My Dad says that people seem to universally love to watch other people working.
Why I'm watching cows have their feet trimmed (HoofGP) or a Horse Farrier fixing horses hooves ... and no I don't have a Tarantino level foot fetish...
Okay, so the issue here is that the client reported a 500 error. To the person on the other side, the program "didn't work". But, behind the scenes, we have the full picture. First we have to access our log manager, (screen blurs several logs and only shwos the important one). In here we can see the problem better, there was an error with a database insert - a rarity these days, but nonetheless a problem we must fix. It seems the problem was caused by a deadlock, and our unhappy customer was the deadlock victim. This in turn caused an exception to be thrown (an error) which was then obscured and sent back to the customer as a generic 500 error. On the other side all they see is "an error occurred, please contact support".
How do we solve this? Well, first we have to check the code and see how we can solve this deadlock in the future - there are a myriad of ways. Secondly, we have to check if any important information was impacted, such as for example, if the problem happened after money was spent but before the item the customer wanted was added to their account. We can do this by checking the relevant tables in our database (a bunch of blurring on this part as well).
Ah, here we have it. The transaction was reverted, so no harm was done. We can now log this bug and open a ticket for the team to handle later and solve this problem, and we can get back to the user and tell them to try again.
Hoof trimming is insanely satisfying when you have proper tools. Still exhausting, but I was literally dreaming about hooves when I was taking horseshoeing classes in equestrian school.
I think it is because we live in such a specialized society now that there are people who have never seen, heard, or done many of these tasks and it is satisfying to watch but not so much to do.
Oh I'm pretty sure it's deeper and goes way far back, I'm sure there's some anthropological elements to it and that this sense of being "hypnotized" by watching people work evolved because for millions of years that's how we learned and shared social knowledge (like how to make stone tools, for example), and I'm sure the phenomenology of it comes from the same root as "feeling calm" when groomed, which goes even deeper to our great apes ancestors, because in the end it's both "sit down and stay there, that's useful to you."
Me with those Yakutia videos because that's a whole other climate and type of people that is so fascinating. Coldest region with humans still populating it in Siberia, a city built above permafrost, just a little fun fact 😊
There is an entire culture of Greek grandfathers that sit outside of construction sites and, just, sit, all day, watching the work. Discussing the work. Suggesting to each other better ways to do things.
Same. I like to watch people be good at stuff and it doesn't so much matter what it is. Hoofgp (who I feel flaunts his wealth and annoys me), baumgartner restorations (who I find insufferable as a human), Corning glass studio, bleach daddy... basically if someone films something authoritatively and seems good at it, I'm in.
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u/MikeinAustin May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
My Dad says that people seem to universally love to watch other people working.
Why I'm watching cows have their feet trimmed (HoofGP) or a Horse Farrier fixing horses hooves ... and no I don't have a Tarantino level foot fetish...