Trivial things that make you annoyed beyond expectations?

[ebikeerwidnes]

Ah yes, rm $PATH_NAME/*.* when not having set the variable (or spelt it differently) was a fave of mine. Why's it taking so long?..... oh, oops.... followed by a rapid ctrl c

Once one of my programmers left a "programmers handbook" at one of the remote computer sites
it had the full command set in it

The computer room manager decided to try out some of the commands (which was as scary as it sounds - he was not a very techy person which was a worry anyway!!!)

he was fine until he found the DL command (yup - delete)
but didn;t do any damage until he decided to try it with the ** filename - called "wildcard" which he had never heard before
and did it under the root folder (directory)

and happily deleted the operating system
which cause no problems at all - until they tried to reboot the computer overnight - when he was at home asleep and I was on call
that confused me for a while

 

[yello]

and happily deleted the operating system

It's why we have backups. And we do have backups don't we?

I've become rather adept at messing stuff up and recovering it. Then messing up all over again. I do learn, just a bit slower than most. The veritable personification of fail again, fail harder.

 

[ColinJ]

Yes - in the old days I broke things - and sometimes it did affect the whole company
some of those times I got found out!!!

I once heard about a really scary programming mistake...

I spoke to someone who remembered an incident when a programmer introduced a bug into the embedded control software for a microcontroller which controlled a huge mechanical hoist in a carpet factory. When the microcontroller tried to slow down the hoist, it actually started moving faster. A large roll of carpet ended up knocking a massive hole in the factory wall!

 

[Chris S]

Toilet cistern fittings made of steel that rust so badly you have to cut/drill them out...

and the rust leaves a mark that looks like a poo stain.

 

[VinSumRox]

and the rust leaves a mark that looks like a poo stain.

And you have to specify stainless steel for replacements or you just get easily rusting ones again.

 

[Red17]

2 moans from this morning at the gym (I may have moaned before as this is a regular irritation)

First people who just drop weights at the end of a set to draw maximum attention to the weight they are lifting

and people sitting on a weights machine on their phone, not using it but just sitting there for 15 to 20 minutes

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I once heard about a really scary programming mistake...

My ex boss did a lot of programming on PDP11s when he was younger

some of it was controlling machines of various type - the engineers gave them the details and they sorted out the programs to do whatever when a button was pushed etc etc

One was controlling a massive saw for a logging place somewhere or other
apparently the tree trunk came along a conveyor and the computer detected it and started the circular saw, got it up to speed - whcih involved some serious momentum - then dropped it so the the saw cut the trunk
all this occurrened in a very small number of split seconds and using BIG machinery

Then the saw would fly upwards until the computer detected it was in its resting place and stop

anyway - apparently there was a bug and in certain circumstances the motor driving the massive spinning saw upwards would not stop when the saw broke the beam telling it that it really needs to stop now

so in testing (luckily) the saw was performing perfectly when the computer suddenly decided to not stop the motor and the massive spinning saw carried on past the stop point
at which point it turned out that blocks designed to stop it if it went too far were only good enough to do that at slow speeds
so the saw carried on upwards - saw, motor and all - past the end of the rails, past the blocks, through a steel girder holding the ceiling up and up into the wide blue sky

and then gravity had a quick word and it came back down


apparently it was quite spectacular

and the whole building had to be taken apart to recover the saw and motor and most of the roof had to be replaced

all due to a one line coding "feature"

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Slightly different - but a DEC programmer I was talking to had worked in the Ford engine factory
on the line that made BIG lorry engines

He was supporting the team that looked after a conveyor belt system.
The computer was connected to loads of detectors all round the factory that "knew" where the engines were and moved them, stopped them and whatever
anyway - at one point the conveyor reached the wall of the building so there was a thingy (technical term) that turned the engine round and put it onto anotehr conveyor at right angles - then it went off to the next station on the line
simple enough - just needs to be able to deal with the weight and size


anyway - the detector was a light beam that went across the belt into a detector
when the detector saw no beam it knew there was an engine there and the computer could trigger the motors and stuff that turned the engine round

well - this is a factory dealing with big engines - there is oil and grease around
so eventually the detector got mucky - which is OK because the computer was set up to cope with a wide variety of different brightnesses

except that someone forgot to clean it - so eventaully the detector got too mucky and the computer did not know the engine was there
so it fell off the end
so they had a massive heavy engine jammed between the end of the conveyor belt and the wall

apparently they had to demolish the wall to get a crane in to lift the engine out
all for the sake of 10 seconds with a j-cloth!!


I never did anything that exciting unfortunately!!