Name a personal Epic Fail.

[Blood Brain Barrier]

If you finished your degree you would be calling your lack of a family your "epic fail". The "if only..." regrets we have are unbelievable stupid when you think about it.

Staving off the possible loss of my family is precisely why I ignored my own career. First my father required home health nursing right up until he died. Then my mother had cancer and I took care of her--pushing her to eat, drink, exercise. If I hadn't been there then there is no question on either of our minds that she would have died. There were others in the family who could have helped but they didn't realize (because they lacked my prior experience with home nursing) that you have to push invalids if they're going to recover.

No, my Fail was in completely dismissing everything else in my life while dealing with these emergencies which lasted for years. I most certainly could have made the time to attend to my finishing my degree but instead I ignored the matter entirely until it was too late.

If that's true, and you really are superman enough to everything at once, then you can finish your degree now. So do it, instead of posting your depressing regrets on a forum.

 

[Dreadman75]

Here's a rather lengthy one:

I was modding Fallout 3 on my PC and was attempting to make a few large mods and a few other smaller mods work together nicely. They didn't want to.

It was only after a complete uninstall and reinstall of the game that I finally figured out what was wrong.

You see, I had downloaded the DarnifiedUI mod from a third party because, at the time, I couldn't find the original source. From that third party I also got the instructions on what to overwrite in the FALLOUT.INI file.

Shocking revelation: The third party uploader was a moron. His instructions for the .ini file were COMPLETELY WRONG.

So I went back to the original site and found the original download link at the very bottom of the forum post, in a much smaller font.

BUT WAIT, it gets better. I had already overwritten the .ini file using the wrong instructions again. So it was looking like I was going to have to uninstall and reinstall the game AGAIN. But, this was not the case...

I am paranoid almost by nature, and doubly so for computers. As any of my friends will tell you, if I try to mess around in-depth with a computer I'll likely start WWIII without even knowing what I'm doing.

This paranoia worked to my advantage as I had the astounding foresight to back up a copy of the original, unaltered .ini file elsewhere. Allowing me to just delete the altered file, replace it with a vanilla one, and subsequently alter the vanilla .ini file the correct way.

The game, mods and all, worked like a charm.

The lesson here: Read the original instructions carefully, lest you miss something important. And always take third party downloads with a grain of salt.

 

[Fractral]

I was only about ten at the time, and no much for thinking. I went backpacking around London with my family, but I didn't get the idea behind backpacking being 'pack as little as possible so it's light enough to carry around all day'. I thought I had to fill up the bag.

So, in the bag went two big books, an alarm clock, a dreamcatcher, a torch and beanie baby.

That was a fun, if a bit tiring, day. The look on my dad's face when we got to the hostel and I started unpacking was hilarious.

When I hiked the west highland way, I managed to fill my pack with useless stuff, while forgetting seemingly everything that I actually needed. I had a book, a whole bunch of chargers (it turned out that there were no plug sockets in a valley 5 miles from the nearest town) and like 3 different towels. I also had nothing to wear at night, and only one pair of waterproof socks. Though I think it's more fun when you don't have everything. If a hike could be described as fun.

OT: Um... when on a German exchange I didn't drink any water for 2 days because my exchange family lived on nothing but fizzy water and coke, which I hated before and hated after respectively. I ended up puking everywhere, several times, and being doubled up in pain from dehydration. Oh, and did you know that Germany is hot in the summer? Well it is. So I also ended up with heatstroke and severe sunburn. Ruined what would have been a pretty nice holiday for me.
It was funny though, asking the mother for some water to put my rehydration tablets in. She immediately got a bottle of fizzy water. When I told her that I wanted tap water she stared at me like I was insane.

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

I broke my leg once.
By sliding into a door.
An OPEN door.
Yeah.

 

[an annoyed writer]

I've totaled two cars, and I just barely managed to keep my Driver's License. The worst part about it is that the first one was something left for me by my now-gone grandma: I destroyed what I consider to be her last gift. Still makes me sick thinking about it.

I swear that the captcha's gained sentience: it says Learn From Mistakes. How fitting.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Peetty much my attempt of a joke when my history teacher hell this photo with she was standing with a max model of ET. I try to make a witty comment saying "I thought he went home" as a joke. My friend never let up with that fail jokes of me (and one of the many reason why I never kept in touch with those jerks).

 

[smearyllama]

I recently sat on my thousand-dollar viola.

Yeah.

Repairs were free, because my there's a protection plan on it, but the crack when the fingerboard broke off (that was the only damage, luckily) haunts me.

I don't think I'll ever live it down. <.<

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

It had to be when I was picking up Black Ops II the day it came out and they were doing the whole 'whose here for *blanks?*' *insert cheers* and when they said single player, I was the only person who cheered and being a female it was also even more awkward...

But my worst had to be at a Convention and I ended up hitting on a Christ Redfield cosplayer..not knowing his girlfriend was right next to him. Really epically fail.

 

[Oro44]

When I was 10, I decided not to wait for the ice on the hill to thaw out before I went sledding down it. Hit a rock at about 25 mph and shot through the air. Cracked some ribs on that one.

I also paid full price for The Force Unleashed 2 a few years back. That was a fail move, if you ask me.

 

[Quaxar]

I once confused Beowulf with Canterbury Tales. I think that is the definition of epic fail.

 

[Esotera]

I had a party in my parent's house as a kid which caused £20k of damage, got a car stolen, and I also cheated on my girlfriend with a girl who later did stuff with my two best friends (on the same night). I have plenty of other fails worse than this example, but nothing condensed into such a spectacularly short time.

 

[Dygen Entreri]

It had to be when I was picking up Black Ops II the day it came out and they were doing the whole 'whose here for *blanks?*' *insert cheers* and when they said single player, I was the only person who cheered and being a female it was also even more awkward...

That's not a fail on your part, its a fail on the gaming community in general (Or just the idiotic spunkgargleweewee fans who don't appreciated the hard work developers put into single player campaigns).

 

[farscythe]

eh..on a today note..i bunny hopped my bicicle on to a frozen canal..it hurt (it was fine until i landed and the wheels went in different directions)
on a more serious note... i once got a recovering druggie back into drugs. lost touch with her since but i know her life went all sorts of fucked up since... think ill feel guilty about that one for the rest of my days

 

[Dygen Entreri]

My family was out on a frozen lake in front of our cottage on New Years Eve, setting of fireworks. My dad and I were setting up the finale; one that was loaded with about fifteen big fireballs to shoot off in succession.

My dad lit the fuse, and as we retreated I accidentally knocked the firework with my boot onto the ice rink we had cleared, where everyone else was watching. When it went off everyone went running and screaming away from the shot, but the recoil had sent the firework spinning across the ice, making the next shot go in a completely different direction.

For fifteen more shots we had to stay on guard and be ready to avoid another shot in case the recoil caused it to aim a us again. Fortunately no one was hurt, and afterward we all laugh about how crazy we must have looked running back and forth on the rink.

To this day when we remember the story, I allege that Dad was the one who knocked it over.

 

[The Funslinger]

Well, I'm in love with someone who currently doesn't even live in the same country as me. Does that count?

You've fallen for me. I knew it.

OT: Well, during a bad break up, and a rather drug addled camp out with about a hundred fifty other people, I succumbed to alcohol poisoning and nearly died.

I was given a 'Britain legal' butterfly knife for my seventeenth birthday. I did not know what made it Britain legal.

Basically, it was really stiff to open, having to be pried open with both hands and would slam shut very hard. Not at all like the easy, fluid motions regularly associated with such knives. So I googled it, and apparently brand new knives are quite stiff. The recommended solution was to apply WD40 to the hinges and open and close both sides of the knife to loosen it up.

As it turns out, 'Britain legal' means the hinges are replaced with springs. Very strong springs. Cue the run off of WD40 causing my hand to slip. Knife slams shut, very nearly taking a chunk out of my finger. And by that, I don't mean it narrowly missed. I mean it closed on my finger, cutting it to the bone and a large chunk of flesh was hanging off by a strand. It has healed, with a shiny scar, and cold weather makes it tingle very unpleasantly.

 

[gostchiken]

Out on a camping trip and cooking some delicious bacon on a griddle, completely forget that I'm cooking it and wander off to do something. I come back to a grease fire, after an "oh shit" moment I put it out, and am left with nothing but a pile of black ash that used to be bacon.

 

[Starik20X6]

Oh that's easy. I was in love, was given my chance, and chickened out. I've said and done some phenomenally dumb things in my time, but to this day that is my only true regret.

 

[Bvenged]

Pffft beats me. I'm not sure if I've ever done an epic fail of epic proportions.

I'll get back to you on that one, if I can think of any.

Edit: Got one! My most embarrassing and stupid moment ever, by a long shot.
See what I share with you people? You should be grateful

Right, I was with my mates in a supermarket grabbing a load of junk-food to take to the cinema, and I wasn't paying much attention to anything at all. I think I was 16 at the time. Well, whilst I was putting my stuff through the checkout I noticed this shaggy-dressed woman hovering around watching me.

Well, after half of my crap had gone through the till she waltzes over and starts grabbing my stuff and bundling it into some carrier bags with haste. Now I was highly confused. What was this mad woman doing with my stuff? Why does nobody notice what's going on here?

Well, after she'd grabbed and bagged most of my stuff, I turned to her, grabbed the bag and said (quite loudly): "Excuse me. That's MY stuff."

She looks at me awe and states: "*Ah! *chuckles* I'm just a charity bag packer!" before laughing some more to the hysterics of my friends. I mutter out an apology and walk out of the shop with my head bowed in shame.

I had died a little inside. It was my most stupid moment ever and I generally like to think of myself as not as stupid person. I know these people exist, I've seen them before, yet right at that moment my brain seemed to be away on holiday. She'd jut finished packing the bags of the friend before me and others were stood at the ends of each till up and down the shop doing the same thing. Such an embarrassing story. I'd all but erased it from memory.

 

[Kotaro]

I accidentally walked into the ladies' bathroom once. In my defense, I had my nose buried in a book at the time. Didn't make it any less humiliating, though.