I’m still working on mine, but go a head and start, I’ll be back later.
Only unix-heads will understand this one -
rm -fr in the root directory.
Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again
For me it’s got to be a tossup.
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I majored in Elementary Education in college…jeez I wish I was in a more lucrative field…don’t get me wrong–I enjoy teaching and I’m well thought of as a teacher. But if I had it to do over, I would have sought a traditionally male domintated field, like computer science or something. It was lack of confidence that I didn’t do this back then. I didn’t think I was smart enough.
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I wish I hadn’t married my husband…that’s kind of weird, because I do have a beautiful daughter whom I love more than anything. But…you think you can live with certain character flaws, because, no one’s perfect. And later it turns out you can’t.
–Gail
What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what it’s all about?
Everything between the ages of 14 to 20.
I won’t get into it but I am still repairing the damages. A word of advise don’t ever think you are above the law then flaunt it!! I don’t know what the hell I was thinking but eh I did it and it’s over with now (well sort of).
here kitty, kitty
Come out, come out where ever you are. 
I have to go back to when I was about 20. I was at this family’s house by a lake. There was a bike path along the shore with limited access. i got on the bike path, and started riding, and the family’s 6-year old kid followed me. After about a mile I told him to go back. After about 5 miles he was still tagging along. I should have turned back.Eventually I was attempting to ride and pull the kid along, couldn’t leave him alone. I was thinking the path must end somewhere. It would have ended.But about an hour after starting the kid’s mom, by now assuming her kid had drowned in the lake, came driving in the opposite direction. The path was closed off from cars! She grabbed her kid and the bike and went home. I have no idea how I would have gotten him back.
Other potential events:When my brother in law nearly fumigated the neighbors out of their house with fire crackers.Also a very stupid trip across midwest states in icy weather, when they closed roads part of the trip.
When I was 6, I loved to go to the park. There was this one slide in the park that I loved so much to go down on. It was a half pipe about 50 yards long and 20 feet high and it was on the side of a mountain.
One day, when I reached to the beginning of the slide, I noticed many people around there daring each other to go down. No one wanted to go down the slide. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t go down as well. So I went past the group and slid down the slide. I could hear the whole group go “NO! Don’t go down there, kid!” I was wondering why they were telling me not to go.
Then when I looked ahead, my eyes went wide open in fright, as I saw why no one went down the slide. An animal or person apparantly took a crap on the slide. And poor little ol’ me SPLAT right into the poop on the slide.
After I reached the bottom of the slide in tears, I had to walk half a mile back to my house from the park with poop all over my shorts.
Moral of story: Always have a second pair of shorts with you drumroll
I joined the army… for SIX YEARS!!! Luckily, I developed knee problems and was thrown out for not running fast enough. I only wasted three years of my life.
I actually believed him when he said he was in the middle of a nasty divorce.
I was attending a summer camp for kids with high IQs. It was held on the campus of McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA. One of our classes was held in a chem lab, and was equipped with those jets that shoot out gas for Bunsen burners. We would amuse ourselves by turning them on for short bursts.
One day, while a few of us were killing time in the lab, someone dared me to turn on all the jets in the room and stay in there with the door closed. Naturally, being a dope with a high IQ, I did it. As you can tell by the fact that I’m writing this, I wasn’t killed by asphyixiation; however, I found out later that someone smelled the gas, assumed there was a leak, and had the building evacuated. Luckily again for me, I was never caught, and no one was hurt.
Well, since you brought up Bunsen burners, my Stupid Human Trick was to set my hair on fire in a biology lab my senior year in college. I was an English major and seriously science-challenged and had no experience with microscopes or Bunsen burners. So I set up my B.b. right next to my microscope, prepared a slide to look at, put it under the scope and leaned down to look . . . and accidentally draped my hair into the Bunsen burner. Then I suavely beat myself on the side of the head to put the fire out, finished the lab with half a head of curly-fried hair, and went and got my hair chopped off. I’ve worn it short ever since. The worst thing about it was the smell of burning hair . . . and my appearance – no way to pretend I hadn’t done it. Ah, memories . . . they only hurt 'til the medication kicks in.
You didn’t! 
That’s like the most feared thing in the world!
Did it manage to take out /etc before you stopped it?
A co-worker of mine accidentally did a
chown -R someuser on /
Not as bad as what you did, but it still messed the system pretty severely-- esp with all of the setuid progs.
P.S.
What were you trying to do when that happened? Did you accidentally put in a space, or perhaps you accidentally hit enter?
Fear of that has led me to never do a recursive change on an absolute path.
Ok, Here is mine. Actually a series so follow along…First-lost my job as a systems admin for a data processing company(not fired, the company went under) not so bad, but as I was undereducated and over-skilled I was unable to get a comperable paying job…so, bills piled up and things got cut…like my car insurance(As I live in NY it is manditory)…
so no insurance…DMV suspends my registration, but I keep driving…DMV suspends my license…I keep driving…My car begins to self-destruct due to lack of maintenence, and I begin to develop a moderate case of paranoia as I have been driving with these suspensions for over 2 YEARS! So heres the “incident”-driving home one day, my car stalls in traffic.In a busy intersection on a very slight incline, I can’t get it started, and I know the police will come soon, so I figure I will push the car to the side of the road, and keep trying to start it. So I start pushing the car.
Not too hard for me as I am physically quite large and strong. So I push the car about 25 feet and it is cresting the slight incline,
and I go to jump in…Did I mention I have Athsma??? Yep, had a full-blown attack right at that instant. Missed the jump into the car, which is now picking up speed. I try again, miss, and fall to my knees, damaging both permanently. I hold on to the door, and am now being dragged by the car as it rolls down the hill, still accelerating. I let go, the back tire just misses rolling over my right leg, and accually pinches my side as it rolls by, the rear bumper rips out the back of my pants. I get up and watch as my car, which had quite an allignment problem roll into the right curb, glance off, roll toward oncoming traffic, veer back to the right, roll over the curb, knock down 3 signs and roll into a gas station! The car missed the customers, and struck one of the pumps, knocking it loose and sending fuel spraying.
Fortunately the pump was for diesel fuel, not gasolene! No explosion, but still, the fire department came and foamed it down, EMS came as I was on the verge of passing out due to lack of oxygen, and, of course, the police came. I was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the police station.
I was able to extricate myself form all my legal troubles, but the car was destroyed.
All true.
The worst part was my familly and coworkers reading about me in the local paper’s “police blotter” section!
“The universe doesn’t give first warnings or second chances”
leaving my husband and assuring him there was no way in hell I’d ever get back together with him…then realizing when it was too late that I still love him.
This mushy stuff is ok, above, but ryan wins this Topic.
I returned my garment inspected by 004. Now I’m regretting it.See the topic in this forum.
Undead Dude:
#1 I don’t know about /etc, but it had taken out most of /bin. Especially, tar was gone. I think they used cpio to get the system back. You notice I use the word they.
#2 I was trying to install some software and I couldn’t get enough space free. Just as a semi-excuse, I had been out at the customer site the night before till 3AM. Oh, did I mention this was customer’s computer? I then came in about 7 or 8 (yes AM) to install this software. So, I think I just accidentally fell asleep.
BTW, the person who took over the install called me later and said “I’m having trouble getting enough space to install this software, is that why you fucked up?” (or words to that effect 
) No Duh!
Sorta appropriate with my sig, eh?
Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again
I don’t mean to freak anyone out (and i don’t like remembering it either) but for a few years in and after high school, I was a full-blown Satanist. I’m out of it now. What an awful life.
“On the edge of sleep, I awoke to a sun so bright…”
If this I hadn’t done this to myself I’d never have believed it…
One night back in the college days my roommates and I were desperate to stay up late to get some work done at the end of the semester. The only problem was we had no stimulants of any kind in the house, no coffee, no Coke (either kind), no No Doz, nothing. Someone did have capsules of bee pollen though, and we had all heard that it was supposed to give you energy, so we figured we’d take some.
However, being the impatient maniacs we were, we decided that it would take too long to work if we just swallowed the capsules like normal people. So we decided to empty a bunch of capsules out, chop the stuff up really fine, and snort it like a drug. Seemed to make sense at the time. We go through the whole process, get the lines all cut up and start. It gets to be my turn, I exhale and prepare myself. I take a deep inhale and instantly my nasal passages are on fire, I think my head is going to explode, it’s a worse feeling than any drug I ever tried.
I had forgotten that I have really bad hayfever.
The next 4-6 hours were some of the most miserable I have ever spent on this planet. I was a sneezing, runny nosed, watery eyed mess. My roomates thought it was just about the funniest thing in the history of mankind. I ended up getting zero work done, other than having a story that can get any group of people laughing hysterically at my own expense. Ah, the folly of youth…
I don’t have any one spectacular screwup (could anything even begin to compete with ryan’s post anyway???), so I’ll just have to post some small ones:
[ul]
[li]Swimming across a lake and back even though I’m a horrible swimmer. On the way back, I almost went under for good. I wound up floating on my back and drifting back to shore. Of course, I was a teen and didn’t want to ask the other swimmers for help because I was too embarrassed.[/li][li]Trying to pick up molten glass with my bear hands. Well, in chem class we melted some different chemicals which formed small glass beads, about the size of BBs. Left little indents on my thumb and index finger.[/li][li]Along the same lines - checking to see if an electric stove eye was on by stick my hand on it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t mean to stick my hand on it and had just planned on hovering about it a bit. But instead I plopped it right down on it. I was a bit 10 at the time. It left the pattern of the eye on my palm and fingers - kind of like the guy in the Raiders of the Lost Ark.[/li][li]Computer screwup time: I changed my root shell to /usr/bin/tcsh. Unfortunately, tcsh is in /bin under Debian, rather than /usr/bin as it was under my old RH system. chsh didn’t even check for the existence of the shell. And, of course, I instantly logged out after doing this. Now THAT was fun. Luckily, I still had my old RH system. I booted it, mounted my other system and edited the passwd file. Later I talked to my friend about it - turned out he did the same thing when installing Debian.[/li][/ul]
Go ahead and laugh folks, everyone else does!
It’s been just over 1 year and everyone at work feels compelled to tell all the new employees the story!
“The universe doesn’t give first warnings or second chances”