"were"?

I'm still stupid, just different kinds of stupid.

Quote: Debugging a function like crazy. Hitting the keyboard, screen and head like crazy. Cursing the God for hours. Adding tons of debug code, printing stuff, putting in globals. Crying, giving up, yelling, breaking things, wanting to die. Then I realised that I didn't call the function and it worked just fine....
And it happened at least 3 times.

I'd like to sit in the corner and watch you code sometime. [lol]


Here's another one.

I was doing routine maintenance with a gaming rig. I just got a hold of a DataVac, which is this little gremlin of a vacuum that sucks on one end and blows on the other simultaneously, which supposedly makes it perfect for cleaning out a case.

What I didn't know was that the blowing end builds up mad pressure when the nozzle is held near the tip. There is a little hole where air was escaping that I blocked while holding it. (NOT at the very end of the nozzle) As I was blowing out dust, my grip loosened and the nozzle itself fired like a bullet right into some capacitors. I found out later that if a stick of RAM was in 3rd DIMM slot, the system wouldn't even do the POST. It would just sit and whir.

[Edited by - zyrolasting on October 24, 2010 2:02:33 PM]

Recently (this year)... I was trying to hook up a hard drive and I figured that the trouble I was having might be because I had the power cord plugged in upside down. So, I flipped the cord over and plugged it in.

Pop.

The other week I was programming something, and it started off with a core part of the assignment having 2 states, so I wrote it with an if else statement.

Then I updated the simple program for a follow up assignment that expanded on the first, and did so by adding a third state.

From there, I managed to botch it because I added an if to the bottom of it, when I should have added else if.

Something like half an hour of fiddling to notice that little typo trying to figure out why it would always jump to the third state right after entering the second properly.


The moral of the story? I should make more liberal use of Switch Statements, and that I'm still stupid enough to believe that real debugging tools are over kill for most simple applications.


I'm also stupid enough to skip most error checking in the simple tools I usually find myself making for my own uses. Nothing like knowingly reinforcing bad habits.

C'mon, let's talk about the true test of stupidity: I'm so stupid that I won't get hired after an interview because the interviewer also realizes I'm stupid. Hahaha! So, I'm stuck with working for myself and wishing I could fire myself over and over again.

And then, I realize how dumb I am when I take FAR longer to figure something out when it would take an average developer an hour or two. I started keeping a running list in notepad++ of the dumb mistakes I've made so I could avoid repeating them, but...I never saved it and my power shut off last night during a freak wind storm. I don't remember what I wrote, so maybe I should start saving my shit and chalk up 'not saving!' as another dumb mistake.

I don't have any backups either. I think that's gonna come back to haunt me some day. I have an unjustified faith that all my hardware will always work so the urgency to start backing up my valuable data is just not there. Maybe I'm hoping for a premonition of "hey, your stuff is gonna get lost in four days. Back it up!".

Ah... I guess it's amazing to still be alive at 28. That's why we celebrate birthdays ;)

Quote: I don't have any backups either. I think that's gonna come back to haunt me some day. I have an unjustified faith that all my hardware will always work so the urgency to start backing up my valuable data is just not there. Maybe I'm hoping for a premonition of "hey, your stuff is gonna get lost in four days. Back it up!".

You can look into an online backup service. I'm having a good experience with IDrive so far.

Another little tidbit: You know this joke?

Quote: Guy 1: I did so well when I was learning about programming.
Guy 2: What language did you use?
Guy 1: Er, English?

That actually happened to me, where I was Guy 2. I couldn't believe it, especially since I read the joke before it happened. [lol]

just a couple of days ago, I had to reinstall windows (new harddisk), the current windows version was stuffed (wouldnt even boot in safemode)

anyways I installed it only to find I couldnt get on the internet, since I needed some special drivers for the motherboard.
The stupid thing was I threw the motherboard CD out a couple of years ago, thank god I had a mac to get on the net + then download the driver, but still a PITA.

but I also discorved a very stupid thing from the nvidia driver team.
OK winXP all setup, I need to install graphics drivers right.
goto their site download the latest version, install them + about 80% of the way through it just saiz onscreen

instalation FAILED, no further message.

heres me thinking the downloaded file was corrupted or something, so try a few times after 1/2 hour
I try "dxdiag" + it saiz directx8.1 (standard with winXP) aha that could be it.
So I download + install dx9.
I then installed the drivers + alls well.

you'ld think a company with the development skills/budget of nvidia would have some simple code like this

if ( dxversion <9.0 )
printerrormessage( "u need at least dx9.0" );

Quote: Original post by zyrolasting
Another little tidbit: You know this joke?

Quote: Guy 1: I did so well when I was learning about programming.
Guy 2: What language did you use?
Guy 1: Er, English?

That actually happened to me, where I was Guy 2. I couldn't believe it, especially since I read the joke before it happened. [lol]

Something very similar happened to me, except the language was French; it was an English-speaking person.

Once I tried to start comp without keyboard. But it asked me to press F11 (or something like that), so I pressed F11 to see what happens. Nothing happened.
Damn thing should have asked to plug keyboard first.

Quote: Original post by FableFox
hard disk swapping.

in the good old days, where hard disk are of OK size, and both CD-R drives are really expensive, and so is zip drives (and zip disk). I was a poor student at tha time. but an animation student.

so it's normal for us to swap hard disk (2nd hard disk) just to transfer large files between computers. we're not talking about close computer here. we're talking about different student block, student who rent rooms/houses outside university. and no, there is no internet connection to student block, in those day.

it was so normal that most of us either have only one side of the casing wall, or none at all.

anyway, after all those plug-in and removing, I became too careless. One day I broke a few of the IDE pin, rendering the hd useless (and the data inside).

those are the days. being animation student, it remind me of the interview with tron animator. they said they have to be perfect, since it not a matter of if we made a mistake, hey, lets fix it in post. it was a matter of, this animation is screwed.

so basically, that hd and the animation inside is screwed. lucky-ly, it is a transfer hd. you know, when you buy a larger hd, you tend to use it as C:, and the old hd as D:. so i still have most original files on C:. but i do lose files that i only keep on D: (the screwed hd). but what the files are, i'll keep it to myself :-)

You know, most decent computer shops can repair/replace broken harddrive connectors and its not all that expensive.