Why I Even Started This Mess
Needed to migrate data like yesterday. Boss man said “get ‘er done,” didn’t matter how. My desktop looked like a bomb site already – spreadsheets everywhere, that half-drunk coffee staining some printouts. Said screw it, figured why not just throw all the tools I know at the problem at once? Jam ’em together, see what sticks. Called it an “IT Gangbang” ’cause honestly, it felt chaotic just picturing it.
The Frankenstein Setup
Dragged all my crap to a spare meeting room Monday morning. Plugged in like five laptops – my daily driver, that old workhorse ThinkPad from 2018, Jenny’s loaner MacBook ’cause hers broke last week, and two others gathering dust. Hooked ’em all into the projector like some mad scientist. Seriously looked ridiculous. Whiteboard looked worse:
- Python scripts for scraping
- Excel macros that Jenny swore by (but never documented)
- Some crusty Access DB marketing used in 2015
- Google Sheets forms for manual entries
- Random PowerShell thing IT gave me ages ago
No plan. Just fired everything up at the same damn time. Copy-pasted the same customer list into every single one. Hit “run” wherever I saw a button. Felt kinda powerful for like two seconds.
When Everything Blew Up
Predictably, pure madness. My main screen froze solid showing Excel’s stupid rainbow wheel. The MacBook started overheating like a toaster. Heard Jenny’s laptop fan whining like it was gonna take off. Then the error pop-ups started dancing across the projector screen – Python choking on date formats, Access demanding some password nobody knew, Excel just crashing outright. That old ThinkPad? Blue screen. Of course.
Whole room got noisy and hot. Papers slid right off the table when I slammed my fist after the third crash. Almost yanked all the power cords out right then. Absolute clown show.
Making Something, Anything Work
Took a walk. Got more bad coffee. Came back and unplugged the MacBook and the ThinkPad. Let the dead weight go. Turned off all the Excel junk forcing those stupid macros nobody understood anyway. Just kept the simple Python scraper pulling raw data and dumped it straight into Google Sheets. Skipped every “fancy” step. Manually typed in the garbage Access couldn’t read. Smashed “save” every ten seconds praying it wouldn’t die again.
Was it elegant? Hell no. Was it a real gangbang anymore? Barely. But somehow late Wednesday night, with pizza grease all over the keyboard, the Sheets file had numbers that looked close enough. Good damn enough for the boss anyway.
What a Dumpster Fire Taught Me
Honestly? Throwing every tool you know at a problem at once is stupid. Felt powerful for one hot minute before it blew up in my face. Turns out:
- Too many cooks (or laptops) do spoil the broth – they make it explode
- Old scripts rot like bananas – that Access DB password? Lost to history
- Manual typing sucks but sometimes is the “solution”
Mostly learned that “gangbanging” tech just makes a huge mess somebody’s gotta clean up. And yeah, that somebody was me, picking digital confetti off my keyboard until midnight. Next time? Picking one damn tool and dealing with its crap. Less exciting name though.
