Well - thanks for the help guys.

I'm going to assume at this point that it was an error on the data feed side and smack my knuckles with a ruler for not forcing the upper case on the data that I was assuming to be upper case.

It appears that my manual/programatic tests just happened to match when the data was screwed up - the chances of that seem to be stupidly high - but this worked for months, works now - and I can no longer repeat it today with the old or the new code.

Again - thanks for the help guys - when things like this happen to other people, I scoff at how they are obviously overlooking this or that - but when things are happening right in front of you that you know "can't" be happening, it is a weird thing.