#7: Print out this thread, or at least the last post and maybe this one, and carry it with you. When you have to tell a client that you must fiddle with things that worked yesterday, and perhaps do so for hours, you can show them that this is not just their problem, it is also our headache and heartache. The only solution is to do all of numbers 1 - 6 and hope that you can solve their problem.

I lost a client once, an oncologist, because the things that had worked before to make his HDMI situation work did not work in this case. He didn't think it fair to be charged for the labor that didn't result in success. I didn't have the balls to challenge him, as a doctor, to see if he refunded charges for cancer treatments that had worked for other people but didn't work for this or that individual patient.