Shamanic way to deal with errors
Disclaimer: due to my limited English vocabulary I used the word “shaman” as a metaphor only. The usage of “shaman” in this article has nothing to do with the true meaning of the word.
Unless you have some masochistic tendencies, I bet you hate errors the same as I do. No fun is fun under the buggy Sun, right? And solving them might be like beating one’s head against the wall. From my experience, things might get clearer when we compare them to one of those warm late spring days: you’re walking in a blooming park, laughing with your friends and bursting with the joyful energy enriched by the Sun, when suddenly you step into… (for the lack of a better word) …shaman.
Occasional shaman
Don’t freak out. I know it sounds silly, but the first step is to stay calm. When you step into shaman, you don’t want anybody to notice. So when seeing an error, don't freak out and rationally evaluate what happened.
Make sure it’s an error. Just like after stepping into shaman we double-check that it really happened, we should also confirm that the error (i.e. unintended behaviour) is present and it’s not the usual flow of the program. However, a single confirmation is enough - we don’t have to constantly check and curse that shaman is there - it’s not going to disappear by itself. Unless…
…it’s an error, which is non-repetitive. Just like shamans are changing their places unpredictably, some errors are one-time glitches that may disappear after simply retrying the same action.
Restart the system.
Good old rain refreshes the day,
As little shamans get drifted away.
(author unknown)Sometimes it happens that the program or the internet, or simply your computer gets tired. Restart it. Restart the program, router, computer or whatever isn’t working. You won’t believe how many times this solves the issue without further investigation.
Check if a newer version of the program is available. Sometimes simply upgrading your device will do it.
If a program is freshly installed and doesn’t work as expected, you may try reinstalling it. It might be that during the installation process something went wrong.
On the other hand, if the program/app/OS is on your machine for a long time and/or has lots of stuff installed, you may also want to reinstall it or at least remove old, unused stuff. Likewise, if shaman is laying there for days and you’re constantly stepping into it, the simplest solution might be to simply remove it.
Warning note: unless you have an ancient soviet machine, the old way of fixing, i.e. punching and kicking most probably won’t work. I won’t even mention what would happen with a shaman if you…
Perform a complete scan for viruses & other malware. Maybe somebody’s putting the shamans there intentionally?