Ask HN: Do you ever feel powerless in sight of a problem?

If yes, how do you deal with it?

I just spent the whole day trying to get a set up running (Ubuntu + CUDA) and nothing worked. I blindly followed one instruction after the other without understanding anything, which is thoroughly unsatisfying, but taking the time to really understand the problem isn't an option either, since I want to get working on the "real" problem of my thesis. Have you ever experienced something similar? How did you deal with it?