Oh, geez... I might be upset too! I consider my coffee pot as "life sustaining medical equipment"!
I guess I didn't mention it in my post, but there was a time when new engineers would get paid to learn new stuff. My boss knew that I'd kick this other program's butt and my program wasn't strictly necessary. The purpose of the assignment was to master interrupt driven device handlers, async I/O and HD, printer, magnetic tape and card reader performance characteristics. I was given other assignments after this one where I needed to apply what I learned from this sort assignment. My boss had a plan and a purpose for this assignment. As a "new guy", I didn't think about what was to come next. I just dove into this thing full bore and did the best that I could.