Who's done some stupid sh_t?

prod

prod

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Oh my god who cares?
Today @ 8am we got a call from the client - one of their beloved reports are missing from the server, a quick investigation leads us to discover that an intern (junior dev.) REMOVED it from a Live production server! A new version was waiting to be deployed from UAT and he somehow thought this warrants him to do stupid sh_t. UAT has not been passed yet but his reasoning is he didn't want people to run the old version with a bug...wtf?

While I'm pissed off as hell it did remind of some stupid sh_t I've done in the past, and talking about it makes it better.

So, anyone else?
 
We've all made stupid mistakes. In fact a better interview question than "Why are manhole covers round?" etc. would be "What is the stupidest thing you have ever done?".

I bet most answers would involve something terrible when running an SQL statement under pressure...
 
You just can't allow Jnr guys to have access like this...

We don't even allow seniors to have access like this !

PROD and UAT are my domain, if its a F-up then its my F-up
 
Nerfherder said:
You just can't allow Jnr guys to have access like this...

We don't even allow seniors to have access like this !

PROD and UAT are my domain, if its a F-up then its my F-up
Click to expand...

While I agree, we are moving towards a closed domain where only 1 or 2 more senior people will have the permissions. Better late than never, they seem to think live servers are their home PC's ;)
 
Russell S said:
We've all made stupid mistakes. In fact a better interview question than "Why are manhole covers round?" etc. would be "What is the stupidest thing you have ever done?".

I bet most answers would involve something terrible when running an SQL statement under pressure...
Click to expand...

Like an UPDATE script without all the needed columns in the WHERE, I've personally done this ;)!
 
UPDATE tableX
Set Value = 'P'
Where Something = H and Item = 1 or Item = 2

1 million records later...

Should have been

UPDATE tableX
Set Value = 'P'
Where Something = H and (Item = 1 Or Item = 2)

The horror, once you see 1 million records when only expecting a few hundred.
 
prOd said:
Like an UPDATE script without all the needed columns in the WHERE, I've personally done this ;)!
Click to expand...
Or testing an update script on what you think is your Dev environment and it's actually your Prod window... Late night does horrible things to your sense of judgement. Fortunately I had the system down for maintenance during this time, and had made a full DB backup of Prod.
 
prOd said:
While I agree, we are moving towards a closed domain where only 1 or 2 more senior people will have the permissions. Better late than never, they seem to think live servers are their home PC's ;)
Click to expand...

Yup, it's a Dev thing. I have been there... If something is wrong you just change it or hack it. No caution or consideration for what else might be affected.


I have made a few big blunders though... The biggest I can remember was at about 3am during an upgrade, I wiped a settings table from our db while trying to upgrade it. We tried to copy the settings from UAT but they are not 100 % the same and we saw features having strange anomalies for 2 days.
Taght us a valuable lesson though... We now have those settings recorded and documented
 
Update Blah
Set Mess = 'About to happen'
Where criteria = 'whut'

Then select text while chatting to someone, click execute and realise you only selected the first two rows.
And you are on the production DB.
Run to the call center and tell 48 telemarketers they need to take a early lunch break.
Pray that the DBA did a hourly backup 5 minutes ago, else you will be lynched.

That is why change controll, backups and keeping the junior off production (And staging) environment is so important.

And
Resign from company, leave everything handed over to your replacement. Get called a week later because the new junior DBA decided to clean up space on the Dev Server, and deleted a number of databases he didn't recognise, including their backups.
Specifically the database of your last project - that your replacement was due to deploy to production in three days.

Most spectacular.
Test changes to a CrystalReport that used Rightfax to send out faxes. Have the report flat out refuse to send a fax to your test number. Discover a font bug in RightFax that caused it to actually send the faxes to the first fax number on the switchboard list. Namely the CEO. In the UK. All 345 test faxes. Three times.
 
Compton_effect said:
Blah blah blah, computer speak I don't understand blah blah blah

Most spectacular.
Test changes to a CrystalReport that used Rightfax to send out faxes. Have the report flat out refuse to send a fax to your test number. Discover a font bug in RightFax that caused it to actually send the faxes to the first fax number on the switchboard list. Namely the CEO. In the UK. All 345 test faxes. Three times.
Click to expand...

Hahahahaha, I like that story, thnx for a giggle.
 
Back in my I.T days, I was on an RDP session to a clients server and somehow instead of disabling their unused NIC, I disabled the only working NIC. Which meant my RDP session got cut. It also meant their company network was shutdown. No internet, no emails etc. They were not impressed. Had to drive into town to go re-enable it.
 
Last edited:
Compton_effect said:
Most spectacular.
Test changes to a CrystalReport that used Rightfax to send out faxes. Have the report flat out refuse to send a fax to your test number. Discover a font bug in RightFax that caused it to actually send the faxes to the first fax number on the switchboard list. Namely the CEO. In the UK. All 345 test faxes. Three times.
Click to expand...

That is hilarious
 
informix database

oninit -iy on a live, production server - on site...

wasn't me though... :D

PS : oninit -iy initializes the DB...
 
We have had some occasions where test emails where sent to customers. It is something we are very careful of now.

I kinda had a big blunder that wasn't. While working on something at Foschini. I wasn't there long yet. I dropped a lookup table related to the stores and I thought it was on LIVE. I had to take the dreaded walk to the manager to tell him what I done - I was ****ting in my pants. Luckily it turned out that it was only a staging environment, I didn't have access to LIVE.
 
Tander said:
When I was on a clients server back in my I.T days, I was on an RDP session to a clients server and somehow instead of disabling their unused NIC, I disabled the only working NIC. Which meant my RDP session got cut. It also meant their company network was shutdown. No internet, no emails etc. They were not impressed. Had to drive into town to go re-enable it.
Click to expand...

That's why I rename the NIC's to "Internet" "WAN" "LAN" "DMZ" etc... easier to remember which NIC's which that way...
 
Early in my career I mistakenly changed permissions on an Exchange DB... nobody could access their emails, worst part is even administrator got denied access :o Managed a successful recovery by getting in a guru.

Suffice to say I now leave default permissions well alone, and don't go messing with those kind of things...
 
The_Librarian said:
Early in my career I mistakenly changed permissions on an Exchange DB... nobody could access their emails, worst part is even administrator got denied access :o Managed a successful recovery by getting in a guru.

Suffice to say I now leave default permissions well alone, and don't go messing with those kind of things...
Click to expand...

I utterly hate working with Exchange. It feels like it's going to fall over if you sneeze to loudly near it :D
 
Shi said:
We have had some occasions where test emails where sent to customers. It is something we are very careful of now.

I kinda had a big blunder that wasn't. While working on something at Foschini. I wasn't there long yet. I dropped a lookup table related to the stores and I thought it was on LIVE. I had to take the dreaded walk to the manager to tell him what I done - I was ****ting in my pants. Luckily it turned out that it was only a staging environment, I didn't have access to LIVE.
Click to expand...

I've done similar actually: Sending an email on SSIS OnError event instead of OnFailure. My entire team + IT director of our client was in the mailing list, plus some managers etc...SSIS generates LOTS of errors if it fails :D
 
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