Day 1.280: Push off!

I had a rough day.

I'm very glad that I have never had to engineer anything that could result in serious injury or kill anyone. I know that many people live with that responsibility and even with the reality of accidents that they have caused or not prevented. I suspect that such things rarely come down to one person's fault. That is a good thing for everyone. However, I do have a certain amount of responsibility and this morning, soon after I arrived at work, I discovered that a mistake I had made yesterday had potentially caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage and a long set-back to a project.

For two and a half hours while I waited for the OK/not OK verdict there was nothing I could do - it was definitely my fault but I was completely helpless to do anything about it. I remember one of my favourite management trainers, Johanna Rothman, telling a story about how she, as a development manager, did something similar to 'sudo rm -R /' on a development server. For the non-geeks: this is not a good thing! She wanted to stay and help sort it out, but the IT people sent her home - helpless to do anything to make up for the mistake. I felt like that today.

When the news came in, everything was fine (except my nerves).

In a lighter moment later, we spotted this vehicle (the right-most of the group of cars on the left) stationary and holding up the rush-hour traffic. The driver phoned a friend who arrived soon after.

Rather than get out and help him push his car off the road, he parked behind him. We joked "What's he going to do - push him off the road?" The answer was - yes!

In fact, they went right through the junction and out of sight.