If you're gonna be wrong, that's the place for it

Flashback to the 1980s, when this pilot fish is overseeing the production, testing, installation and maintenance of computerized outbound call centers at his company.

"Engineering came up with an improved design, and the company decided to test it by retrofitting some existing customers' sites," says fish. "I led the first such team on a trip to the company's biggest customer.

"The newly installed system promptly crashed. The techs diagnosed a power-supply failure. The lead tech said, 'OK, this is simple. We can just swap in the power supply from the old system.'"

But fish isn't so sure that's a good idea. He points out that something went wrong with the power supply, but it's not clear what -- and if it's not just a bad supply, and an external problem fries the other power supply, the customer will be down for the day.

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