If it fails where you thought it would fail that is not a failure. – from Excellent Advice for Living
This is a great quote, especially for those of us working in computer systems. We often design things like HA (which I wrote about this past week), circuit breakers, and other techniques to handle problems we know about.
When those things occur, we’ve planned for them, so I get that these are not a failure. In fact, they are a known case we’ve designed for.
The same thing for me, if I am building something on the ranch. If I put in a post and don’t cement it, and then need to add a wheel to a gate (ask me how I know this), then if the gate leans over, it’s expected.
On the other hand, if the piece of metal holding the wheel on fails, that’s a failure. I expected it would keep the wheel on, but apparently, it isn’t engineered well enough to handle a load from a slight slope. ![]()
I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.
To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.