Blooper one

Error when connecting to database server during install; you find that when attempting to add a database server for a new farm the wizard refuses to take the domain login credentials which you enter, even though those credentials have full rights to the SQL dbase and server.

CHECK: who are you logged in as? Are you in fact logged into the application server, or the server where you are attempting to install SharePoint, as a local administrator?! Log out and log back in as the domain administrator or log in as the account under which you are attempting to connect back to the database server and do the farm install. Of course, if this isn't the case, then you need to go back and check your login account's privileges on the database server.

Reason: you've probably been at it all day long, doing lots of installs and builds, along with testing, and you need to take that break you were planning on taking 2 hours ago!

You tell a colleague about what you did just so you feel better and confirm that anyone can make mistakes. Your colleague laughs and says he's going to blog about it so the whole world knows that you made a silly mistake :-)

Blooper two

Your Site Actions button stops working, along with other buttons on your SharePoint Web forms, like create buttons.

CHECK: have you been using either IE7 or IE8 debugging tools, specifically disabling JavaScript? If you have, then that's possibly the issue. Even if you've closed your browser's debugger, chances are if you'd previously disabled JavaScript it'll still be disabled when using IE on that same machine. Of course, if this isn't the case and you are seeing the same symptoms, then it's possibly due to FBA configuration or other client-side issues.

Reason: you've been so busy debugging SharePoint sites in multiple browsers you've simply lost track of which settings you used during debug. You probably walked away from your machine and then came back and totally forgot that you disabled JavaScript in your debugger. Some people might even go so far as disabling the IE devtools to troubleshoot this issue only to find it doesn't help! Don't forget to look at the simple reasons first!!

Yours truly, we're only human.