Okay, so let’s get into what happened today with this whole “puka ejected” situation. It wasn’t exactly on my schedule.
The Start of It
I was setting up my workspace, getting things organized for a little project. Had this small puka shell, you know the type, kinda smooth, hole in the middle. I use it sometimes as a weight or just a marker on my desk. Placed it down right near the edge of my mat.
Went to grab something off the shelf, turned back around, maybe two seconds later. The puka? Gone. Vanished. Not like it rolled off slowly. More like it just wasn’t there anymore. Instantly thought, “ejected”. Like it was fired off the desk.
Searching Around
First, you do the basic look-around, right? Checked the floor immediately around the desk. Nothing. Lifted up some papers. Not there. Started getting that annoying feeling, like when you lose a tiny screw you just had in your hand.
I actually got down on my hands and knees. Checked under the desk, behind the computer tower, looked in the trash bin just in case. Still nothing. It wasn’t a big deal, just a shell, but the way it disappeared felt… weird. Forceful.
My searching process was pretty basic:
- Scan the immediate area.
- Check under nearby objects.
- Look in weird corners and under furniture legs.
- Question my own sanity briefly.
Took me a good few minutes before I spotted it. It was halfway across the room, lodged against the wall near the door. How in the world did it get over there? Seriously, it must have flown a good few feet.
Thinking Back on It
Finding that puka shell made me think about something else entirely. Reminded me of this one time, working on a team project years back. We had this one small module, seemed totally harmless. Nobody paid it much attention. It just sat there, doing its little job.
Then, during one stressful deployment, boom. That little module just completely failed, spectacularly. Didn’t just stop working, it threw errors that brought down connected services. It basically got ejected from the normal process and caused chaos.
We spent ages figuring out why. Turned out it was some edge case, some weird input we never predicted. Just like my puka shell. Maybe it was static electricity, maybe I bumped the desk just right without noticing, creating a vibration. Some small, unseen force caused a sudden, violent exit.
You find the piece that got ejected, figure out how it happened if you can, and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. With the puka, I just picked it up and put it in a container this time. Can’t get ejected if it’s locked down, right? Sometimes the simplest fix is the way to go. Annoying when it happens, though. Throws off your whole flow.
