Remembering Murphy- Murphy’s Law

I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.

Everything is either said for a reason or for no reason at all. It is noteworthy how certain sentences say just what they’re supposed to and never fail to astound us with their truth. Every person, unless he’s dumb says something. Even the dumb who have been deprived of their power of speech say things by their actions. The responsibility of understanding what has been said is ours entirely and it is only us – who understand – who can actually propagate what we heard so that others can hear what we say.

One such man who said something worth pondering over was Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an engineer by profession. I respect him not only because he was an engineer but because of that something he said. His statement is called Murphy’s law today and it exhibits the firmness of the grasp of this man on the ways of the world. He had understood what every living person had to live with and though many people might have realized the same, I salute him for he was the first one who said so.

Murphy law states,
“Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.”

Isn’t it true? People might brand me a pessimist for repeating the statement but name calling never helps, so I suggest such people to save that energy and use it for nobler pursuits. Once seen in the right light, Murphy’s Law actually starts making sense: Shit happens in this world. Subtract the number of times you’ve succeeded from the number of times you’ve tried and if you’re human you are bound to get a non-zero result. That my friend is the quantitative measure of Murphy’s law holding. Upon dividing this result by the number of trials, you get a better estimate. And if the quotient of the previous division has no fractional part, you my friend are one specimen of either of the two species- God or the author’s true alter ego (if the latter is the case, get in touch with me. Let’s hang out together sometime.)

Now some people might have qualms about the involvement of science in this law. Well, doubts in the verity of a statement are good signs, both for the person who has doubts and for the person who stated the law. Since Murphy’s been dead for quite sometime, I take on the prerogative to answer for him, to the best of my ability. ( If you think I am bullshitting you, I might have done that. Do not hate Murphy for what I say because these thoughts are mine in their entirety and they do not reflect what Murphy had in mind when he said what he said.) Ask yourself what science is. I’ve found texts to support that science is the quest to know. In this sense history is science, right? Isn’t history a little something when it comes to gaining knowledge? In all these years history has been an important tool to the achievement of this objective- knowing. Time and again we have turned the pages of the past to satisfy our quest to know. And history has shown us that things have gone wrong when they could’ve gone wrong. So, there is science in the law. It might not have a hundred percent chance of holding, but no law has that luxury. Ask someone who knows, is V=IR always? Ohm’s law doesn’t hold always : even the textbooks show that the characteristic straight line is a curve in the practical sense, but you call that a law.

There have been many stated versions of the this law and I will list a few of them, in my style of writing. Forgive me if you find the language blasphemous, for it is just intended to bring in some humor. I’ve made additions at my discretion in places to bring about the same effect.

1.If anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inopportune time. It will all be your fault and everyone will know it.
2.If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
An extreme version would be,
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST one to go wrong.
3.If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
4.Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. The hidden flaw doesn’t remain hidden for long. And then people find out it was your fault.
5.Mother nature is a bitch.
6.The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
7.You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. ( Try and relate this to the four lines that mark the beginning of this composition.) Now, read the next point.
8.The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

The following statements could be classified as Murphy’s Laws of Selective Gravitation:
9.A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
10. An unbreakable object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
11. A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
12. A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) – unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
13. If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
14. A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example.)
15. The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the pet dog will throw up on it.

The following statements form the equivalences in shopping:
16. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you’ve bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
17. The other line always moves faster.

The statements pertaining to love:
18. All the good ones are taken.
19. If the person isn’t taken, there’s a reason.
20. Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.
This constant is always zero.
21. “This won’t hurt, I promise.” is not true.

The statements for a computer:
22. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
23. Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another ‘unrelated‘ part is modified.
24. Line number 108 : m=n;
Line number 109 : assert ( m==n);
Output : Execution Aborted. Assertion failed in line 109.
25. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
26. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
27. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.
28. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user. And the end user can do nothing about it than wait for the next version of the software. The next version of the software will have bigger bugs.
29. The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
30. Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.
31. If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n – 1 components in locally-held stocks.
32. Each computer code has five bugs, and this number does not depend on how many bugs have been already found (it is conservative).
33. Whenever you’re in a hurry, the server is down.

There are more statements- thousands of them, all stating but the obvious. All of them support the law. For instance, Steven Right once said,“If Murphy’s law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic.” Since nothing of that sort has happened so far, you might be tempted to think Murphy’s law doesn’t hold. Well the good thing about Murphy’s law is, even when it doesn’t hold, it holds, “If Murphy’s Law can go wrong it will.”

I’d like the readers to write down similar statements in the comments section. It’ll be an amusing exercise.

The Night the Clock Struck None

After impregnating my unwilling mouth with 3 chapatis along with lemon pickle and gulping a litre of water down my throat to wash the stuff down, I unhappily rose from my seat, cursing the cook for bringing about the involuntary exercise I had become accustomed to indulging in everyday. The tired body needs nourishment after two hours of workout but nourishment is like love- it can’t be hidden where it truly exists and can’t be found where it doesn’t exist, and sadly the case was not the former. Nevertheless I decided that this would be the last meal before breakfast the next day and content with my own shortcomings and the world’s, I walked alone towards my room. I had barely reached the aisle that leads to room no. E-28 when I was interrupted by Suprit,

“Chandra sun, koi kaam to nahi hai tereko (Listen, so you don’t you have any other business?)” in his characteristic rising-falling overtones.

“Why?” was my reply.

“Just tell me. Are you free or not?”

“I’m not sure what you mean but say I’m free. Now what?”, I managed to say.

“We are going somewhere, and I want you to come with me”, narrated Suprit.

“Where?” I asked.

“I’m throwing my birthday bash and we are going to Ohri’s Banjara for the midnight buffet. And you’re certainly coming”, continued the Mahabali.

“Listen, Suprit. You are a nice guy (it didn’t sound so weird then). You know how I don’t like….” was what I was saying before I was stopped by the restless spectacled guy, with fire in his small eyes,

“For once get rid of the anti-social in you.”

What the heck? “Ok, count me in”, I said so not because I genuinely wanted to go but because I wasn’t in a mood to stand one of his lectures that revealed his perception of the world and all the things inside it.

So that was when I first surrendered to the fate. Minutes later I was thinking of excuses to put off the whole thing. It turned out that several guys were celebrating their birthdays together and contributing resources to make the event possible. Then people came along and said things which again made me feel, what the heck, I’ll go just for the heck of it. At one point before this realization crept in, I had a sound debate with Mathur and I had virtually convinced him into not going but he had already given his word (he was one of the party hosts) and it would be hard to back out after half the arrangements were made, so that didn’t work. All in all, I knew I was going with a certain degree of unwillingness (the degree was such that one would feel one were being kidnapped).

My reasons for not going were,

i. Who in the hell does not drink and still goes to party after 12 in the midnight?

ii. I had had the dinner (or whatever it was).

iii. The guys throwing the bash didn’t know any hot members of the opposite gender whom they could invite.

iv. I was tired.

v. To enter the campus after 0045 hours, one had to forfeit one’s ID, only to collect it from some faculty later.

vi. It was certain that the party would go on beyond 2 o’ clock and I had verified earlier that nothing good could happen to you after 2 in the morning.

vii. I was not so keen to die. (Yeah, wild things can happen in the night.)

So, we got ready to leave. On our way towards the main gate, I took turns at scaring Yash and Mathur by quoting examples of people setting out with something in mind and never returning. As we walked we found more of our batch mates joining in the throng. We all assembled outside the main gate. Somewhere in the distance the clock struck none. (Well, we call it 0000 hours and there was no sound of the clock striking, so technically the clock was meant to strike zero times.) The three cabs were there in a jiffy and more than fifteen guys jumped in each of them. No matter how sophisticated we may claim we are, we certainly don’t pretend to be. Some guys couldn’t fit in and they hired an Auto. Still Mudit, Mayank Goel, Parikshit and Chubbyshek could be seen alongside bikes (borrowed from seniors), occasionally helping in the stuffing of prisoners in the vans. And we set for the terra-incognita.

I swear I would have fainted for want of oxygen had Sachdev not interrupted the van to pee out in the open. After he was done, we hit the road again. I spotted many AP-13s on the number plates of overtaking vehicles and each time I saw one, I made the others count. If 13 was for bad luck, man, we were in serious trouble after the 13th count.

Soon we reached the destination and people stared at us with horror and distaste as some of us fell right out of the cabs when the doors were opened: under the influence of the repulsive forces that prevent all matter from combining. The remaining guys came flying out of the other cabs as well and we ramp walked towards the entrance. It was pretty evident that the locality was posh and we’d be considered pirates there. Nevertheless we didn’t hesitate and went inside. It was Party time! The place was nice and the seats were comfortable. When it comes to rubber-necking, IIITians are a starved species. All they want is potential and potential was flowing like a river that night. Wherever the fagged out eyes could travel there was candy for the eyes. Open doors have the power to tempt even saints, let alone the crooks, and I need not explain this line. Then came the news that Parikshit and Chubbyshek had encountered Police on their way and a lack of driving license upon their person prevented them from coming. Damn! This was not so raven!

Anyways, the show had to go on and we continued. The food was good beyond our expectations and so was the ambience. I was struck speechless at the sight of three different flavors of Biryani while my buddy Abinash got lost in the Hyderabadi haleem. A ladle of Chicken Dahiwala was all we required and there it was. (Our vegetarian counterparts were not too happy with the resources at their disposal.) We ate and beheld and then ate and beheld again. Our eyes and tongues rolled in all directions as if they had been granted a license to utilize all the degrees of freedom. Soon we had satisfied our different appetites and I eased into the state where people are oblivious of everything else and take time out to relish their glory. I, and evidently most others were in this state when some bloke announced that our ship had been struck by an iceberg. While the hosts had assumed that the per head charges to avail the services of the buffet were 200 bucks, it turned out that on Weekends they were 350 bucks, not including the taxes. And instantly we could hear cries of pain and perpetual agony.

As it is done in times of National Emergencies, the wise heads huddled together and came up with a rescue plan which involved each of the party fellas to loosen 200 bucks from their wallets. There is a school of thought that the stomach is not just a digestive organ, it has a mind of its own. It is true. As soon as the news reached the general public, the craving for more food manifested itself and people jumped towards the fresh plates. This time the eating was more intense and like a school of piranhas that devours everything edible in its path, our champions came, saw and conquered. With lots of stuff at their disposal at no extra cost, people were trying out whatever they had fantasized but never tried (with food of course).Our little but nonchalant Data felt the urge to wash his hands with soft drinks and others followed suit. Meanwhile Addhyan Pandey (it’s a crime to separate the surname from the forename in this case) collected the generous contributions from the plundering pirates and Suprit kept a count of heads. After exhausting all fantasies and sudden n’ spontaneous n’ mischievous ideas, people realized that the place had to close down for the night, so leaving the guys with the money inside, marched to their chariots (yeah the blasted cabs) and stacked inside like hens (when they push against each other in the event of the butcher reaching for them in their cage for business).

The sleepy cab driver drove like wind in the night and in no time we were back to the college. What happened later is another story which I’ll tell some other time.

On my way to the room again(note this word) I remembered the saying “After the feasting comes the reckoning” and vowed to trust my instincts the next time onwards. I bet Sood would not doubt this decision of mine.

John Doe’s got a problem in Remembering Things

Yes it is true. Our good old, seemingly harmless and the very avuncular John Doe has a problem remembering things. And guess what, JD was the first to discover it too. It started with small issues, as forgetting where he kept his stuff. Then he started to forget things that others told him. And now the conditions deteriorated so much that he has started to forget names of people he once knew. I hope the condition doesn’t worsen lest one day he’ll stand in front of the mirror and say, “Nice to meet you”. However there is something very peculiar about his condition that is he only forgets things he doesn’t care about much. This would have controlled matters to some extent had he been a regular guy. But the fact that there are a lot many things he doesn’t care about has worsened his situation even more. I believe he needs professional assistance, but he doesn’t agree on consulting a professional.

            Once it so happened that he was home alone. And his distant relatives happened to be in town. As a matter of fact they came to visit JD’s place. He had once been to their place, but that was half a dozen years ago and he stood like a complete jerk staring at the lady at the door. He was perplexed, trying to remember where he had seen the couple, and in the mystified silence, he sucked big time. It took him a

hundred and ten seconds to realise he was supposed to let them in and not block the entrance. He asked them to come inside and kept asking himself who on earth they were. Once they had settled and aunty had finished the customary act of pulling cheeks, he fled from the scene and called mom, his data recovery software. It was a tough time for him to keep them entertained till his saviour mom arrived.

Recently, he received a call from a long separated friend. Since he had not changed his cell phone in years, it had the caller’s number, saved by the name of “Task Manager“. But the mystery was, who the hell Task manager was. And why such a technical name? However, being an engineering student, JD was good at “Troubleshooting“. So he pretended he didn’t have the number saved and asked who it was. But like a shrewd Virus, the caller escaped JD’s ploy by replying, ” Your good old buddy, the Task manager”. JD was tempted to ask “Who the f*** are you, fancy name?” but he didn’t. Anyways, JD realised his troubleshooting skills were no better than Windows Vista’s which always said, “Unable to fix the problem. Contact your Hardware Vendor“. JD could not guess who the analogous hardware vendor could be. So he was considering the option of referring to the FAQs instead, but he identified the high risk of embarrassment. So he chose to talk instead, pretending that he knew whom he was talking to. But after a half an hour of seemingly meaningless conversation he was frustrated at his pathetic memory. After killing two days trying to remember, he gave up, wanting to beat himself to death using a baseball bat. Later he even considered the idea of using a Firewall on his cell phone to block incoming calls from people with unrecognized Digital Signatures which could be a threat to his System Security. Nevertheless, he put Task Manager in the list of Quarantined objects.

And very recently JD has been receiving emails from one of his blasts from the pasts (I believe you are keeping up with the current teenage lingo, in case you aren’t, consult the Oxford). But as it is with girls, she insists on his figuring out who she is. I’d like to mention that JD has had a jolly good past and for a guy of his stature it sometimes gets really tough to remember the dramatis personae of every novel he reads. The girl says they met on a Friday and that he was wearing a grey chequered shirt and similar stuff. But he doesn’t even remember the shirt, let alone the girl. And he doesn’t wish to guess, for if he guesses wrong, any guy with brain in the right place would know what’d happen.

So he has been asking me what course of action he should follow. I believe he needs to execute Check Disk or even Defragment his hard drive before any Bad Sectors creep in. Before I can convince him to see a professional I’ve asked him to  eat sprouted almonds. And he’s jolly well doing that.

Engineers are NOT COOL

Its been a long harboured belief ( though I’d have used the term myth, I realise that the time is simply not ripe for that ) that Engineers ( I’m talking about those who get into the top colleges in the Nation, not just any Random person on earth who has gotten into any Engineering College ) are not fun loving people ( or in other words are nerds). They’re viewed by others as a different species altogether. That they’ve no sense of humour, that they’re book-wormish geek-like pain-to-be-with types who seldom have the time to say anything apart from polymorphism and recursion, that they’re pre-absorbed in wondering if there was another solution to the Tower Of Hanoi , that they don’t love parties in happening places , that they are short of confidence and still send friend requests to girls on Orkut, feigning insouciance, and that they’re uncool. For all people who have such RATIONAL beliefs , I’d really appreciate if someone came forward and explained to this humble and ignorant prospective engineer what according to them was the definition of a cool person.

Or let me make a wild guess : a cool person uses – in trend – words like wassup ,yo baby , stylo which elude all attempts at capture by those compiling a dictionary ; messes with the conventional ways of spelling english words by spelling my as ma and life as lyf , physics ( if at all he/she uses the vestigial word ) as fysix ; wears self designed apparel that defies the plain un-materialistic human comfort ; has piercings and tattoos in strange places ; dances in discos thrice a week ; drinks to the tune and smokes to the flow of the surging adrenaline ; misbehaves and calls it attitude ; moves around on modified sports bikes ; does many a thing beyond human understanding .
Well my apologies if I missed out something that should’ve been mentioned as part of the comprehensive definition. And I agree that engineers ( you know whom I’m talking about ) are uncool , for they can hardly meet the QUALIFICATIONS of a cool person , even if they fulfil some parametric requirements like drinking like a pro does ( but I’ve seen them lose their colour after a single shot though. See, they don’t practice enough .) So , on the basis of our definition , we conclude that engineers are UNCOOL . Fair enough. But it still remains a fact that engineers are gifted, specially in the areas of logical deduction and scientific thinking and that they are not afraid to contest any belief if they don’t believe in its authenticity. And the world bears a testimony of such people and their attempts to question even the most OBVIOUS statements. Time and again we’ve seen them rise from anonymity and challenge Gods of the modern times – Newton and Einstein – and then get lost in oblivion. They have their 15 months of fame and then years of degradation, which goes on to prove that even if Engineers are uncool, they are simply not ORTHODOX. And being a prospective Engineer, I am but no exception to the rule . At this point of time, I’ll not say that your definition of a cool person is flawed. I’d rather say that different people have different ways of defining words that are branded as being slang and no suitable meanings for which are found in any of the Dictionaries.

Well, Engineers are uncool if you go by the mythological definition. But I am UNORTHODOX and I choose to mould the definition to suit my needs. I believe that being UNORTHODOX is cool. I believe that challenging some law, knowing fully that your opinion will – more or less – be crushed in its infancy is super COOL. Standing up for whatever you believe in , even if no one else does , that is cool. Facing the dire realities of life ( or lyf or whatever ) and choosing to see them rather than shutting the innate perceptive abilities is COOL. Accepting your flaws and not trying to sweep them under the rug of nonchalance, that is cool. Humility is cool. I’m fine with it even if it shows a lack of the conventional attitude. Isn’t respecting everyone cool ? Wouldn’t it be cool if someone respected you ? I believe that profanity of language in an attempt to appear cool is highly UNCOOL. Richness of language is cool. I happened to be with some CONVENTIONALLY COOL people the other day. I was shocked to see one of them misspell “opportunity” and no one was able to locate the error even after my reprimand. Illiteracy is definately not cool. Literacy is cool. Wearing whatever you are comfortable in , even if it is not in fashion, is cool. I disagree that Engineers lack a sense of humour. Its just that people don’t understand their jokes when they say that ” the name of the Rock Band Infected Mushrooms is derived from the symptoms of a water borne disease prevalent in the Rain Forests of the equatorial region”. Intellectual humour is so Cool.

Engineers are deprived of the “Cool” tag because they are different. Being DIFFERENT is cool.Its true that they’ve strived hard to make it to a good college, and its also true that it requires some sacrifices and self-restraints on their part but what is not true is that they don’t have the necessary ingredient in them that others pursuing law or management or arts or say fashion designing or whatever possesess , that makes them cool. I believe that anyone on Earth can be cool and we ENGINEERS are no MARTIANS.