Share your N000B Moment!!!

[visualAd]

I just tried to insert and AGP graphics card in to a PCIE slot.

[dee-u]

I replied to this thread.

[mendhak]

I had my age wrong for a whole year.

[kregg]

You can't fail as bad as this. (There was a screenshot attachment which showed the correct time, something like 12pm when it was 12 in the afternoon)

[Shaggy Hiker]

I forgot my own name in college (true, though it was temporary).

[timeshifter]

I had a reverse n00b moment, where I realized how much of a n00b I was back then... I just wrote an app to simulate Conway's Game of Life, and it runs more than 650 times faster than my first try...

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

I have an inability to remember what year it is without referring to some kind of calendar. I have no idea why I can just never remember this one fact.

[visualAd]

n00b

[MartinLiss]

Many years ago I took some formal programming classes and one of them was in COBOL. COBOL has a Move statement and one of my (obviously polite) classmates wrote lines of code that began "Please Move...". In another class we needed to develop an application that contained an external error message table and one person include an "Error Message table not found" error message in the table.

[BillGeek]

I accidentally deleted all reports from our Production environment at work.

[oceanebelle]

I forgot my age.

[FunkyDexter]

I had my age wrong for a whole year.

I did that. The whole year I was 35 I thought I was 36. It was only when my 36th birthday was approaching and someione asked me how old I was going to be that I realised.

[mendhak]

Same... now I have to do it all over again.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

I managed to delete five postgresql overviews from my dev database... and I hadn't saved the code.

That was my first major n00b moment, have since learnt not to ever 'DROP CASCADE' anything in the db without saving code. I partly blame Ubuntu, because unlike Windows when it says "Are you sure you ant to destroy the universe", Linux assumes you have half a brain cell and simple commits to it without warning... oh how wrong they are!

[timeshifter]

I accidentally deleted all reports from our Production environment at work.

Which is why your reports should all be generated at the time of need, and displayed read-only, to prevent accidents from happening...

[visualAd]

Hai, I haz a repotz...


Or do I?

[EntityX]

I used to be copier and fax technician at one time. I was working in hollywood at the Entertainment Tonight offices. I needed to unplug the fax machine I was going to work on and I unplugged the computer someone was working on. They had some work that they hadn't saved and it was lost. Oops.

[techgnome]

When I was first learning VB (back when VB3 was the hot new stuff on the market).... I'd only used procedural programing until then, so event driven programing was a bit foreign... I couldn't figure out where the IF statement was that said "If this button is clicked, run this code" .... It wasn't until the fourth day that it finally dawned on me that it was simply FM and that was all I needed to know.

-tg

[visualAd]

Of course, there is an IF somewhere that fires your procedure off.

[Blakk_Majik]

I was once given the highly enviable task of prepping an ASP application (written entirely in Javascript mind you) for our users in the India office.

Now, India is broken into two seperate entities, so there had to be a way to make sure that the users from one entity did not see the data of the other. Cool, I can do that.

I finish the changes and test it out, and everything works great. However, I forgot that my id has super user priveliges, so no matter what I log in to on this app, I get in. Not a very good way to verify other user's access.

So, given the above, I install into production no problem. However, the "If" statement on one of my Javascript functions (that validates user access) was not written properly. So, I accomplished the task of getting the India entities blocked from looking at each other's data. But then, I also managed to lock out EVERYONE from every country that wasn't a super user. So for half the day after the install we are fielding calls from users in India, Japan, Mexico, Canada, and the UK.

I also, once learned a very valuable lesson about using delete statements without where clauses. I will only say that rebuilding 5 million rows of data is no picnic.

[timeshifter]

Your sig is wrong.

SELECT * FROM [Users] WHERE [Clue] IS NOT NULL
0 rows returned

[techgnome]

Actually... it's not incorrect... if it's LINQ...

-tg

[timeshifter]

Ok, so I even had it a little off...

[wild_bill]

At a former job in an operations department we were having problems with one of our KVM switches accessing a production SQL server. I decided to remove the keyboard driver, and install a random one. On reboot, there was an epic fail, and I had no clue how to setup drivers with out Windows. After hours of googling, I finally found a solution. We had a contract with a state government so every minute we weren't processing after 6 AM we got fined some ridiculous amount (I think it was $1500 / minute). Luckily everything was up on time, or I would have gotten the boot.

[dee-u]

The molex connector is designed such that we should be able to avoid connecting it in the wrong position and I was confident enough that I should be able to connect it correctly even without looking, I inserted it and firmly placed it and I booted the computer and was puzzled why it wasn't booting, I checked the connection to find out that I was able to connect it in inverted position and fried my drive.

[Blakk_Majik]

Actually... it's not incorrect... if it's LINQ...

-tg

Winnar!

[visualAd]

I was once given the highly enviable task of prepping an ASP application (written entirely in Javascript mind you) for our users in the India office.

Now, India is broken into two seperate entities, so there had to be a way to make sure that the users from one entity did not see the data of the other. Cool, I can do that.

I finish the changes and test it out, and everything works great. However, I forgot that my id has super user priveliges, so no matter what I log in to on this app, I get in. Not a very good way to verify other user's access.

So, given the above, I install into production no problem. However, the "If" statement on one of my Javascript functions (that validates user access) was not written properly. So, I accomplished the task of getting the India entities blocked from looking at each other's data. But then, I also managed to lock out EVERYONE from every country that wasn't a super user. So for half the day after the install we are fielding calls from users in India, Japan, Mexico, Canada, and the UK.

I also, once learned a very valuable lesson about using delete statements without where clauses. I will only say that rebuilding 5 million rows of data is no picnic.

Here's another lesson, don't use Javascript for user authentication.

[oceanebelle]

.. and fried my drive.

Driving Fried chicken??? That's uber 733t!

[timeshifter]

Ok, you're cute, but could you please stop with the food? It does get kinda old after, say, three years...

[TheBigB]

Here's another lesson, don't use Javascript for user authentication.

Indeed.
It's like...... Wait. It's not like...
Is there something equally noobish to that?

[techgnome]

using a batch file maybe?

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

Ok, you're cute, but could you please stop with the food? It does get kinda old after, say, three years...

My life revolves around food (and if I stop exercising, your life, and the whole world, will revolve around me). I ate rice for lunch. So: Bleah!!!

[BillGeek]

using a batch file maybe?

Hehe... yeah, about that...

Apparently the IT department here runs a batch file in the "Startup Scripts" that grants access where required. Sufficed to say: If I get hold of that file, I can access ANY server across the county!

They're not too clever, are they?

[Blakk_Majik]

Here's another lesson, don't use Javascript for user authentication.

The app doesn't use JS to validate the user per-se, the access roles come from a database.

I did not write this app myself. It existed years before I started working here. Apparently, the developer that originally wrote it didn't know how to use VBScript, so they used Javascript to write the entire app.

I remember thinking to myself "Great! So if I have a single solitary Javascript error, the entire app will be broken! Oh Joy!". I mean honestly, what sane individual would use js for an entire application?

For my particular task, I only had enough time to "open it up" to another country. If I had the time, it would have been .NET in a heartbeat.

[dbasnett]

I was 20 something and was the Acceptance Test Manager for a large mainframe install at the US Secret Service. During the acceptance test we had to be up and running for 99% of the time for 30 consecutive days. On the last night the IT director and I went to dinner because at midnight the test was over and we had passed. During dinner we had drinks. After dinner we went back to the site and were standing next to one of the open panels(in those days there were lots of flashing lights and switches). As I often do when I get on a roll, my hands become involved in the conversation.

I hit one of the switches and down came the system.

[JuggaloBrotha]

The app doesn't use JS to validate the user per-se, the access roles come from a database.

I did not write this app myself. It existed years before I started working here. Apparently, the developer that originally wrote it didn't know how to use VBScript, so they used Javascript to write the entire app.

I remember thinking to myself "Great! So if I have a single solitary Javascript error, the entire app will be broken! Oh Joy!". I mean honestly, what sane individual would use js for an entire application?

For my particular task, I only had enough time to "open it up" to another country. If I had the time, it would have been .NET in a heartbeat.

You have my condolences.

[homer13j]

When I showed up for my first shifter kart race (Mid-Ohio) I was a pathetic nine seconds off the pace. Per lap. I got lapped twice in a 30-minute race.

And that's my n00b moment...

[kregg]

This.

[Arrow_Raider]

I was installing ram in my friend's laptop and the ram he purchased wouldn't fit - the notch was off by half a millimeter or so. So instead of checking to make sure he actually got ram that was of the right specifications for his laptop, I proceeded to shave off the difference from the notch and force it in. Needless to say, it didn't work.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

I hate those stupid RAM boards. Sometimes you have the right specs but the die didn't punch them out just right, and you DO have to shave them. But then sometimes the wrong board looks exactly like the right board that just needs shaving. I've done exactly what you said before.