TheBanyanTree: (no subject)

[Julie Anna Teague]

I do some federal reporting as part of my job. It seems as if it would be rather
straightforward. Pick up this file. Do this. Send this back. But it is a process
frought with errors for one reason and another. Try as we might, there is always
something changing--either the requirements, or the data, or the system, or
problems that have taken root before I even took this job. Something. And ok,
well, sometimes there is human error. I am, afterall, a human, and part of my
processing involves manual jiggling of file headers and file names, and lets
hope to God I've had coffee that morning. Most of the time, everything is good,
everything is cool, but every now and then all hell breaks loose. Or something
is just slightly off, and while it may be a tiny glitch for me, it's a major
glitch for some poor sap whose data we just reported incorrectly. The bottom
line, here, is that I am totally amazed sometimes that things run as smoothly as
they do, that more hell doesn't break loose each and every day. I can't be the
only one dealing with program bugs out there. Or on the flip side, I worry that
more hell breaks lose than we ever know about, that some information about me
somewhere is hopelessly inaccurate, and that I will find out about it at the
most inopportune moment. Not to scare you all. Really. Relax. I'm not the person
reporting your taxes or anything like that.

Julie