I understand that there is a precise problem statement for the issue the OP was dealing with, as you have stated. What I was getting at was the the OP hadn't found that precise statement.

This is actually a more fundamental concept issue with our field in general - most programmers don't realize that development is at least 80% thinking and no more than 20% typing. I was reading some onLamp.com articles on FreeBSD installations and one author kept saying that installs were "99% preparation and 1% installation". I think that this is extremely appropriate to programming and computers in general. Most programming is actually quite easy - even trivial ... once you have figured out the problem you're trying to solve.