This morning during a conference call with our clients we were showing them how the billing administrator would handle payment processing. The task is actually quite simple, however the options are extensive.

After I got to the final step I warned everyone not to run the batch as the system was in debug mode and it will run a failed request on every client in db. Having said that, I hit "Initiate Batch" on my browser and the system started processing transactions.... DOH!!!

When was the last time you went DOH!? 🙂

    I work in webhosting company and one of our clients called today that hes having problem with his email. Ok, I asked the normal questions and all that. My first question is allways: "Is your net connection ok?". He aswered yes. I talked with him about 20 minutes and it got clear to me that their net was f*cked up. I told him to open the browser and write our url to it. Well, it didnt open and browser opened the error page.

    I said:"What was my first question to you?"
    client:"You asked is our net was working."
    me:"And you said it was."
    client:"Yeah."
    me:"Well, it doesnt work. Call your internet provider"
    client:"Ok."<hangs up>
    me:"DOH!" 🙂

    I learned a lesson. First ask client to open the %#%& browser! 🙂

      Oh I have so many of these "DOH!" moments, I couldn't possibly list them- so I'll do as the post says and give my last one (which was 2 days ago)...

      I work from home a lot, but I do have an office where I go also. So a few days ago, I'm working on a client's website until midnight and then when I go to the office the next day there was one small change to my template that I needed to make. Unfortunately, I forgot the small task of ftp-ing the most current files back to my office computer, so I ended up changing the old files, then ftp-ing them (in essence over-writing hours of work) before I realized what an idiot I am 😃

      It's that whole "locking-your-car-keys-in-your-car-with-your-car-running" sort of pit-in-the-stomach feeling 😃

      Know it well!

      -Elizabeth

        guys, thank you for making me feel SO much better! 🙂

          I am Elizabeth's close friend as to the DOH! moments... but its not only the human making thrilling mistakes.

          I remember some years ago... back at the Winblows95 days.
          My computer run out of memory but I didn't know it! I was working on a very very big application when the computer started showing me all the crazy things you could imagine. I was too tired to realize that it could be the memory's fault, so I got so mad at the %$#*& computer that I pressed the power button. I still don't know why I didn't trash it instead!! Result: many hours of lost work.

          I also remember one of my first such moments... I was about 13 years old... at my first steps in programming an Amstrad CPC6128. Back at those years people programmed in Basic 1.1 ... building top-down programs and having to use line numbers infront of every line of code. No procedures, no functions, no classes, no exception handling techniques! Nigthmare days. So I remember I programmed for many hours when the power went off :-S How is that for a DOH! moment? After this I learned that is very wise to save your code every 5 minutes.

            Originally posted by altexis
            I So I remember I programmed for many hours when the power went off :-S How is that for a DOH! moment? After this I learned that is very wise to save your code every 5 minutes.

            Yes, I think we can all relate to that, although now we do have battery backup on most our machines (except mine LOL)... now we have a common saying around the office-
            "SAVE EARLY, SAVE OFTEN!"

            Can I interject a non-programming "DOH!" moment?
            Several years ago when I was young and single and hung out at the clubs, my friends and I (as most women do) would people-watch and make catty comments about other women there ("did you see what SHE was wearing?" and "Oh my gosh she should NOT have her hair like that"... you get the idea.) Anyway, so after a few drinks we decide we will go out and make dorks out of ourselves on the dance floor. But unfortunately as I went to step up to get on the elevated floor, my shoe caught on the stair and I literally fell face down on the floor. Everyone in the club completely stopped moving and stared at me. It was one of those "screech to a halt" surreal moments where you realize what a dork you really are LOL. Anyway I have now relinquished all rights to ever make fun of anyone else again 😃

            -Elizabeth

              Originally posted by Elizabeth
              Several years ago when I was ... single

              you mean you are NOT single??? ohhh... thats a sad day for the PHPBuilder community 🙁

              Originally posted by Elizabeth
              But unfortunately as I went to step up to get on the elevated floor, my shoe caught on the stair and I literally fell face down on the floor. Everyone in the club completely stopped moving and stared at me.

              I had one funny moment like this... but the interesting part is that when I just recovered from the sock and watching everyone staring at me... my mind instead of feeling bad, it realized a bug I made in a program I was writting!... Maybe human brains need a little shake up once in a while hehehe

                Originally posted by altexis
                I also remember one of my first such moments... I was about 13 years old... at my first steps in programming an Amstrad CPC6128....

                Gee, I remember doing this; I wrote an adventure game for the son of a friend; got pretty much to the end and someone down the road decided at that moment that their car would look much nicer wrapped around a power pole. The pole did not survive.

                The difference between us is that I was on a CPC464 - it's a bit hard to get into a "save early, save often" mode when you've only got a cassette tape drive...

                As for a more recent event... um... lessee ... okay: mail account administration.

                We had email accounts for everyone in the office - as you do - and one of us was leaving on Friday. Naturally, there were a number of people who would email her in the course of business, and it would not look good if they suddenly started bouncing, so I figured that - instead of simply disabling her email account - I would alias it to the internal all-points office mailing list, so that someone else could pick up the ball. A quick, simple change that I made in less than a minute before heading off to the pub for the farewell party.

                I didn't remove her address from the internal all-points office mailing list.

                Someone mailed her later that night.

                .... No, sorry. I can't talk about it anymore.

                  This happened w/ me day before yesterday:-
                  I was standing in a bus waiting for the stop to come. When the bus got near to the stop, I started to approach the gate of the bus to get down. I realised someone is holding or puuling my bag.
                  I turned around and saw:
                  There was this beautiful gal whose nice long hair had caught up with the zipper of the bag and it was paining her a lot. Though I immediate stepped back and got them out of it, everyone seemed to be looking at me, I said sorry and the bus stopped at the stop. Time for me to get down.
                  What was more embarrasing was that this was the second incident in the bus with me. The first one: When I was trying to get into the bus, my foot slipped.
                  🙁

                    6 days later

                    Lol, dont even remind me.... so many DOH! moments. The last one would have to be the story of my server 🙂.

                    Out host had been down for a couple of days, due to some server-related problem. Clients were emailing/calling me every 5 minutes. Finally the host gave us an update through the forum, and on quick inspection I thought I saw:

                    -------BLUR------- All data has been lost EXCEPT server BCHICAGO -------BLUR-------

                    which was the server I was on, but alas, the message was actually (on a 2nd and 3rd re-read... what? i was tired!!!)

                    All data has been lost on the server BCHICAGO

                    No backups (stored on the same server!!) meant that several clients had lost ALL of their websites, some of which they never kept backups of themselves. The torrent of abuse and hardship I then faced has to be censored from this forum.

                    Luke

                      Luke: I can only imagine what that must have been like. Hey, if nothing else, you came out a much stronger person yes? 🙂

                      System admins are such abused souls.

                      BTW: After reading weedpacket's doh story, I finally understand his nick 😃

                        Originally posted by largo
                        BTW: After reading weedpacket's doh story, I finally understand his nick 😃

                        By Jove, he got it!

                        It happened a fair while ago now, but nothing since (at least in this arena) has really compared well enough to qualify as a "DOH!" moment ... maybe it immunised me against stuffing up. Or at least worrying about stuffing up.

                        Like that fellow Nietzsche said: "That which does not kill us makes us stranger". Hey, dalescop, maybe I should make that my .sig?

                          Originally posted by Elizabeth
                          Know [that feeling] well!

                          SCENE 12. Int. Office. Day.

                          ELIZABETH is sitting at her computer preparing to upload some files. She has them selected and hits the ftp client's "SEND" button (CU of screen as this happens). A progress bar appears. A minute or two passes as the progress bar approaches completion track. Cut to side CU of ELIZABETH as she starts to frown and looks more closely at the screen. Cut to ECU of file timestamp information on left side of ftp client (those being uploaded), then med. quick pan to file timestamp information on right (those at home being overwritten). Another quick pan left and right to compare the two sets of numbers again.

                          Cut to screen's POV of                           ELIZABETH as she takes on a stunned mullet expression. SFX of nasty dramatic chord with lots of strings as the camera's focal settings are messed around with so that our POV appears to zoom in towards ELIZABETH, while the rest of the room zooms dramatically off into the far distance.

                            Originally posted by LukeO
                            The torrent of abuse and hardship I then faced has to be censored from this forum.

                            OH MY GAWD that sucks Luke! But don't worry, we still love you here! 🙂

                              Originally posted by Weedpacket


                              SCENE 12. Int. Office. Day.

                              ...etc etc...

                              Weedpacket I had no idea you were such a talented playwright!

                              ..scene follows with Elizabeth pulling hair and screaming ""NO! The humanity!!"

                              Actually it was more like, "OH SH*T..."
                              😃

                              -Elizabeth

                                5 days later

                                Just this morning Largo 😃

                                Had two hours looking at a hunk of vb code without working out why l was getting an error message...

                                Code started

                                Private Sub Form_load()
   '
   On Error Goto LoadError
   '
   yadda yadda yadda
   '
LoadError:
   MsgBox err.number & " : " err.message

End Sub

                                After two hours some one else had a look and suggested l exit the sub before getting to the LoadError statement and issueing an error message each time it ran...

                                D'uh 🙁

                                  6 days later

                                  I was 12 years old, and helping my uncle work on the sewage lines at my grandmother's house. We had a deep hole dug, and the clay pipes were wide open. I told him I had to use the bathroom pretty bad, and he said "Ok, just don't flush." Let's just say this was a "job" that required me to sit down. When I was done, I instinctively reached for the handle. As soon as I depressed it, I realized what I did, and yelled out the window to my uncle "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Look out!"

                                  Fortunately, he heard me and was able to jump out of the hole in time.

                                  D'OH!!!!

                                  Ok, so it has nothing to do with PHP, but I just had to share. Aren't you glad I did?

                                  Liz, don't feel bad... I am a Lotus Notes programmer; one of the things we do is replicate databases to keep them all up to date. One day after making a bunch of code changes, I replicated my changes to the production server. But I replicated the wrong database; I ended up sending a year-old database into production! Needless to say the IT Support person got a lot of nasty calls and emails. I told her I would look into it, and immediately replicated the correct database. Fortunately, no data was lost, so I didn't tell anyone what a bonehead I was. I just told them that Lotus Notes is really buggy and that I would look into what happened. For some reason, I was never able to "find out what happened..."

                                  D'OH!!!

                                    jazz, that's very much a doh! 🙂 Happens to the best of us though.

                                    Also, BuzzLY, I do not believe you. This is what really happened folks (weedpacket syndrome kickin in...)

                                    --
                                    BuzzLY had planned a trip to the mall with his friends last week, he was looking forward it. April and her friends had promised to show up, and BuzzLY was especially looking forward to that.

                                    As he knelt in the mud, baking in the heat, he could feel nothing but rage... "I'll show you ... mister.don't flush... I'll...

                                    --
                                    Sorry BuzzLY 🙂

                                    back to work!

                                      BuzzLY!
                                      We're so glad you're back 🙂 and so glad you've brought the level of the conversation down as low as it could possibly go LOL 😃

                                      (Talk about a LOAD ERROR statement... or perhaps it was a CORE DUMP)

                                      -Elizabeth

                                        largo, thanks for blowing my cover. And for the record, I was not 12 last week. That was well over... well, let's just say it was a little longer than a week ago 😉

                                        Thanks, Liz... I'm glad I could come back and bring the level of conversation down to where it belongs 😃 And I think it was more of a MEMORY FLUSH than anything :p