What a Beautiful Day!

There is nothing like fighting tooth and nail with something until you finally get it! I have been consumed by two pieces of equipment at work for a solid month. They are supposed to communicate with one another during material testing, but the data that I was getting was completely wrong. They had never been used in this way before, but some upcoming testing required that they be used together.

This has been a nightmare month. The problem required that I understand electrical circuits, among other things. I have always labeled myself as "electrically challenged". My father is an electrician and my brother can do anything with circuits, so if I ever needed anything done, I just told them and they did it. I mean, I'll tear my car apart, but if it's electrical you can forget it. So I found myself in the middle of Wheatstone Bridges, multi-meters and computer software, miserable, confused and beyond stressed! This testing has to do with material qualification, so that only added to my worries.

Without going into all the gory details, I managed to get it working today. And in the process, I understand the horrible electrical side as well as the software side of the issue. I swear that twenty minutes after it worked, I felt my shoulders relax and they had the weirdest, tingling feeling. Like blood was finally able to move through again. Well, on the day that BP managed to plug up it's huge debacle (hey BP, learn the "leak before failure" principle), I managed to plug up a smaller one as well!