Sheesh! "Test Pilot" - like a pilot on a farm? ("pile it here, pile it there).
If it's not hardware, then it must be software, right? I'm not conversant with avrdude, so I can't dig further into this. I'm not sure what happens next, but the folks in the pointy hats will probably fix it if it comes to their attention.
What should I do to move this along?
Cheers,
Jim