Problem Solving

Do you ever find yourself in a season, of at least a few days, when you have to solve one problem after another? Sometimes they are related but sometimes they are totally unconnected.

Well, I'm having such a season, and yesterday was extra heavy with problems to face and deal with from several directions. I hesitate to unload them on you, but I think there is a helpful moral in all of this if we just keep our eyes open and think this through. So I'm ready to go through this exercise for my own benefit. Hopefully it will help you too, next time it happens to you.

Quick Review: Monday night last week I was working on the site to sell diecast models, when suddenly it crashed on me. it has happened before, so I tried this and that. The error message said there were flaws on some .php files. I know some coding, but php files are still a closed riddle for me, so I went to my hosting service support and asked for help in the chat. (They've been very good to me in the past). But after being put on hold I was advised that my request would be bumped up to higher levels of expertise. I would get an email the next day. Two days later I got an email saying that they couldn't solve it either. All they could do was restore my site to what was on thelr last backup about 2 weeks earlier. However, that would cost me.

I declined, and decided to start all over again, and hopefully not make the same mistakes I've already made, which would make the site better in the long run. Deleting whole folders full of files and then uploading them fresh from the original source takes a number of hours. I had a headache, and had at least two other problems to work on that were unrelated, so I prayed and begged for help. Then I began the deleting and uploading.

Meantime, I decided that if I had to wait I might as well figure out how to make myself some foam neck braces. I'd bought some foam last week, and had cut out two pieces but was stuck on how to attach the velcro. I brought two small bags of remnants to my desk, and found a piece of pink cotton was just enough to cover the one foam brace. I found another pretty piece of floral quilted cotton and since I'd cut out a bigger brace (that is higher under the chin and ears), I decided to save that piece for the second one. However, my plan was to make one first, and then learn from the mistakes that might apear with that before I made the second one.

(By now my headache had lifted).

I had tried last week to sew the velcro patches directly onto the foam, but the sewing machine gagged on that thickness. I tried by hand, but my needle would not go through the velcro. This time I tried sewing the velcro rectangles onto the pink cotton first, then sewed up the pink material into a sleeve to fit over the foam. I struggled to shove it in there, and decided there would be a better way for the next one.

Ah-ha! when I got that one done and tried it around my neck, it worked! Not nearly as bulky as all the scarves I've tried! The foam did keep its shape and was able to jack up my jaw so that the vertebrae in my neck are lifted apart a bit, and my pinched nerve is unpinched! Hallelujah!

But when I looked in a mirror in the bathroom which faces another mirror I saw that the ends did not overlap very neatly. Hmmm? how will I solve this problem?

Well, why not start on the second one, and see if I can do that better?

Between these efforts I kept an eye on my monitor to watch how the uploading of files was going. I also paused to create a new database, as it might not work if I linked it in the final install stage with one that already had some data in it. Good move!

After 10 pm the uploading was done so I went to the final installation steps - mostly clicking on green buttons. Wonderful! It took! now I could login to the dashboard and start fixing up the settings, and then loading up the descriptions and pictures of the models... That will take a long time yet, as I think I have 2000 to put up, but over the last few weeks I had got about 30-40 done. Those I will have to do over now.

But then another problem came up, and I had to go hunting on the forums for this shopping cart to see how others had handled it. That part is not done yet. I called it a night after midnight.

The second foam neck brace is not finished yet either, but now I have ideas for at least two ways to improve it over the first one I made.

Whew! look how long this took, and I only covered two categories of problems to solve.

Okay, my conclusion is that solving problems is how I learn to do things - the more problems I have the better I get at doing those things. Believe me, I've already forgotten the hundreds of problems I had to learn to solve with building websites, or writing ebooks. I've come a long way in those two categories, but for sure I haven't seen the last of these problem-solving learning experiences!

Gr'ma Kroeker had an expression; translated into English it is: "Old as cow and still always learning!" See how this applies to problem-solving? I consider myself quite the experienced or wise cow!

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