fist pass at making it more reliable

[asengupta3]

Proposed changes

Types of changes

What types of changes does this pull request introduce?

• Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• Refactor (non-breaking change that does not add functionality but makes code cleaner or more efficient)
• Tests (new or updated tests)
• Styles (changes to code styling)
• CI (continuous integration changes)
• Other (please describe below)

Additional Notes