love & marriage

As I've said before, I really love my job... most of the time. One of the things that led me into engineering in the first place was a passion for solving problems. I love a good challenge and to me there's nothing more satisfying than that "ah-hah!" moment when you finally figure out the solution to a problem that you've been toiling away on for hours or days, or sometimes even weeks. But occasionally a problem can go on too long, or the nature of the problem itself can be so confounding, that it takes much of the fun out of it. This has been the case for me the past several weeks. Part of my job as an integrator is the "marrying" of hardware and software into one blissful, happy union. I've been thinking about this lately and how it is in some ways similar to a real marriage. In the beginning everything is exciting. Granted, the initial integration effort can be challenging and stressful, much like planning a wedding (as I'm sure my project manager will agree *wink*), but once it's all said and done, the end result can be pretty exhilarating. That is, until the honeymoon phase is over, and you begin taking each other for granted. Suddenly little problems start popping up here and there. Then the little problems escalate into bigger ones. You start questioning why you ever got into this relationship -- no, wait...that's not how it happens. :) Okay, so I'm not really there yet, but I have just about exhausted my patience (at work, not at home ;). The particular problems I'm chasing right now (two different problems in two different labs) are the kind that are intermittent and generally take several hours of running before they occur, which means that I get to spend hours and hours making slight changes, and then waiting...and waiting...and waiting...to see if it makes a difference. All while vying for large contiguous amounts of lab time, which can be difficult to get. And then, just to add insult to injury, I come down with this gawd-awful cold that has migrated from my head to my chest, then back to my head again (the preferred location), and, as of this morning, now in both head and chest..doh! (And thank you all for the well-wishes, btw. I would have loved to take some time off and rest, but due to the lab-scheduling issue and my own masochistic sense of responsibility, it just wasn't to be.) Fortunately, I'm one of those lucky people who rarely ever gets sick (knock wood), and when I do, I swear it's this exact same illness, about once every 2 years....so yeah, I'm a big baby about it when it strikes. With any luck I'll get well just in time to make our long and arduous Thanksgiving pilgrimage (pun intended) to the in-laws (about a 12-hour drive...what fun--but nothing that compares to what happens after we get there). ;) Oh, the things we do for love!