more difficult problem than the same scorers. At this point, I thought that I have a pretty high chance (~50%) for being able to go to Istanbul.

However, at 01:54 of the contest, all of a sudden my PC went wrong. A “bang”-like sound was heard and the bottom-left corner of the screen was broken. Then, the brightness of the screen gradually went down, and ten seconds later, the screen becomes black. Considering that I had a spare PC, it was usually possible to restart coding with the new PC (or even with smartphone in the worst case), but today it was impossible because screen-recording with OBS Studio was mandatory to prevent ChatGPT. The broken PC means disqualification, so now I lost all the chance for qualifying for finals.

I was totally wrong. I was much too overconfident about my PC. I started using my current PC on July 13, 2025; however many issues had occurred during the three and a half months until today. On mid-September, a sudden blue-screen occurred; on early-October, a sudden freeze occurs several times; and on October 16, the touchpad gradually stopped working and becomes completely useless two days later. Probably, this PC was a defective product, and I had many chances to reconsider for using the spare PC in important events. However, ultimately I decided to participate in the defective one and therefore disqualified. I should have cared about my personal computer.