Murphy’s Laws of Computing

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  • When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
  • When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it’s probably obsolete.
  • The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.
  • When the going gets tough, upgrade.
  • For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.
  • To err is human … to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural.
  • He who laughs last probably made a back-up.
  • If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer.
  • A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.
  • The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.
  • A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do.

Murphy’s Laws of Teaching

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  • The clock in the instructor’s room will be wrong.
  • Disaster will occur when visitors are in the room.
  • A subject interesting to the teacher will bore students.
  • The time a teacher takes in explaining is inversely proportional to the information retained by students.
  • A meeting’s length will be directly proportional to the boredom the speaker produces.
  • Students who are doing better are credited with working harder. If children start to do poorly, the teacher will be blamed.
  • The problem child will be a school board member’s son.
  • When the instructor is late, he will meet the principal in the hall. If the instructor is late and does not meet the principal, the instructor is late to the faculty meeting.
  • New students come from schools that do not teach anything.
  • Good students move away.
  • When speaking to the school psychologist, the teacher will say: “weirdo” rather than “emotionally disturbed.”
  • The school board will make a better pay offer before the teacher’s union negotiates.
  • The instructor’s study hall be the largest in several years.
  • The administration will veiw the study hall as the teacher’s preparation time.
  • Clocks will run more quickly during free time.
  • On a test day, at least 15% of the class will be absent
  • If the instructor teaches art, the principal will be an ex-coach and will dislike art. If the instructor is a coach, the principal will be an ex-coach who took a winning team to the state.
  • Murphy’s Law will go into effect at the beginning of an evaluation.

Murphy’s Laws for Parents

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  • The tennis shoes you must replace today will go on sale next week.
  • Leakproof thermoses–will.
  • The chances of a piece of bread falling with the grape jelly side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
  • The garbage truck will be two doors past your house when the argument over whose day it is to take out the trash ends.
  • The shirt your child must wear today will be the only one that needs to be washed or mended.
  • Gym clothes left at school in lockers mildew at a faster rate than other clothing.
  • The item your child lost, and must have for school within the next ten seconds, will be found in the last place you look. [By definition]
  • Sick children recover miraculously when the pediatrician enters the treatment room.
  • Refrigerated items, used daily, will gravitate toward the back of the refrigerator.
  • Your chances of being seen by someone you know dramatically increase if you drive your child to school in your robe and curlers.

Murphy’s Laws

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  • If anything can go wrong ….it will.
  • Anything dropped while working on a car will roll underneath to the exact center.
  • The chances of a piece of bread falling butter side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
  • The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.
  • A $200.00 picture tube will protect a 10 cent fuse by blowing first.
  • As events transpire as a function of time, tend to move towards a higher state of entropy.
  • The worst or stupidest ideas are always the most popular.
  • In front of every silver lining, is a cloud.
  • Save yourself a lot of worry, don’t burn your bridges until you come to them.
  • Simple jobs will always be put off, because there will be time to do them later.
  • Never make a decision you can get someone else to make.
  • The person who pays the least, complains the most.
  • There is no time like the present for postponing what you want to do.
  • The more we complicate the plan, the greater the chance of failure.
  • Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
  • A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and hours are lost.

Mom’s Laundry Rules

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  • Pajamas
    Do not put pajamas in the dirty clothes after only one wear. It is a scientific fact that you do not get dirty while you sleep. Pajamas can be worn many times before they smell bad enough to warrant being thrown in the dirty clothes.

    Exception: You may put pajamas in the dirty clothes if you throw up on them or something else that may be deemed disgusting, but only if they stink.

  • Socks
    Unroll your socks before putting them in the dirty clothes. Otherwise, I will start washing and drying them in their original rolled up little balls.

    Special note: Unroll socks before throwing them down the laundry chute. If you don’t, the law of physics causes them to bounce off the washer and land behind the washer or drying, and Mom is getting to old to crawl back there and fish them out.

  • Clothes Hung Up
    Clean clothes can be easily removed from the clothes bar by gently lifting up on the hanger and pulling towards you. The clean item can now be removed from the hanger for wearing. The wrong way to remove clean clothes is to YANK on one corner of the garment. This causes the hanger to go flying around the clothes bar, scratching the wall and becoming impossibly entangled with the neighboring hangers.

    Special note: This makes Mom want to choke children. So far, she has been able to refrain from this action.

  • Dirty Clothes Rule
    If you have made the decision to put something in the dirty clothes, do not later decide that you, for some reason, now need to retrieve it by digging through the clothes baskets, leaving behind a mess that looks like a small tornado whipped through the laundry room, leaving a scene of devastation in its wake.

    Special note: The only thing worse than having to put stinking clothes in the laundry baskets is having to do it over and over and over.

  • Pockets
    Check your own pockets before you put dirty items (again, make sure they are dirty first) in the laundry room. Have you ever tried to pick tiny pieces of white paper off an entire load of dark clothes? No? I thought not! But the next time this occurs, you will have the pleasure of this experience.

    Special note: In the future, all money found in pockets becomes the property of the laundry-doer, and that most assuredly will be Mom, who hopes to be able to save up for a Caribbean cruise, which she will go on alone. She has heard that you don’t have to do laundry while you are on a cruise!

  • Folded Clothes Rule
    When those clean clothes miraculously appear on your bed or chair, graciously thank the saintly person who lovingly placed them there and PUT THEM AWAY!

    Special note: Failure to do this in the future will result in a generous contribution to the Goodwill.

  • General Dirty Clothes Rule
    If they aren’t dirty, why the heck are they in the laundry room? Put them back in your closet or drawers. When you decide to try something on and decide that it will not make the fashion statement you were looking for that particular day, think twice before you make that conscious decision that it is easier to throw the item in the dirty clothes rather than hanging it back up. Again, the Goodwill would love to have these items, as their fashion standards must not be as high as yours.

  • Laundry Sharing
    In the future, each of you will be required to do one load of laundry a week. Instructions will be provided. Mom feels that the joy of this household chore should be shared, and she has been very selfish about this in the past. She also feels that this is a necessary life skill, and without it, you may not ever want to leave home. This would not be in the best interest of your parents.

Note – Rules may be added or modified at any time by Mom.

I, (sign your name) __________________________________ agree to abide by the above rules, as I actually have no choice in the matter and do not wish to further anger my mother.

Date:______________

Modern Laws

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  • Murphy’s First Law for Wives: If you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he will forget two of the first five.
  • Kauffman’s Paradox of the Corporation: The less important you are to the corporation, the more your tardiness or absence is noticed.
  • The Salary Axiom: The pay raise is just large enough to bump you into the next tax bracket and just small enough to have no effect on your take-home pay.
  • Miller’s Law of Insurance: Insurance covers everything except what happens.
  • Weiner’s Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross-references.
  • Isaac’s Strange Rule of Staleness: Any food that starts out hard will soften when stale. Any food that starts out soft will harden when stale.
  • The Grocery Bag Law: The candy bar you planned to eat on the way home from the market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.
  • Lampner’s Law of Employment: When leaving work late, you will go unnoticed. When you leave work early, you will meet the boss in the parking lot.

Rules to help Men Understand Women

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  • Learn to work the toilet seat. If you’ve managed to lift it up, gravity is on your side when it comes to putting it back down.
  • Sometimes, we are not thinking about having sex.
  • “I ate it, didn’t I?” is not considered praise.
  • Your responsibility for raising children does NOT end at conception.
  • Get rid of your comb-over. It’s not different — it’s just as ridiculous as every other comb over. You’re losing your hair — face it.
  • An order of takeout ribs and a Chris Farley movie is not everybody’s idea of a good time.
  • “Yeah yeah, you look fine” is not a compliment.
  • Yes, I DO tell my best friend everything.
  • You have enough ballcaps.
  • You have too many t-shirts.
  • You’re too old to wear a goatee.
  • Every actor we find attractive is not gay. You can stop using this one — we’ve all heard it.
  • A hug is not always a prelude to sex.
  • When we ask “are you listening,” we already know you’re not.
  • Your best friend is an idiot
  • Nothing says “I love you” like offering to go to the grocery store.
  • If you can rebuild the carburetor on a ’66 Mustang, working the washing machine should be a snap.
  • Yes and no are sometimes acceptable answers — grunts and blank stares are not.
  • A sore back that prevents you from doing household chores for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.
  • Underwear is like a car. After five years, it needs to be replaced with a newer model.
  • A romantic weekend getaway does not involve baiting a hook.
  • Slapping us on the butt and saying “how bout getting me a cold one” is not foreplay.
  • The missionary position is best left to missionaries.
  • Rolling over and mumbling “I’ve got to get some sleep” does not produce an afterglow.
  • If it was really good for me…you wouldn’t have to ask.

Laws of Work

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  • If you can’t get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.
  • A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
  • Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
  • It doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters what you say you’ve done and what you’re going to do.
  • After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
  • The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
  • You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
  • Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
  • When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
  • If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
  • There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
  • Keep your boss’s boss off your boss’s back.
  • Everything can be filed under “miscellaneous.”
  • Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
  • To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.
  • Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he/she is supposed to be doing.
  • Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
  • If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
  • You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
  • People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn’t.
  • If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
  • At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.
  • When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
  • Following the rules will not get the job done.
  • Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
  • When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger handle this?”
  • No matter how much you do, you never do enough.
  • The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.

Unique Laws

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Okay, you’ve heard of Murphy’s famous Law: Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. There are many other related Laws, as well. Here are some:

  • Lorenz’s Law of Mechanical Repair
    After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.

  • Beach’s Law
    Identical parts aren’t.

  • Anthony’s Law of the Workshop
    Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner.

  • Tussman’s Law
    Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

  • Lowery’s Law
    If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

  • Peer’s Law
    The solution to a problem changes the problem.

  • William’s Law
    There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.

  • Handy Guide to Modern Science:
    If it’s green or it wiggles, it’s Biology.
    If it stinks, it’s Chemistry.
    If it doesn’t work, it’s Physics.

  • IBM’s Pollyanna Principle
    Machines should work. People should think.

  • The Dilbert Principle
    The most ineffective workers will be systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage – management.

  • Ehrlich’s Law
    The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

  • Ralph’s Observation
    It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are in a hurry.

  • Cannon’s Comment
    If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

  • Cole’s Law
    Thinly sliced cabbage.

  • The Law of Common Sense
    Never accept a drink from a urologist, nor a friendly handshake from a proctologist.

  • The Law of Reality
    Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.

  • The Law of Avoiding Oversell
    When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse.

  • Law of Physical Displacement
    Sometimes you are the dog. Sometimes you are the hydrant.

  • Legal Rights
    Everyone has a right to be stupid. Some just abuse the privilege.

  • Law of Probable Dispersal
    Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

  • Law Pertaining to Divorce
    Be a good housekeeper. When you leave him … get a good lawyer …keep his house.

Rules for Jewish Living

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  • Never take a front-row seat at a bris.
  • If you can’t say something nice, say it in Yiddish.
  • The High Holidays have nothing to do with marijuana.
  • Always whisper the names of diseases.
  • Never leave a restaurant empty-handed.
  • Without Jewish mothers, who would need therapy?
  • If you are going to whisper at the movies, make sure it’s loud enough for everyone else to hear.
  • If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. But if you can, make sure you tell everybody what you paid.
  • It’s not whom you know, it’s whom you know that had a nose job.
  • If you don’t eat it, it will kill me.
  • Anything worth saying is worth repeating a thousand times.
  • There comes a time in every man’s life when he must stand up and tell his mother that he is an adult. This usually happens at around age 45.