Nobody Likes Making Mistakes

Last night I had a release of the server and in the release package I thought the shell scripts were included. Now, it's obvious what's happened, but I really thought they were included. Then, while walking to the train, and with no hopes of going back and fixing it without being home late, I went ahead and got on the train. Then I got the call. Yup, what I had thought about was the case - the deployment package did not include the shell scripts and there was a critical path change in this release. Crud!

It was easy enough to fix when I got home, but the problem was that the opening greeks were going to be missing because of the failures in the calculation nodes. So I had to reload all the underlyings with positioned options. This took about 40 mins, but could be done without having to take the server down. Since the Hong Kong day was already in full swing this was the far better idea.

As I was doing this by hand, I was thinking that it would be nice to have a little program that would do this for me. Well, this morning when I came in I started doing a little digging and sure enough, I had written a tool to do just this many moons ago. I had just forgotten about it until I had the time to dig into the possibility. Next time, I'll remember.

My point is that while I know it just makes me look more human (so says my wife) it really is terribly embarrassing to make mistakes like this. Sure, it was easily fixed and I fixed it, but the fact that I made the mistake was what bugs me. Deep down, I knew there was a problem because it came to me like a flash on the way to the train. So there was something there trying to tell me what I was doing, but I was sure it was going to be OK.

Wishful thinking.

I need to lighten up a bit. Everyone makes mistakes and I have no problem forgiving others, I just have a hard time forgiving myself. I remember a scene from My Favorite Year when Swann (Peter O'Toole) was yelling to Benjy (Mark Linn-Baker) about going on TV live - "I'm not an actor! I'm a moviestar!" Benjy gets angry at Swann for starting to walk out and says something about how Swann has always been his hero, and heros never walk out. Swann is upset with the responsibility this places on his, as he really likes Benjy, and reacts badly by saying something to the effect of "I'm not that person! I'm just a person.". Benjy responds with the best lines in the show: "I can't use my Alan Swanns life-sized. I need them as Big as I can get them." And then the clincher: "Oh... and by the way, No one is that good an actor." Swann comes around and saves the day. In the end, seeing that the person Benjy sees in him is really there, if he just believed in himself a bit more.

I feel I need to be better and not makes those mistakes that are so easy to make. I don't want to be just ordinary. Man... the baggage we carry around from our childhoods. I've certainly got my share, and it comes out when I make mistakes like this. Double-Crud!