Here we go ... again

I'm sitting in the airport waiting to catch my flight to LAX. Life got just a little more interesting last night.

When we got home from church yesterday, there was a voice mail from work. They needed me to come in. Didn't mention exactly what the problem was, but you know how it goes. Guess they didn't want to scare me off.

So I went in to work and discovered that our customer (names have been removed to protect the far-from-innocent) was having difficulties. Nothing earth-shattering, just software that wasn't working. Their software. See, we give them an operating system, and a few applications to run on it, and they write some of their own applications which run at the same time as our applications, and they all work together to help pilots manage navigation and flight management tasks.

They took our, stuff which was working, added in their own stuff, and suddenly it wasn't working anymore. Well, let me clarify that: in this one particular failure mode, it didn't do what they expected it to do.

So I and my comrades were at work yesterday from early afternoon to late evening, trying to figure out what was going on. We took their software and ran it in our lab without any problems. Which leads us to believe that there is something amiss in their lab. That is, a hardware problem. Nothing much we can do here about their hardware.

But that is not the correct response when the Customer says, "Jump". They said, "Get someone on a plane right now!" -- which is their default response to any problem. And when the Customr says "Jump", we Jump. And as the front-line geek, that means me.

Which is why I'm on a flight to LAX today. In this particular episode, I'm playing the part of the 7th Cavalry, riding in over the hill to save Custer. Armed with my laptop rifle and my cell phone canteen. Ready to jump into the fray and slay the dragons. Or bugs. Or whatever.

Oh, and I have to be back in Chicago by Thursday to pick up the boys!

Man, what a fun week this is going to be.