Subtitled:  Why error messages are good.

Came up with another error while running TopoToRaster but this time ArcGIS gave an error message that led to a solution.  Turned out all my contour lines had an elevation of 16 which TopoToRaster did not like.  I had intended to increase the elevation and inadvertently set them all to sixteen.  I had saved the previous values before editing so it turned out to be a simple fix and I didn’t have to spend a day trying figure out what was wrong.