I will get back to the SQL for dummies stuff next time. This bit me in the ass this week in my home life. The concept here can be applied to pretty much every aspect of your life. Two words: Do your fucking homework!
I got a frantic and exasperated holler from the kitchen this week. It seems the water was backed up in the dishwasher and what do we do! OMG! WTF! BBQ? Damn. So being the dutiful spouse (Ha! Whatevs...) I hop to it, grab some tools and pull the dishwasher apart and proceed to find nothing wrong. I double and then triple check everything. All is kosher. Spent quite a lot of time bailing water and looking for clogs and scratching my head and teaching the kids fun new cuss words. Ever heard a 4 year old shout "motherfucking bitch ass dishwasher!" and "what the actual fuck!". Did that really happen, you ask? No, no it didn't. But you can imagine, right? Nudge Nudge Wink Wink.
So, my exasperated and profanity laden evening would not have been wasted had I took a brief minute to check the simplest things first. Turns out my daughter was looking for a specific cup and it happened to be in the dishwasher, mid-cycle. A dishwasher that is humming and churning and leaking steam might deter the weaker spirited children and, perhaps, the brighter ones too. Not my daughter. She promptly unlocked the dishwasher and opened it mid-cycle to get her precious. Now, most of us would set things back to how we found them so whatever was happening and causing the aforementioned steam and churning business could continue. Alas, dreamy thoughts of iCarly, horses, milk and cookies, world domination, and "why is my brother such a douche?" were no doubt overwhelming and the washer remained unlocked and the poor cycle remained unfinished.
All of this effort, pain, suffering, effort, 'innocence bunker'-busting f-bombs, and effort could have been easily avoided. Experience is a bitch. It gives us bloated heads and fat honey boo boo's mama-sized egos. A complete novice might take some time to map out how things should work, what the normal process is, the happy path, and then devise a strategy of checking all of these in order of importance. However, it would be super easy for someone that has ever worked on a clogged dishwasher to assume that standing water means clogged drain and some of the time that would be correct. But only some. And some of the time ain't all of the time. 60% of the time it works every time is fine for Sex Panther cologne, Axe body spray, and Curtis's Valtrex but you don't want a 40% fail rate on your code or your condoms. You will have a bad time. So, do your Uncle DBDeveloper a favor and think just a smidge before diving in. Check the easiest shit first. That's why Service Desk asks you to turn it off and back on. It's easy. And sometimes it fixes whatever shit the bed. Start with the simplest, easiest or quickest thing. Even if your gut is telling you it is super complex and what elegant solutions you might devise to resolve the problem. If your problem is an 8 year old girl with a penchant for obliviousness, how is an elegant solution for a mis-perceived root cause going to help? Two words: it fucking ain't.
I don't care how long you've been in the industry and how many lines of code you have written, If 60% of that was for the wrong reason, then I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul. Seriously, check your goddamn ego at the door. Your boss doesn't give two shits how elegant a solution you can come up with for Problem B when Problem A is the one losing them money. Don't be stupid twat. Well, be as small a stupid twat as you can be. Not all of us can completely avoid the natural twattiness that is inside of us. I am ashamed to admit that even I, yes, I, have a twatty streak, perhaps not quite a mile wide but certainly somewhere between Bree Olsen and the Octomom. I struggle everyday against this cursed twat gene. I am not sure which side I get the twat gene from - both sides exhibit such traits. Perhaps this is a curse of humanity. Perhaps there is a little stupid twat in all of us. Maybe if we were less concerned with skin color and income level and more concerned with reading books and staying fresh, the world would be a better place. Lik dis eff u cry evrityme.
But seriously, do your homework. When a problem comes along you must whip it, but first you must think what is the simplest thing it could be? Check that shit first. I could have had a lovely evening with video games, beer and internet porn but instead I was up to my elbows in half cleaned dishes and dishwasher parts.
I plan to get back on the SQL for stupid twats series again next week. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment