Hmmm.... I might be able to shed a little light...
Okay, so imagine you are the lead enigneer/project manager on a new system. And this system really is your baby. You conceived of its basic design, drove it from start to finish, really poured your soul into it.
And you get back your "it better be right this time because production starts with it unless you really screwed up" prototype motherboard. You build it up, and start testing. Everything has to be right, but that is okay because you were OCD careful and checked everything before sending it out for fab. Just a quick validation, and things should be golden....
But the damn floppy doesn't work. What the hell? The motherboard really provides no value add to the floppy control, everything is controlled by Agnes and Denise. There is nothing there to fail. Swap diskettes. swap Denises, swap anguses, swap power supplies. Still no good. Double check the netlist and the layout. Nothing. The floppy always 'just worked' before. Shit. Whip out the scope and start poking here and there. How the hell does this floppy thing work anyway? What exactly should the signals look like?
So roll up your sleeves, grab more coffee, dig out the docs and start reading and studying. Spend many hours refreshing your memory about how it is supposed to work, and then spend a few more with the scope. Poke at a working system and compare signals. Add pressure because you really need to release it, but certainly can't if the floppy doesn't work.
Hours go by. 2 pm.... 6pm... 10pm... midnight... 2am... Everything checks out, all the signals look great, why doesn't it work? WTF!!?
Then the really dim light bulb goes off. I mean the micro-watt kind, the kind that, by virtue of the single photon it emits, signals that it is infinitely more brilliant that you are.
There is nothing wrong with the very expensive prototype motherboard you have been slaving over. Maybe, just maybe, it is that floppy drive you have been testing with. Swap it out, and presto! Everything works great. See no problem, you've just wasted 12 hours real time (and 5 years of your lifespan) because of a cheap POS floppy drive!! Or more accurately, because you were too stupid to try swapping that out long ago.
Now let he without sin cast the first stone, but if you had wasted your time like that, then maybe, just maybe you would understand. Simply put, there was no longer room in this universe for both me and that floppy drive. It was him or me. Sadly, my efforts to propel it into the next universe were interrupted by the wall. I went home.
I ain't proud of it. But the damn thing got what it deserved.
Or did it? Thanks to the deathbed vigil video, that damn drive is now more famous than I will ever be. It won. What's next? A freaking wikipedia page for the damn floppy drive?
I can see my tombstone now.
His floppy didn't work,
so his proto didn't go
Here lies a dumbass engineer,
died stupid, dontcha know.
