Next in our series on not shooting yourself in the foot: Doing a sudo shutdown -h now on the main database server right before you head home to cook dinner for six.

When you're distracted, all shells look alike. So make it look different! I like to color my prompt in a bright red on all production machines I frequent. You can achieve this by adding this line to your your ~/.bashrc:

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[41;33m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

Now relog or do a source ~/.bashrc to see your dangerous new prompt. I also recommend coloring root's prompt for the occasional su power trip.