The Apollo 13 Analogy
In the true story told in Ron Howard's Apollo 13, the crew is fighting for their lives on return to Earth from a doomed moon landing expedition. They are low on power. They're slowly freezing to death. Unfortunately, they need to have certain systems running or they're just not going to make it -- without their navigation computer to do the complex calculations for them, they could hit the Earth's atmosphere at the wrong angle and either burn up or bounce off into space forever.

At Mission Control in Houston, the flight crew is frantically trying to figure out how to get all of the systems running without sucking up more power than the crew has available for the duration of the trip.

Ken Mattingly, an astronaut who should have been on the flight but wasn't, spends hours and hours in the simulator in Houston. The simulator is a mockup of the actual capsule and has all the same systems, power supplies, etc. Mattingly tries combination after combination trying to make it all work without exceeding the voltage maximum they are allowed.

The trick was this: it didn't matter what component used how much power. They were already down to absolutely essential components. There was nothing left to sacrifice. All the components in question needed to be on. What mattered was how they were turned on.

When Mattingly figured out the turn-on sequence, they had a combination that worked. And it saved the lives of the Apollo 13 crew.

What the Analogy Means
Sure, you may have tried everything possible on your computer. You may not have any more IRQs or system resources left to allow anything to work.

But sometimes it's not the direct approach you need. Sometimes you need to know how to turn everything on, and in what order. This is what I do, all day, every day. Let me figure out how to get your spaceship back to Earth.

Well, that's it for that story. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Web site, already in progress.