Screwups

Screw ups, flubs, accidents … everyone’s done them. Everyone will do them. They are inevitable.  We’re just human.

So what’s your favorite flub?

Mine is the time that I was trying to look-up a command by typing “SLTCMD CMD(A*)” but, instead of hitting “S”, I accidentally hit the letter letter immediately to the right of it instead.

Luckily I was operating with a *PGMR user profile, so the damage I was able to do was limited.  Still, it got me some attention.

Use the comments below to tell the world what your biggest screw-up was.

Feel free to use a bogus email address on the comments if you want to remain anonymous.

5 Replies to “Screwups”

  1. How about the time (at a previous employer) that I wanted to remove the key from the UPS. Unfortunately there was only one position in which the key was removeable.

    Don’t ask – I’m not sure where my brain was that day.

    Glitch?

    Gremlin
    Loose
    In
    The
    Computer
    House

    (Don’t get it wet. Don’t feed it after midnight. Never can remember the 3rd Don’t.)

  2. As a consultant, working at a client site in the late 90’s, I was searching through RPGLE programs in QSYS one morning just looking to see what I could find. I don’t remember if I was looking for anything specific. I had done a WRKOBJPDM lib(QSYS) objtype(*PGM) objatr(RPGLE) and was going through the list and entering option 5 to bring up the Display Program Info, and then enter a few times to get to the list of Service Programs.

    Did I mention that all the programmers at this shop had *SECADM authority?

    Needless to say, I got into a bit of a rhythm, as we tend to do – 5, enter, enter, F3, next program, 5, enter, enter, F3, next program, 4, enter, enter – huh, wait – what just happened???

    I deleted an object out of QSYS. Well crap, that was dumb. Oh well – let’s reinstall it from last night’s backup. I worked with our system admin, and wouldn’t you know it, all of the restore commands aren’t working because there’s an object missing in QSYS. Also, now all of the programmers are yelling because all of there compiles are failing. And, now I’m running late for an appointment with my boss at the home office for my annual review!

    One of my worst days ever and I will never forget it. I ended up going to my review, which was very positive, and leaving the situation in the hands of my fellow programmer and the system admin.

    When I returned, they had somehow fixed the problem. The still to this day haven’t told me what they did to correct it.

    Needless to say, in spite of this specific situation, that client eventually hired me as their IT Manager and I stayed for another 2.5 years. I’m not sure I would have hired me!

    Bob Cagle
    still an IT Manager, and now I know better!

  3. Many years ago I was applying a PTF cume, and came to the point that an unattended restart was required. I wanted that to happen over night, so I scheduled a PWRDWNSYS *IMMED to be run, unfortunately I forgot to set the date and time which both default to *CURRENT. Imagine my surprise when my screen suddenly went blank. The good old AS/400 which was sitting on the floor next to me was dutifully displaying it’s various SRC’s, and my phone started ringing off the hook.

    Go take lunch, it should be back when you return I told them.

  4. Building first RPG CGI application as the client site. Went to shutdown the HTTP server and accidentally tapped the enter key after typing ENDTCP. Guy next to couldn’t figure out why his session dropped. I giggled and ran to the dumb terminal to issue the corresponding command to counteract the mistake. Still, sessions dropped. Luckily is was late!

  5. Long ago, before IBM automated backups, we had our own utility for making nightly backups. Users could enter a list of libraries to save in a data area and late at night a CL program would save the libraries to tape and then do a PWRDWNSYS RESTART(*YES). Later, customers asked for the possiblity to call an extra program of their own; mostly executing some queries. So we added the possibility to enter a program name and make the CL program call that program. Of course, we did not know how their programs would behave, so we put MONMSG CPF0000 after the call. One morning I went to a customer, noticed that the night save had not finished; it was in MSGW. I entered a C to cancel the job, but of course I only cancelled the client’s program, so the job returned to our CL program, which because of the MONMSG ignored the failed call and merrily went on with the PWRDWNSYS. I had to tell the customer that all users had to log out, so the system could complete the PWRDWNSYS and the following IPL. Oops. (Oh, and I also did the SLTCMD thingy, deleting all DSPJ* commands. Luckily we had two systems, so I could restore from the other system.)

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