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68 comments

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fbernier
git commit -m "$(curl -s programmerexcuses.com | sed -n '/<a.>/{s/<[^>]>//g;p}')"
chrismorgan
I would prefer it to give just the message when the request contains the `Accept: text/plain` header.
vardump
I'd like to commit a bugfix:

  git commit -m "$(curl -s programmerexcuses.com | sed -n '/<a.*>/{s/<[^>]*>//g;p}')"
biscotti
www.whatthecommit.com alternative to this:

  git commit -m "$(curl -s http://whatthecommit.com | grep -o '<p>.*' | sed 's|<[^>]*>||g')"
ShaneOG
And for any OS X user (* BSD based sed)

  curl -s programmerexcuses.com | sed -n -e '/<a.*>/{s/<[^>]*>//g;' -e 'p' -e '}'

  git commit -m "$(curl -s programmerexcuses.com | sed -n -e '/<a.*>/{s/<[^>]*>//g;' -e 'p' -e '}')"
danielweber
Reminded of the old BOFH calendar with daily excuses: "Sunspots."
pandatigox
Nice site, but seems weird wrapping the text in a <href> and wrapping that in a center. As somebody else said on the comments, why couldn't be just plain text/have a plain text header?
TinamousSteve
I got 500 Internal Server Error with an additional 404 Not Found for the ErrorDocument, I had to wonder if that was a real excuse or genuine server error! Theirs a certain amount of irony to it anyway.
michaelhoffman
On one reload I got a standard internal server error message. Next reload it was gone. If that was on purpose, it is a nice touch.
dasil003
I got this twice and I went to go look at the response to see if it was actually a 200 implying that it was purposeful, but once I loaded up the dev console to see the headers I couldn't reproduce.
jrs235
Try DoSing the page by holding down F5 for a second or two...

Status comes back as 500 not 200.

jrs235
I don't believe it's intentional. The server had can't handle much load.
paulftw
Great idea, but after trying it dozen times I still didn't get the most common excuse: "works fine on my machine"
dspillett
Strange. It seems to be working for me.
bencoder
I found it: "Everything looks fine on my end"
smackfu
"That worked perfectly when I developed it" is in there.
Kesty
I've found "It worked yesterday", it's all of the same vriant.

My personal favourite is "Everything worked fine in the dev environment"

lfuller
This is why Vagrant / Chef is so great.
giblaz
Yesir. I'm using Puppet myself and it's saving me boatloads of time and energy and brainwracking.

The fact that it can be used not just for Vagrant but for setting up your nodes on a cloud infrastructure is kind of overpowered :D

democracy
You know sometimes it is a polite way to say that " it is YOU who messed it up, so why don't you analyze what you have or have not done and try to fix it"
cruppstahl
That's an interesting webpage. it has a hidden google ads-field in an iframe. I'm not web-savy enough to fully understand how it works.

The "click me as often as you can" contents for sure generate a lot of clicks. genius!

viewer5
Sounds like something the advertisers wouldn't be very happy about...
jrs235
I see my GET request for show_ads.js is failing. So perhaps that nonloading javascript is suppose to make it appear but it's non working at the moment... Now, which excuses from the site would apply here?

Here's the first one that might make sense that showed up on my refresh: "It worked yesterday"

UPDATE: Must be Ad Block blocking it.

koesterd
Are you using Adblock or similar software?
jrs235
Yup, it was Ad Block.
c16
I was wondering why they didn't use jquery/JS to load data from a list rather than reload the page and create more web server hits. This would explain why.
patorjk
I'm not sure its hidden on purpose. There doesn't appear to be any styling to hide it, and when I went to the URL that the inner iframe was linking to (the iframe inside of the iframe), it gave a blank page.
chaz
I think Google banned the domain from Adsense. I had a neglected UGC site that gradually became inundated with shady links and content, and this happened to me. Perhaps a site with low clicks and repeated, short-lived ad serves is worth banning.
JasonFruit
Some of those give me a twinge of embarrassment: "I didn't receive a ticket for that," indeed.
arethuza
I have actually seen something that was thought to be an application error tracked down to a faulty firewall device - that was a fun bug to investigate :-)
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sgt
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Is this another excuse?

c16
My favorite excuse so far: http://i.imgur.com/X0aFVfy.png
tomasien
Ahhh I was about to post this. Well done!
panzi
Yup, got that too.
MattBearman
Me too, not sure if it's a very clever joke, or the server is just being hammered by HN :s
sdsk8
"it was up when i went to bed!"
pacofvf
"Probably the log consumed its memory"
BasDirks
They should add "We're on HN" to their list.
ovechtrick
What did you type in wrong to get it to crash?
thehal84
looks like an Ad click generator since DoubleClick is hidden in the page.
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zerni
"The bug must come from changes colleague XY has made after me! pointingfingers"
joeblau
Where is "It works on my box"? I'm guilty of using that one a few times.

Edit: "It's user error" is another popular one.

simgidacav
Is there a "hey, it passed all the unit tests"?
wil421
Everything looks fine on my end! It looks like its a browser compatibility issue.

Ha! I said both of these this morning. No I am blaming the plugin.

gabriel34
The first time I loaded the page I was expecting some writeup on programmer excuses, instead I was presented with a page that said "Our servers are too slow to cope with the demand" or something similar and I thought "OK, a bit too honest calling their servers slow, but the message is clear" so I decided to wait a bit until HN traffic died down
ixtli
You say lazy like it's a bad thing.
logfromblammo
I got "The third-party API is not responding" the first time, and I thought for a second that it was a 500-class server error. Then I reloaded, and laughed.
m0skit0
"Internal Server Error" is also an excuse?