Stupid Shit That We've Learnt From!

[Novaer]

Stupid Shit That We've Learnt From!

Have you ever done something stupid in your life? Did you learn from it? Consider sharing your story to the community. It's an exercise in humility and what-have-you. Perhaps you can help prevent other people from making the same mistake. You can post more than one story, just please keep it to one story per post, and try not to double post... Unless no one has posted in like a week or so. It doesn't have to be deeply personal, just as long as it was stupid, or a mistake that in hindsight was very silly mistake to make, intentional or not, it's all good. What did you learn from it? 

Now I wouldn't ask you all to potentially embarrass yourselves unless I was willing to do that too. So here's my story:

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Hot Swapping Hard Drives

Back in 2012, I used to own an Acer Aspire 8930g, which is a model of 'Desktop-Replacement' Laptops, with a big 18.4" screen. It was a kick-arse laptop that I only paid something like £400 from someone who refurbished it, it came with a Polish Windows Vista on it, but I put Windows 7 on it very quickly. Despite being a very solid laptop for the time, it had a bit of a design flaw, that is unrelated to the story. Suffice to say: The power input was in the hinge... So as you open and close it, over time it gets weaker and weaker. This laptop was unlike any other laptop I had owned, previously. In that it had two SATA bays for 2.5" Hard Drives, and only one was filled so I got a new hard drive for it, and put it in the secondary slot for extra storage. Another thing I really liked about this laptop was ease of access for upgrade potential.

In the prime of its life, so it was still working at this point, and the idea that it'd fail hadn't even crossed my mind at this point. I had, at some point set a backup schedule for my laptop so that it would backup to the Netgear Stora (A Network Attached Storage unit that I had at the time) and assumed that everything on my laptop was backed up. So I wasn't too careful about the stuff that was on it. Bare in mind that this was my daily machine, for quite a while. I did patches, updates and posts on it before putting them up on EcchiDreams. I gamed on it. I chatted to people on it. So on and so forth. 

One day, @Neptune and I had @SMFoxy over, visiting us in our home. I got a little curious idea which crossed my mind. Whilst the laptop was asleep (Suspended, not hibernated, powered off, or anything like that) what would happen if you took both of the hard drives out, and put the hard drive that was in slot 1 into slot 2 and the one that was in 2, into 1? Would it just restart? Would it find that the hard drives have changed location and remap? I had no idea. I had never done that before. @Neptune and @SMFoxy were both telling me that "This is a very bad idea." and "That doesn't sound like something you should try out." But I knew more about computers than these two, and my 22 year old self wasn't going to be lectured to by these "Noobs". (Lol)

So I insisted that everything important was backed up daily to the NAS and that there was nothing important on it. So I went ahead and did it, despite their cautions and advisements that this wasn't a good idea... I should have listened. 

This was mistake number 4. (Yes, I have made 3 other mistakes here).

When I brought my laptop back out of sleep, the screen went black for a long moment before coming back to the login screen, but everything was lagging hardcore and the hard drive light was solid. I clicked on the password box, but nothing was happening. After a good five or ten minutes of waiting, it blue screened. Upon rebooting, the laptop would just blue screen, over and over again. So, I had to use an external USB-to-SATA adapter, plugged it into Neppy's laptop, to try and find out why this wasn't booting... Only one problem with that idea. Both drives were corrupted to all fuckery. 

So I just formatted both and just started again. All the while, getting some frankly deserved "I told you!" and "What have we learnt?!" from the other two, who were rightfully smug. After I got into Windows, I went to the NAS to restore my backups... 

It was at that moment, I knew. I fucked up.

Yeah-no. They weren't there. It hadn't done any back ups... So I lost it all. 

So what did I learn? 5 things, from 5 mistakes:

5) Don't assume that just because you know more about (Insert Subject Here) than someone else does. that their opinion is completely invalid.
4) Don't Hot/Warm swap hard drives, if the bays aren't designed for it. 
3) If you're going to do something stupid like this: Do a manual backup to be sure.
2) Do not rely on automated backups - which has stung me more than once. 
1) I should listen to @Neptune and @SMFoxy.

[Elena Ichinomiya]

Hey! At least we all learn something from your experience...not without giving one-two smirk of "told ya".

Mistaking diarrhea medicine as powdered orange juice
Yeah you read that right. Man make mistake, or perhaps this woman make a mistake that really make her whole week a goddamn trip to Throne of John. I had this experience back in the day when i'm still on elementary school. After i got home, i'm all sweaty and hot due to current season (keep in mind my country is tropic). I was thinking about drink some cold mineral water on the fridge until i saw some powdered "OJ" above the fridge. There was three of it and the package really look refreshing (god damn ads!)

"So tasty that it can Kamehameha your digestion system"

So i just "Fuck it, there's three of it, my parent won't give a damn since there's some left" that's what my young self thought. When i drank it, i do felt it taste a bit funny but i drank it anyway and off with it. And then one night my father ask who on earth drink one sachet of the said drink. I don't remember the name (Honest!) so i don't answer.

And the adventure start literally next day. I keep going back and forth to toilet. I'm sure you guys know what i'm doing, don't ask! Of course my teacher start to grow weary of my constant running on toilet but i told them i really had to go. It goes one for literally a week so my teacher decide to ask my parent if i had food poison. And that's where i innocently said "i drink some funny orange juice few days ago. Other than that, nothing". Suffice to say, my parent got squandered by my teacher, and they in return squander me who still clueless whats going on for drinking something so foolish without reading the label. My answer? "It look tasty!"

Thank god a few medicine stop my dysfunctional digestion so yeah.

What i learn?

• No matter how delicious it look, read it first!
• Should ask my parent if i can eat/drink something even if it placed on our own home.
• Follow every medicine label warning said, especially "keep away from children" part! (As adult)
• Should've spit something taste funny when it reach my mouth.
• I should stick to mineral water...

[WetNoodle]

Man, I could write a novel but I'll keep it short and sweet.

Back when I was a wee lad my parents had a motor home and we'd often go camping. One time during one of these trips, we stopped at this out-of-the-way rest area that only had like... an outhouse bathroom. And... you could probably guess what this was. No plumbing. No running water. Really stinky. Just a toilet over a big empty hole that just seemed to go down and down into nothingness.

So my young, curious mind was like "Where does it go?" because I'm used to toilets with running water and see it go down the hole. Then, I get a genius idea! I go outside and get the biggest, heaviest rock I can carry. I take it back into the outhouse... and drop it down the toilet hole...

Thankfully, it was also right by a dock near a river... so I ran in horror, screaming... covered in the nasty and jumped into the river to clean off.

Moral of this story? I dunno. He who cast stones into an outhouse gets covered in shit?

[ManInMauve]

Much like @wetnoodlestuff, I could probably write a novel on ridiculous things that I’ve done.

However, I’ll start with a lesson that I probably should’ve known, but just didn’t act on, at the time.

I was in middle school. So, I was 12 or 13. I decided to wear my favourite sweater, but also decided against wearing a shirt under it. Why would I when my sweater looked like a shirt, right?

Well, the day had gone pretty good, and I was on my way to an afternoon class when I noticed a stray thread in my sweater. Without thinking, I grab the thread, and go to tug at it. Needless to say, it didn’t go in my favour. The sweater was destroyed, and I had to run to the office because I hadn’t thought to wear a shirt underneath my sweater. (Oh, the arrogance!)

I could’ve saved myself the embarrassment if only I had remembered one really good lesson: don’t go tugging on loose threads. A lesson that I’ve heard from my mother many a time.

Fortunately for me, that was my last wardrobe malfunction for years to come, and the last major one, too. Unfortunately for me, it also wasn’t the first wardrobe malfunction, either.

I learned not to be as cocky as I was that day, and not tug at loose threads. However, I’ve also looked at where some nudist beaches are, and I’ve been tempted to find nudist communities. So, maybe I haven’t learned my lesson, yet?

[Elena Ichinomiya]

ELENA DRIVE HARD

We don't say we hate technology. In fact, we all grateful for their presence...until they start giving finger to us that is.

Now let me tell you about one thing when it come to technology. You gotta be delicate, you gotta be patience, you gotta have lots of bucks when you realize the gizmo you had is on verge to enter the stone age. Most importantly, you gotta stay away from any form of technology when your mood goes sour! And i learn that last one in a very agonizing way that not only it cost my time and anxiety, but also my chance to login here!

So 2 days ago, my sis suddenly brought a PC from her office so she could work at home. Mind you, she work as designer which mean creating big resolution artwork and rendering megapixel video is a must and her high-end laptop wasn't so hot to do so, hence she brought that hunk of M60 on our home. You think office PC would be all set and good to go. Yeah sure, but this one is set to goes wrong. We realize that the CPU is batshit bad. The OS wasn't cracked correctly, leading the OS refuse to update and to add salt to the wound, many registry are missing. And to add more shit to the bone, the driver also incorrectly installed because it has *insert VGA driver name* when the VGA attached is not that one. Stupid? Yeah it is. But not until i got my spotlight of idiot at work.

All driver installed and we had to overwrite the OS with new one with repair (cracked obviously, but properly this time). Things going well and everything ready to go. However the CPU acting up again because the HDD claim it has little space left when it has whole empty universe. While we format it (not the one with the OS of course), my sis ask to copy some of her data to my laptop to which i did. And guess what? Things got more hairy because after formatting, both partition claim they're full (this time they claim no space left instead has a little). I'm really tired wasting a good chunk of hours straight (10 hours to be precise) fixing this so-called high end ready to go CPU only to give me high-strung in return. We manage to rid the problem...because it somehow solved by itself. Whoever got this CPU after my sis better be grateful!

My sis ask to have her data back and said i can delete one on my laptop once i copy it. The deed is done and then i proceed to delete the data in my laptop. The data for one folder so big since it has 20 GB or so, leading the system to ask me if its alright to outright delete it without throwing it to recycle bin to which i allow it.

Big mistake.

The deletion took longer. So i ask my sis what kind of data she had there. She claim its a bunch of edited video and image along with other RAW format stuff. Yet when i said it eat a good 20 GB space, she frown. "Elena, this thing only eat 8 GB". I swear i felt my stomach having a joust when i heard that. So i saw the delete progress and guess what i found? Butchering of my long saved data.

"Deleting...D:/GonnaFixItLater/*Important folder related to RP and other stuff that perhaps been kept for 5 years or so*

Boy, i never have a chill down my spine for so long! So i stop the deletion but the deed is already done. Most of my data on other partition is wiped clean. Turn out when i hit delete button, the cursor was placed on the drive instead the folder i want to delete. Its strange and seems impossible for such thing to happen, but i guess i was so steamed because of that black chunk of a CPU who give me a headache for whole day, leading my frustration and want everything done quickly and go to bed which resulting lack of paying attention to what i've done.

Well, i manage to recover some yesterday...SOME!

So, what do i learn from technology today?

• I should've remember the phrase "The more modern they are, the fragile they got"
• While it might not my business in the first place, i shouldn't be too pissed because its for my big sis sake
• I should've know better than trust a backup feature
• Never again i'll touch technology when my mood goes backward flip!