Mission Critical?

Why the X-rays? Well, the X-ray shows my lungs as they are today and how they were at 11:00 PM one Saturday night in October a few years ago. I was having dinner with some friends and at midnight started coughing, the cough became worse and was accompanied by severe chest pains. By three in the morning I was so bad that a doctor had to be called out (this was the UK for you doubting Thomas's), an ambulance was called and I was carried down stairs on a stretcher and given oxygen.

Whilst in the ambulance I never once thought 'I wonder if ambulance was despatched by a well architected system?' In fact, I wonder if any users anywhere really cares about the architecture of the system he uses, nor should he.

In the hospital I was diagnosed as having 'raging phenomena', put in an oxygen mask and given massive doses of drugs. I was later told that I was lucky I was taken to hospital so quickly. And I was lucky because around this time one of the biggest ambulance services in England had recently tried to install a new system ..... and it had failed spectacularly. This is what the press said about it;