http://www.advogato.org/person/scottg/ Advogato blog for scottg en-us mod_virgule Mon, 1 Dec 2008 23:34:46 GMT Thu, 2 Aug 2001 19:04:11 GMT http://www.advogato.org/person/scottg/diary.html?start=0 http://www.advogato.org/person/scottg/diary.html?start=0 A user of the nsopenssl module was having problems getting the module to listen on the right port. He was sure it was nsopenssl's problem. I sent him an 'instrumented' copy of the module so he could see what ports the module was binding to etc. <p> He came back saying he felt rather foolish because it was a problem in his configuration. It was something rather obvious, to which I responded: <p> <blockquote> If I could count the number of times my blind assumptions about where a problem lay have bit me in the butt, I'd have been without a butt for a long time now. <p> What I have learned is that the simplest thing is (almost) always the answer. When I start repeating to myself, "But it has to work this way" then I know I'm in trouble and do some backtracking. The Universe, it appears, is logical. But we aren't. </blockquote> <p> The amount of time he spent on this problem speaks to our ability to force ourselves onto a particular path even though it was clear to him that the problem was obvious, but he simply couldn't change his context to see it. <p> Most things are pretty obvious, but we have problems with them, I think, because we make them more complex in our minds than they really are.