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Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#31

Post by aguzzi94 »

partisan wrote: post #26
aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

This is a success, actually. You know what the problem is and you are doing something about it. One day at a time. I was drinking to excess in the past few months. Didn’t make it home one night. It’s way more trouble than it is worth and I plan to change my trajectory.

"Didn’t make it home one night." I know what you're talking about man. Check out Allen Carr's books. The one about smoking had me to quit cigarettes almost 1 year ago. The one about alcohol had me to quit it 10 days ago. They are amazing!

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#32

Post by 2T1Qka0rEiPr »

random42 wrote: post #6
dukeofharen wrote: post #2

Well, not recent, but a few years ago I deleted the production database of my fathers rental company (whoops). The (manual) backup was a week old. Luckily, all data was still there, but on paper (all signed contracts) so I worked overnight to restore all data from the paper pile. After this, I built a script that did a backup once a day and made sure I had to go through some extra hoops to connect to the production d…

I hope you also periodically validate your backups with restoration as well - A backup is only good if it can be restored.

This! I've been backing up my Ubuntu machine using DejaDup (built in Ubuntu backups), only to realise - when my machine died - that they don't work. This was stupid on my part.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#33

Post by bartread »

zhdc1 wrote: post #19

I haven't been able to motivate myself to finish several projects that are 90-95% done.

I really struggle with this too. Victory, or at least the finish line, is in sight, and most of the hard work is done, but what's left is fiddly and annoying - probably time-consuming and boring too - and I just run out of mojo. My current battle is painting my house: the woodwork, in particular, just gets me down. I should be doing that rather than writing this comment.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#34

Post by 2T1Qka0rEiPr »

throwaway8879 wrote: post #23

More like a decade of failures really, resulting mostly from hard addiction to drugs and drinking that led to a failed suicide attempt in 2017. Still recovering from it. Initially there was hatred and resentment towards people who "saved" me, but I can see why people would do it for their fellow human, especially as time goes by. I'm 30 now and starting over...

Sorry to hear this, and hope that you're starting to do better. Glad to hear that it sounds like there are folks in your life to support you.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#35

Post by bartread »

derpherpsson wrote: post #29

Getting a job at a huge megacorp has shown to be a failure for me. Why? At my previous job - a small firm - I spent 8 hours actually working, each day. At my new job I am doing bureaucracy all days long, and very little actual work. Sometimes I come home without actually having had any real work done for the entire day. I flipped out after maybe 3-4 weeks, because Not Doing Actual Work turns out to be extremely stres…

> So now I am planning my escape. I am a bit worried that only working for this company like 8-10 months will look bad at my CV.

Don't worry about it. If your entire CV were full of jobs where you've spent (Also, I too have worked for a megacorp - as a contractor - and it, quite literally, nearly drove me off the rails. I lasted 8 months. Who knew that getting next to nothing done, and being paid for it, could be so stressful? But it really is. You're not wrong about it being bad for your career either. I don't have loads of data, but I have found that developers who've spent too long in that kind of environment don't do so well in our selection process so, if anything, leaving after a short time will only be a positive for your career.)

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#36

Post by yonixw »

zhdc1 wrote: post #19

I haven't been able to motivate myself to finish several projects that are 90-95% done.

Same. But I found a loophole in my mind. I make a second phase. By expanding the project scope and targets even more, you are required to finish the first phase bugs and fixes.

The only problem is you now have the second phase only 90% completed. Here comes phase 3 ...

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#37

Post by cessor »

Most recent: Failed to get out of bed this morning at the time I comited to the night before. I wanted to get up at 8, be at work around 9, got in at 10/11. Fairly recent: I have been doing it like this for three weeks now

My larger failure: I was hired as a contractor/consultant by a major media company earlier this year to help the team develop some cloud based software. I was hired to improve their testing karate. When I started, I was constantly being blocked; all my ideas were rejected and the team kept reverting to they way they had always done it. After 1.5 months the teamleader threw me out. Another team leader was happy take me, there, things were doing great, but I struggled to refactor the mess of TypeScript-AWS-Lambda-Cloud-Crap in a meaningful way.

Not all of it was my fault; the situation there was horrible. But I believe someone more experienced than me, or just someone who doesn't get as emotional as quickly as I do could have handled the situation way better. I feel like a failure.

I am frustrated by the situation, because while it was going on, I felt that I was doing everything right. Not sure what my lesson is.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#38

Post by raxxorrax »

dukeofharen wrote: post #2

Well, not recent, but a few years ago I deleted the production database of my fathers rental company (whoops). The (manual) backup was a week old. Luckily, all data was still there, but on paper (all signed contracts) so I worked overnight to restore all data from the paper pile. After this, I built a script that did a backup once a day and made sure I had to go through some extra hoops to connect to the production d…

I know how that feels. Even worse than any program or script, I especially dislike db management tools that just allow you to fire off random queries against the db. On the other hand you always get these little adrenaline rushes every time you do something like that until you can confirm that you actually fired that delete statement on the correct table... or not.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#39

Post by p3rry »

dukeofharen wrote: post #2

Well, not recent, but a few years ago I deleted the production database of my fathers rental company (whoops). The (manual) backup was a week old. Luckily, all data was still there, but on paper (all signed contracts) so I worked overnight to restore all data from the paper pile. After this, I built a script that did a backup once a day and made sure I had to go through some extra hoops to connect to the production d…

Talking of deletion...I mistakenly deleted production server, yesterday! I was trying to create some AWS micro instance in Mumbai region which were for some reasons were not accessible. Eventually I had to create a mini instance. So I was terminating all those micro instances and some where by mistake one of my important prod instances got selected and boom.

Though I had an AMI created few months back and it took around 15 mins to get latest code working but yeah I learnt my lesson.

But again I think this is a bad ux from AWS where you can directly terminate any instance without any prompt or warning. I hope they change it some day!

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#40

Post by sethjgore »

aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

Check out the Sinclair method for reducing/ resolving drinking problems with a simple medication. It worked for me. From heavy drinking to regular use or even way less than regular use. Recommend 10/10.
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