Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Ah-hah Moment

I'll be toiling along on a work-related something, attempting to process whatever the Hell it is the inventors thought was so damn fascinating and exciting that it deserved to be patented. Pouring over the various documents, searching the internet, rifling through references, I work on figuring out what the inventors are trying to say to me. Then, without warning...

AH-HAH!

It strikes! The Ah-hah Moment hits me like a magical pile of bricks falling from the heavens. (And sometimes it feels like that, too!) All of a sudden, and often based on no particular phrase or sentence, everything becomes clear. It is as if I finally cleaned my glasses or that ugly, pea-soup-thick fog has finally lifted and now I can see everything clearly.

Internally, I nod my head and think: "So that's what this is all about!" Then I smile to myself and continue reading, only now with an eye to what I should say about the invention to the Examiner.