Question Your biggest "Oh ****" moments with computers

[Linguofreak]

In a moment of incredible stupidity, I recently managed to render my computer unbootable and subtly, but pervasively, corrupt my backup while trying to perform a restore from backup. (Mercifully, I'm fairly certain the corruption is reversible)

So I'm sitting without my main system for a couple days, if not more, and misery loves company. In that light, does anyone care to share their worst "Oh " moments in performing computer maintenance?

The thing that really stings about this one is not only *should* I have known better but I really *did* know better, and managed to let impatience get the better of me.

Moral of my particular story: *Never* restore a backup to the root folder of your currently running system. Boot from a LiveCD first, mount the filesystem you're restoring, and restore the backup to that mountpoint.

 

[movieman]

A guy I worked with was once performing remote maintenance on the server running a customer system at their backup site, and rebooted it... then realized that window was actually logged into the operational site server and they'd just knocked it out of service for several minutes while the machine rebooted.

After that, we reconfigured our support machines so the windows for each site came up with different coloured backgrounds...

I have to admit, I did something similar once when I rebooted my machine, then realized that the window I typed the reboot command into was actually logged into the system my boss was demonstrating to a customer at the time. But that didn't affect millions of users, I just had a red face for a few minutes .

 

[Kyle]

I left my computer on overnight, plugged in, in a Florida summer.

Thor himself blew right past the surge protector and completely fried my computer.

 

[Scav]

I was in a remote desktop session on a terminal server updating a software suite while I was on the phone with the client. Didn't think about the fact I was on said terminal server when I cheerfully gave the application update engine permission to reboot the OS.

Two seconds after I realized the scope of my actions:

-- "By the way, I'm going to need to apologize in advance."
-- "Uhh, for what?"
-- (off conversation, audible) "What the ?!"
-- ". . . that . . ."

 

[boogabooga]

Liquid plus laptop...

A very embarrassing situation a few years ago.

 

[Urwumpe]

Some many years ago, I took a co-worker back home from work. His advice, "Why do you want to turn right, go straight, that's shorter" resulted in us taking a small dirty agricultural road at 80 km/h with a small tiny VW Polo (of 1992). All was fine. Until suddenly after a number of sharp turns, a tractor with a large harvester behind appeared right in front of us.

That was our "oh shiiIIIIIIIIIIT" moment, while I left the road and drifted through the dirt in best WRC style around the equally surprised tractor. After I returned on the paved road again, my co-worker admitted that he only knew about taking this road with a racing bike.

But it really saved us 6 km distance.

Moral of the story: Maybe "Expect agricultural devices on agricultural roads". Or "Don't let bicycle riders do the navigation for you". Maybe also "Drive careful on proper roads." Or just "Don't try this at home, kids - do it on proper racing tracks"

 

[Ripley]

Well...many years ago, my first ever self-assembled pc refused to power on.
I checked it in and out but couldn't find anything wrong. :hmm:

Took it to a friend, to have a look.
He plugged the PSU to the MoBo and suddenly it WORKED!!!! :thumbup:

 

[Fabri91]

Something similar happened to me one of the first times I cleaned out my PC, now seven years ago: after having removed and dusted off the GPU, it wouldn't boot. Panic ensued. Had I fried my graphics card or possibly even the mobo? Whatever it was, re-seating the GPU got rid of the issue. Still, the panic was real.

 

[steph]

Last summer, on a very wet road, driving an old-school 90's Peugeot 205. I hadn't driven cars without ABS before, so I knew I had to take it easy (increased separation to the car in front, etc).
So, I was approaching this 4-way roundabout, and I noticed a car approaching from the left road, about as fast as I was coming. So, of course I forget all that no-ABS thingy and, by reflex, I slam on the brakes. At which point the wheels completely lock-up and I slide gracefully towards the intersection. I lifted my foot of the brake pedal to get the wheels spinning again, but that still meant I wasn't going to be able to stop anytime soon. Luckily, the other driver saw me and stopped.

Edit: going off-topic now, but I truly have a vengeful hate for hit&run drivers. Found out just now that my parents' car got side-swiped by someone who basically tried to run them off the road, presumably for keeping 50 km/h in a village, after which he fled. Car's only got some scratches and paint marks, and they're ok, so at least that's that. Over the years, the family car was involved in something like one major accident and four minor ones, all ending with the guilty driver making a getaway.
The really bad one was when someone cut in front of us, after trying to overtake a column of cars. Dad hit the brakes so the other guy wouldn't smash into oncoming traffic, and we ended up getting rear-ended. Dude who overtook immediately left the scene. We saw his license plate , so we called the police, but of course they "couldn't find him". I mean, c'mon...it's a local number plate, 7 people in 3 different cars say it was him, and you "can't find him"? At the very least they should know who the car belongs to and where he lives. The guy who rear-ended us ended up being the legal culprit.
There was another light rear-end collision where we ended up chasing the other driver. We eventually gave up, because, you know, 80 km/h mad car chases through the city streets are both illegal and bad for your health. Of course, police again couldn't seem to find the other car.

 

[TMac3000]

When I was a teenager back in the 90's, I was trying to clean some files off my DOS system to free up hard drive space. Saw some miscellaneous file that was over 120 mb. Being the dumbsh that I was, I said "My God, no wonder I have no space left!" and deleted the file.

It the was disk compression file. That computer, that I shared with my brother, was running DoubleSpace:facepalm: If I were ever to remind him of that moment, I'm sure he would suddenly want me dead again. I remember a buddy asking me "How did you delete your hard drive?!":lol:

One day in college, I was in my typing class, on a Windows system this time, but I went to delete some save files from my class-issued 3.5 floppy using the DOS prompt. I sort of forgot to type A: before typing "del *.*"

The instructor told me the next day that it took the techs about 45 minutes to fix the machine.

 

[IronRain]

Last week, I was called by one of our clients on Saturday saying that their most important application (the one that checks pressures in various boilers) wasn't starting anymore. Automatically, when this application isn't started, ALL the machines go in a full stop mode. So there I was, trying to fix an application that was designed back in '00 and not responding at all. I tried to call the support of the application, but they were closed. I then called a mobile phone number of one of the engineers of the application, who began yelling at me because I called him "on a Saturday". I asked politely if there was an emergency number that I could call, but there was none, so I demanded that he was going to help me because the whole firm was down.
He then replied that I could check some hidden logs, with a specific key command and then hung up. Great. So I checked the log and guess what? Corrupted DLL files. I then repaired the program with its own repair function (control panel > Software > application name: repair), after this I restarted all the sensors and voilà! Application up and running.
This incident started at 02:00 pm and ended on 08:30 pm. During this time frame, our client couldn't do anything at all. It was then very clear to them that an application that needs to run 24/7/365 also needs 24/7/365 support (of course, we said this many many many times before but, as it often goes, something like this needs to happen before they understand this).

And the engineer that I called on his free Saturday? He called me the next Monday to apologize.

 

[Ravenous]

I've seen a few spectacular ones, but I'm afraid I can't give any details...

Let's just say those of you who've only trashed your own personal computer, or just stopped your own company from trading, have no idea what Terror means! A big computer system to us means nationwide, with hundreds or thousands of users logged in...

 

[Artlav]

...standing up after a hard landing, and realising my leg wasn't working right. However, that was one continuous "oh shi..." since i left the plane...

But a really acute "oh shi..." moment was when i was 12 and riding a bicycle on a road.
There was a puddle ahead of me, and a car sound behind.
The car passed just when i was next to the puddle, so i veered left to go around it.
There was a loud screeching of the brakes from behind, sudden acceleration, loosing hold of the bike and weightlessness, in parallel with an instant of realisation that i screwed up HARD by assuming there was only ONE car behind me, all in a form of activation of a wordless concept of "oh shi...", followed by hitting the ground.
Luckily, i only got some scrapes and a mild concussion.

Computer related things?
There were a few, but none really stand out.
Mostly deleting something, then realising 0.1 second later that i really shouldn't have done that.

Dude who overtook immediately left the scene. We saw his license plate , so we called the police, but of course they "couldn't find him". I mean, c'mon...it's a local number plate, 7 people in 3 different cars say it was him, and you "can't find him"?

Have you considered a dashcam?
Perhaps the police will be more willing to find someone when they got a solid piece of evidence.

Let's just say those of you who've only trashed your own personal computer, or just stopped your own company from trading, have no idea what Terror means! A big computer system to us means nationwide, with hundreds or thousands of users logged in...

Kind of like typing "sudo halt" in a terminal, then realising it was the GPRS core server, and 10 million people on an area the size of Europe just lost their mobile internet access?

 

[Ravenous]

Kind of like typing "sudo halt" in a terminal, then realising it was the GPRS core server, and 10 million people on an area the size of Europe just lost their mobile internet access?

Heh, well not that big in terms of numbers - but possibly as much in terms of money lost...

...Like wiping the entire database on a harmless little test system, then realising that window was actually logged into a customer's live trading system not test, and that a hundred customer branches nationwide had just been shut down, unable to trade, and requiring a backup, and that their whole day's electronic trading records were gone for good and would need to be corrected by hand... (A bit like Movieman's comment about running a command on the wrong window, but on a bigger scale.)

The only one I did personally was once bring down a customer's system for a day, but that was a single branch and I got away with it... learned the lesson though...

 

[Urwumpe]

I mean, c'mon...it's a local number plate, 7 people in 3 different cars say it was him, and you "can't find him"? At the very least they should know who the car belongs to and where he lives. The guy who rear-ended us ended up being the legal culprit.

Here, the insurance would handle this.

You brake suddenly and somebody we here call A crashes into you from behind? A's insurance will have to pay, but likely they will try to make your insurance pay as well because you braked without reason. Your insurance states you have to brake for another known driver, who the police can't find. If your and A's cars had been expensive, suddenly A's insurance will be very interested in finding the guy, we now call B, who made you brake. The police will suddenly get visited by company lawyers. You know, these people who are not permitted into Hell because the Devil does not like competition. Suddenly somebody will be found and get some questions about the event. Of course he will deny everything. But again: The more expensive your car was... the more interesting things will get for the insurances to let somebody else pay for it, including paying the lawyers, experts and specialists that will now get activated.

The higher the chance gets, that B's insurance must pay the full damage and possibly B is also rich enough to afford A's insurance lawyers, the more nasty A's insurance can get.

It is not uncommon for expensive hit and run cases here, that the insurance will even gather paint samples and go the full CSI:Bielefeld way against the driver. A child lightly injured in the accident and I would watch for people photographing suspected cars on your public parking.

 

[Scav]

...Like wiping the entire database on a harmless little test system, then realising that window was actually logged into a customer's live trading system not test

I think at that point I would be furiously asking "What the hell is this test environment doing open to the wild?" . . .

 

[Ravenous]

Well, the user in question had full superuser access to the little test system he thought he was wiping, and the very large customer site he had been checking earlier. So quite simply he ran the command in the wrong window on his desktop; a very easy mistake.

(He kept his job though; he's much wiser now and the customer got enough of their data back...)

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I used to do CFD simulations during a very brief period of employment with a company that shall remain nameless. They spent a bundle on the computers and the software for me, but did not feel the need for a UPC or even surge protection. I pointed out how ridiculous this was, even sending emails to this effect (to cover my A$$) to the IT and CIO. They just said no, no explanation given.

I shrugged my shoulders and began my 24/7 simulation campaign. Lo and behold, we were hit with a series of thunderstorms a few weeks later. Yep, sure enough, the lightning gods smote the computer but good. Lost all of the files as well (back up? We don't need no stinking backup!).

So they went and purchased a new machine, re-established the software license, and AGAIN refused to get proper surge protection (Really?). The same rounds of emails, the same shrugging of shoulders, and yet another thunderstorm.

The freshly smitten computer was found dead the morning I went in to submit my resignation. I wish I could say this was the most stupid thing I encountered at that particular organization, but it actually wasn't even close. Sadly they were paying me extravagant amounts of money to work there, but I just couldn't handle the stupid anymore. There were massive layoffs there shortly after I left, firing the last few competent people there, those who didn't already jump ship voluntarily.

 

[Urwumpe]

...Like wiping the entire database on a harmless little test system, then realising that window was actually logged into a customer's live trading system not test, and that a hundred customer branches nationwide had just been shut down, ...

Happened to me. Effectively killed 4 years of customer product data (expensive stuff to get lost) stored in a DB while working with a simple command line client, because the original workstation for database maintenance had been out of order, with a single premature ";" in a manual SQL command, transactions not possible, Urwumpe too badly out of sleep that day to notice the error in the command before executing it and seeing the number of deleted records in the most important table of them all - and then found out that the database backup that was promised to us did not work and instead of just needing a few minutes for restoring the database during the scheduled maintenance break, the database was completely down for almost 2 weeks until the correct backup tape was found and the complete database server had been restored to the state two days before the incident.

Such things do happen, it isn't really the worst. Many small things went wrong, but luckily, nobody died and it was possible to switch to backup processes for the downtime and get back to normal within one month from the incident.

It was just annoying that it happened to me. After going through all emotions from extreme shock via acid self-doubts to berserk rage, I called it a day and went home early at the point when there was nothing left for me to do anymore to fix the problem.

 

[Fabri91]

That brings back memories of an admittedly much smaller incident.
A couple years ago (fall 2012) for some reason I needed to format an 8GB USB drive to be used for a Windows install. So I proceed using the appropriate tool, which asks for the .iso to be used and the drive, presenting a simple drop-down menu with the drive letter and its stated capacity. I select the appropriate drive and the tool proceeds to do its own thing.

Fun fact: at the same time I had my then-Android phone connected, which had an 8GB SD card installed, which presented itself to the system as...an 8GB USB drive.

Only somewhat important data lost were a couple of pictures which couldn't be recovered, but all in all I haven't been happier to have automatic picture upload to a cloud storage account.