Yeah I was the same way. "On this episode of 'How It's Made' carving decoys in Maryland." Next. I came for the machines.
Like my first tour of an electronics assembly facility. I'd seen videos online of the high-speed chip shooters used to assemble motherboards. I was looking forward to it!
Get there....it is not high-tech. There's a soldering oven running DOS on an old desktop-style PC, and a CRT with severe burn-in. (This was just a few years ago, mind you. Some companies were starting to worry about when Microsoft would pull the plug on WinXP.) There was no automatic assembly equipment at all, and not so much as a single conveyor belt. It was just desks with people putting parts into boards.
"Hey kids, let's go to Disneyland, kids!"
Then you are driven past a squashed turtle on the road that your mother had noticed earlier in the day. You manage to feel some surprise at the strong resemblance that the puddles of blood and ejected organs have to Mickey's head and basic features. Then you go home, carrying with you a lesson about setting expectations.
"The machine stopped. Go down there and find the problem."
FML...
At which point you find that the integrated diagnostics tools are as elaborate as a "check engine" light, and the OBD interface was never put in because, during the development stage, management thought it was as much of a waste of time as proper documentation was.
Further investigation shows that the integrated diagnostics hardware is connected to a simple sensor, and is only capable of indicating that the machine has indeed stopped moving.
Worse still, the original designer has not only retired, but has thoughtlessly died of old age, thus robbing you of the chance of throwing the person into the machine's powerful chains once it's brought back to life.
