I think I've shown in my past rants and comments that I'm pretty experienced. Looking back though, I was really fucking stupid. Since I haven't posted a rant yet on the weekly topics, I figure I would share this humbling little gem.

Way back in the ancient era known as 2009, I was working my first desk job as a "web designer". Apparently the owner of this company didn't know the difference between "designer", which I'm not, and "developer", which I am, nor the responsibilities of each role.

It was a shitty job paying $12/hour. It was such a nightmare to work at. I guess the silver lining is that this company now no longer exists as it was because of my mistake, but it was definitely a learning experience I hold in high regard even today. Okay, enough filler...

I was told to wipe the Dev server in order to start fresh and set up an entirely new distro of Linux. I was to swap out the drives with whatever was available from the non-production machines, set up the RAID 5 array and route it through the router and firewall, as we needed to bring this Dev server online to allow clients to monitor the work. I had no idea what any of this meant, but I was expected to learn it that day because the next day I would be commencing with the task.

Astonishingly, I managed to set up the server and everything worked great! I got a pat on the back and the boss offered me a 4 day weekend with pay to get some R&R. I decided to take the time to go camping. I let him know I would be out of town and possibly unreachable because of cell service, to which he said no problem.

Tuesday afternoon I walked into work and noticed two of the field techs messing with the Dev server I built. One was holding a drive while the other was holding a clipboard. I was immediately called into the boss's office.

He told me the drives on the production server failed during the weekend, resulting in the loss of the data. He then asked me where I got the drives from for the Dev server upgrade. I told him that they came from one of the inactive systems on the shelf. What he told me next through the deafening screams rendered me speechless.

I had gutted the drives from our backup server that was just set up the week prior. Every Friday at midnight, it would turn on through a remote power switch on a schedule, then the system would boot and proceed to copy over the production server's files into an archive for that night and shutdown when it completed. Well, that last Friday night/Saturday morning, the machine kicked on, but guess what didn't happen? The files weren't copied. Not only were they not copied, but the existing files that got backed up previously we're gone. Why? Because I wiped those drives when I put them into the Dev server.

I would up quitting because the conversation was very hostile and I couldn't deal with it. The next week, I was served with a suit for damages to this company. Long story short, the employer was found in the wrong from emails I saved of him giving me the task and not once stating that machine was excluded in the inactive machines I could salvage drives from. The company sued me because they were being sued by a client, whose entire company presence was hosted by us and we lost the data. In total just shy of 1TB of data was lost, all because of my mistake. The company filed for bankruptcy as a result of the lawsuit against them and someone bought the company name and location, putting my boss and its employees out of a job.

If there's one lesson I have learned that I take with the utmost respect to even this day, it's this: Know your infrastructure front to back before you change it, especially when it comes to data.

Lazy habit#1: Always Ctrl+C more than twice just in case the bugger fails to copy to the damn clipboard !!

Recently in Computer Science Class...
The teacher said we should copy a text/ sentence to our clipboard. A student asked where the clipboard were and looked behind the keyboard. He isn't the smartest.
Thought that was funny.

I hate when you copy something important to the clipboard, and accidentally copy something else later.

Apple’s copy paste from your phone keeps ass biting me. Most of the time my clipboard has some obscure porn link that I don’t need to accidentally paste on a live share session. There are now dozens of people that know too much about me

Me: How to copy paste to the clipboard in X language?

Internet: Open your text editor to the file where you're writing in language X. Select a few words, then click Ctrl+C Ctrl+V

Did you know, any time you copy text on Windows 10, windows saves the url of the page you copied it from?

Don't know where it is saved, or how long it is cached, but the more you know.

Steps to replicate:
Go into your browser, copy any text from any site. Close the window.
Open one note. Paste text. Theres the url.

I think clipboard saves the url when you copy text from a browser, dunno. but its interesting.

Pressing Ctrl+C shouldn't overwrite an existing clipboard entry that has just been created by pressing Ctrl+C immediately before.

Who thought it was a good idea to use copy + paste shortcut keys exactly next to each other? Some people's muscle memory does not work with such a fine subtlety.

How much working hours, days or even years must have been wasted by people using productivity software accidentally losing what they were about to paste from their clipboards?

Anticipating the first comments, yes, that's another kind of first-world problems affecting people that spend too much life time doing stupid office work on a (German) (PC) keyboard, but here we are, procrastinating on devRant ant wasting even more time.

Antipating even more comments: why am I using a keyboard to work in a German train on a sunny Sunday instead of relaxing at a lake or a swimming pool instead? Well, at least this train doesn't seem to have a pool. More luxury problems for me.

Automatically copying screenshots to clipboard has never been a good idea to begin with.

The screenshot feature since Windows 8, the full-page screenshot feature from the Firefox developer tools, and many smartphones automatically copy screenshots to the clipboard, which usurps the existing content of the clipboard If there is a clipboard manager (like on Samsung smartphones since at least the early 2010s), it usurps existing entries since clipboard managers only hold a limited number of entries. On Samsung's keyboard, that's twenty.

Thankfully, some other tools like gnome-screenshot for Linux make it optional. There is a "copy to clipboard" button on the file naming dialogue, but it does not happen unsolicitedly. This is the user-friendly way to do it.

Most websites and mobile applications do not support pasting screenshots from the clipboard anyway, only attaching them as file through a file picker or drag-and-drop gesture, making it pointless to copy screenshots to the clipboard. If I want to send a screenshot, I will attach it as a file.

When our app encounters an error, it shows an alert with an option to copy the error details to the clipboard, that includes the full stack trace, broadcasting to the world that we are coding in C#. Also, our page URLs show .aspx at the end, so anyone using it can see details of our implementation. Not exactly world-stopping since the desktop portal is only available on customer servers and the ipad app requires username/password AND pin authentication. But still....

When the website does auto-copy to clipboard and adds spaces to the copied text. >:(
Let me copy it if you can't do your one fucking job arghhh

Does anyone know where to find documentation on features in Windows 10?

I don't have Windows 10 available right now. I have been searching Google and cannot find ANYTHING about Microsoft Connect (the mirroring app) for Windows 10. I see articles written by everyone except Microsoft. I searching Microsoft's own search engines on their documentation websites and it returns tons of crap that have nothing to do with that particular app.

What I want to know is if an app that is mirrored from Android can copy and paste text to the Windows 10 machine. I have books available on my Android tablet and the source code excerpts can be copied to the Android clipboard. I am hoping if when the screen is mirrored using Connect that I can paste that text in a Windows app.

Note to self:
Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+V to replace text with the clipboard contents does not work if highlighting text copies it.
I just spent 20 minutes copy-pasting stuff before realizing nothing had changed…

How do you transfer text from one machine ( laptop ) to another ( phone ) with no common tools ( Firefox Send spat out a long string of characters that I had no way of transferring either ) on either? Basically a clipboard sync.

There used to be this online notepad at notepad.cc, but that tool is gone away now.

How do you do it hacker-style? `wall`!

- SSH into the same same server from both machines ( this also assumes you have Termux or some equivalent tool for your phone )
- use `wall` to broadcast message from source
- copy broadcast at destination
- done

Does anyone know how to copy text to clipboard from a h1 but text formating should be the same and no html attributes should appear

I know there's a bunch of different clipboard enhancers out there, I just want a shortcut to view what I last copied/cut so I know if I need it before I copy/cut the next thing.