Murphy's Law

It's not well known that Murphy's law, "If anything that can go wrong, will", was not initially stated in the pessimisstic, tongue-in-cheek way that it's most often used. Story goes that Murphy was a major in the airforce in charge of some rocket sled tests, and that he uttered this as a way of driving home a point about a complex system involving millions and millions of life-critical parts, and that even seemingly inoccuous "1 in a million" defect levels amounted to sure-fire failures in such a complex system. (after checking, the Wikipedia entry differs from this someone, but I like my version :-)

However, it's more often used to refer to a comedy of failures, or failures that occur at critical moments.

Which is the context in which I'll refer to it.

I was supposed to be up at 5am to get some stuff done before heading to the airport for TGS wednesday, and I was up late getting stuff ready. As usual, good intent about getting to bed early was taking a back seat to last minute travel prep.

Wise tech-savvy guy that I am, I figure I'll transfer some of my media-center recorded movies to my laptop for viewing on the flight on the way over. Only I couldn't get my work laptop to participate with my home network file sharing. Sure enough, at around 11pm, I go in and futz with settings, only to render the machine unbootable, because now it's looking to verify the password on a domain it can't find, etc, etc.

Crap.

Luckily, I still had the old laptop at work, so I could just go by the office in the morning and pick it up, and while missing some files I wanted to work on, I should at least be about to get on email & the web.

So I go by the office in the morning and pick up the laptop. Only now I have a laptop that's not fully charged, so I won't be able to use it on the plane for much time.

No problem, I have my MP3 player, which I've refreshed with a bunch of music & podcasts. (BTW, Steve Lacey's podcast keeps getting better. I really enjoy it. Also, his Ferryman song that he wrote after inspiration from the Katrina tragedy is quite good).

So I get to the airport, have 45 minutes of AC time to charge the battery on the laptop. Only with all the panic, I forgot to get a new battery for the MP3 player. Dang it!

Digging through my bag, I find a AAA battery, but no AA, which is what the player takes.

McGuyver Time.

I managed to run the MP3 player off the AAA by doing the following: I wrapped a half-piece of tissue around it to make it the size of a AA, which a "tube" extending off the positive terminal end of the battery. In that "tube", I inserted a spring I extracted from teh end of a pen I had with me. The tissue held the spring and battery in line, and the spring filled the difference in length between a AA and a AAA, and also acted as a conductor.

Ha. I rule.

I'd post a picture, but I also forgot my digital camera as well.

Oh, and my cel phone has also given up the ghost, for some reason always thinking a headset is plugged in, when that isn't the case.

Sigh. Some days, everything can, and does, go wrong.