We’ve all had moments where we can stand back and realize there was no good reason something just went wrong.

For example, on Friday’s at 5pm it’s almost inevitable that something will break here at work.  Everyone is either leaving or has left, and the most important device will go down.  That’s Murphy’s Law.

Or, any program written to be “idiot-proof” won’t be.  An idiot user will find a way to break it.  Yep, Murphy.

In other words, if something bad can happen … it will.   Story of my life sometimes, and I suspect yours too.

A co-worker up the hall from me has a big poster up on his wall for Murphy’s Computer Laws.  I Google’d it figuring it would be a fun read.  Little did I know everyone has devised their own versions of Murphy’s Laws.

There are laws for toddlers, EMT’s, technology, buses, music, and much, much more.

http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-computer.html

Here’s another site with some of the same, and other laws as well:
http://www.opundo.com/murphyslaws.htm

Some of my favorites:
If anything can go wrong, it will.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. (especially when technology is involved!)

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (think programming)

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Everything takes longer than you think. (story of my life!!!)

Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

You will always find something in the last place you look. (obviously!! why keep looking if you found it?!?)

It is never in the last place you look. It is in the first place you look, but never discovered on the first attempt. (so true!)

If it jams – force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. (LOL)

No good deed goes unpunished.

Any time you put an item in a “safe place”, it will never be seen again.

Great ideas are never remembered and dumb statements are never forgotten. (story of my life at work)

Traffic is inversely proportional to how late you are, or are going to be.

no matter where I go, there I am

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…”
Said by Isaac Asimov

It takes forever to learn the rules and once you’ve learned them they change again.

Stupidity is the fundamental driving force of the Universe, which explains why stupid people always go wrong.

Common sense isn’t.

The more important it is to get to a website, the greater the chance the server is down.

Shit happens

A spoon placed in the sink will locate to maximize splash from the faucet

All horizontal surfaces shall be filled to capacity

The attention span of a computer is only as long as it electrical cord.

Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he’ll have to touch to be sure.

A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clark

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

If you can’t understand it, it is intuitively obvious.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

I could go on and on and on ….

And, finally, here’s one that I haven’t found written anywhere so maybe I need to submit it:

Never talk about a piece of hardware that you intend to replace while standing anywhere near it (where it can hear or see you)!  Hardware has feelings too.

For example, a few years ago, an old boss of mine and myself were standing in our computer room looking at a server (running firewall software). We were discussing plans to take the server down and replace it with a newer hardware-based firewall.  I can’t remember what our timeline was, but I’d say it was some number of weeks.  The NEXT DAY the server irrecoverably crashed.

Now when I’m making plans to replace something, I may go look at the device in question, but I never talk about it out loud in front of it.

It may seem that I’m superstitious, but that’s one I very strongly believe in!

What run-ins have you had with Murphy’s Laws?