Odd twists

So today's fire to put out was, "Put together a memo addressing the question of whether extended frozen storage time of component X correlates with failures of parameter Y, suggesting that we need to reduce the maximum allowed storage time. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes." Well, ok, the "ten minutes" thing is as standing joke between my boss and I. It took me pretty much all day just to put the data together because in all our several massive data systems, there is no straightforward way to identify all instances of component X nor all failures of parameter Y. And then just as I'm explaining how the data show that there's no correlation between frozen storage time and parameter failure, I realize that there is, in fact, an extremely strong correlation between the two -- it's just a negative one. Store X frozen for a short period and if fails Y; store X frozen for a long period and it doesn't fail Y. Counter-intuitive, but extremely fascinating. (Use X directly without freezing it and it may pass or fail. So things are a bit more complicated than that.) It was almost fascinating enough to have been worth staying late for an hour and a half to finish. I expect that first thing in the morning I'll be assigned some new aspect of the question. (I can think of a few ....) This is why I love my job.