I had this happen to me yesterday.
Hey, can you tell me why my query is slow?
<5 minutes later>
Nevermind! I had a typo.
It’s like people want to outsource their problem solving to other people’s brains.
Hey, can you tell me why my query is slow?
<5 minutes later>
Nevermind! I had a typo.
It’s like people want to outsource their problem solving to other people’s brains.
The flip side is when I've spent 30 minutes QAing an issue and another 30 minutes writing up what I've learned, and then the response is "I brought that server down for maintenance, it'll be back in a few."
After a few times of that the sys admin is going to get some very poorly thought out bug reports from me, because I don't want to burn any more of my time QAing known issues.
I usually write a detailed question to a colleague whom I believe to be more knowledgeable than me. The trick is, I never send it unless I'm really stuck despite my research.
When I do send it, though, the question is good and usual suspects are ruled out.
The trick is that your efforts to summarize and clarify the problem for someone else and doing your due diligence for others that you may not have done for yourself at first before you _actually_ press send is oftentimes enough to solve the problem outright. If it doesn't work, you're ready to go with an amazing summary of the problem already.
I've on occasion done it to StackExchange sites too, nice thing about that is when you have your Aha moment, you can just tick 'Answer my own question', detail the answer, and post both together for other people's (your future) benefit.