Organizing Chaos and Pushing on a Rope

This last week has been interesting. I have just started driving again after tearing the quadriceps off my left knee (been weaned off the pain killers so I'm not impaired) and going out on emergency calls for my business. My systems miss me...this one water system especially. Drive 110 miles one way to find part of the original system which, after working for 10+ years, had decided it was not going to work. After trips Tuesday and Thursday and then setting up to work on the system from home this weekend I was pushing the rope. For those of you have never tried pushing a rope should do it just to have the experience to understand frustration. Today I got the problem tracked done to some of the original programming, done by another company and which had worked for 10+ years, as a mismatch in the data being transferred from a remote site to the master. Apparently, the spirits of this system decided that one should not mix bit data and integers and were being quite stubborn about it. The spirits have been appeased and water is flowing properly again.

You can push on a rope, IF you give it a little thought. Freezing cold and wet, the rope stiffens and that's just one way.