Murphy's Law

Hi all!

I hope you have been enjoying the wonderful views from all the Melange Authors.  Well today is my turn, and instead of writing about my books, or upcoming works, I'm going to tell you about a few hilarious things this weekend.

First off, its my anniversary today. I have been married now one whole year. Yup. I'm a newbie! lol

Well secondly, for my anniversary my husband and I went to see the Carlsbad Caverns. Let me tell you it was awesome. Now other than the sights, one factor kept popping up over and over. My tendency to walk smack into doors. I know what you are thinking....whaaaaaaaat? lol

Second off, this past week my laptop and phone crashed. In a matter of moments, I had my phone die, while on the phone with my mother, my laptop crash (while I was in the middle of page 24 of my doctoral research proposal) and I manage to lose a compound I made for work (found it eventually hidden behind a box of gloves).  For a whole day I was off the grid, trying to back up all my information and comforting a panicked mother who thought the internet swallowed me whole.

Well I have always had a great sense of humor about things, and one of the things I kept saying was "DAMN YOU MURPHY!!!" So in tribute to Murphy and his laws, I decided to look and find out about where these great facts of irony of life originated.  Lo and behold, they are real!

I hope you enjoy this story, because I know I most certainly have indeed. So dear Mr. Murphy, thank you for your laws. Though at times I don't appreciate them, they are most certainly hilarious.

I hope you guy enjoy the stories and some of the rules I found.

Any day when you survive a Murphy's Law day is a good one indeed!!!!

See you on the cyberwaves!

Mila (if you want to know more about my books....well you're in the right spot. )

_____

The following article was excerpted from The Desert Wings
March 3, 1978

Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base.

It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash.

One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it."

The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law.

Actually, what he did was take an old law that had been around for years in a more basic form and give it a name.

Shortly afterwards, the Air Force doctor (Dr. John Paul Stapp) who rode a sled on the deceleration track to a stop, pulling 40 Gs, gave a press conference. He said that their good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it.

Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it was being quoted in many news and magazine articles. Murphy's Law was born.

The Northrop project manager, George E. Nichols, had a few laws of his own. Nichols' Fourth Law says, "Avoid any action with an unacceptable outcome."

The doctor, well-known Col. John P. Stapp, had a paradox: Stapp's Ironical Paradox, which says, "The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle."

Nichols is still around. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, he's the quality control manager for the Viking project to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.

The Murphy Philosophy
Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.

Quantization Revision of Murphy's Laws
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Murphy's Constant
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Murphy's Law of Research
Enough research will tend to support whatever theory.

Addition to Murphy's Laws
In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right ... something is wrong.

More Laws

• Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
• It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
• Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
• Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.
• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• Everything takes longer than it takes.
  Sent by Jon Carpenter
• If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
• Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
• Every solution breeds new problems.
• The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
• No matter how perfect things are made to appear, Murphy's law will take effect and screw it up.
  Sent by Mitch
• You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
• The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
  Sent by Paul Breen
• The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. 

More on Murphy: http://www.murphys-laws.com/