Wikipedia: Murphy's Law - “If there's more than one possible outcome of a job or task, and one of those outcomes will result in disaster or an undesirable consequence, then somebody will do it that way."
My life is an air tight proof of Murphy's Law:
1) My work computer, a Dell D600, is assembled with a defective hard disk. Dell support does a mass set of hard disk replacements at work. The Dell technician inadvertently picked up another hard disk from the defective stack and placed it into my computer. A couple weeks later in Texas City my hard disk fails along with some other components. I then discovered that my backup image was locked to the CPU ID, Motherboard GUID and MAC address so there was no dice recovering the backup onto another D600.
2) I was given a shiny new Dell D610 since I refused to accept a Frankenstein D600 rebuild that looked like an abused junker with 250,000+ miles. The Dell D610 served me well until I was in St. Paul Park (over a year later) and the hard disk failed. Local support ran diagnostics and the verdict was that the D610 had a hard disk from a bad batch and it was supposed to be replaced prior to me receiving this notebook.
3) I pushed for a Dell D620 to replace the D610 since it was no longer sold by Dell. The D620 included much improved hardware but was still no speed demon. The D620’s hard disk failed while I was in Catlettsburg (two months later). I was prepared and knew that I had a backup (that was verified) and would just install it on a new hard disk. Symantec Livestate Recovery verified my backups successfully but for some reason they were unable to be restored by me or local support. Time to install everything from scratch yet again.
4) I told the story of the major Dell failures but I also had to replace batteries, power cords, and DVD drives that failed. I have concluded that Dells are cheap and have slid substantially in product quality. Even the new D620 power supply has been cheapened to no longer include a ground prong versus the D600 and D610 power supplies which have three power prongs.
5) Air conditioning slowly stops working at home. It was almost September and I convinced Mandy that we should wait until spring to get a Freon recharge. September and October were the hottest months on record.
6) My lawn mower’s blade adapter plate broke and the lawn mower spits its blade out the back. Luckily, the plastic mat that hangs down took the blunt of the impact. I installed a new blade adapter plate and made sure to torque it up. I verified that the blade assembly was tight before mowing the next couple times. Well the blade adapter plate failed again and fortunately the blade was stopped by the much diminished plastic mat. I decided to borrow a friend’s lawnmower and it is working great.
7) I took a nasty crash water skiing. The back of my head hit my ski at 32MPH and cut it severely. My lungs burned from the wind being knocked out of me due to the impact. The water surrounding me was so red that it resembled a shark attack. Five large staples and a couple hours later I was attending the Indiana INT banquet. Later, I learned I qualified for the INT US Championship waterski tournament in Louisiana.
8) Mandy and I decided to sell the Audi since repair costs were getting to be painful. It was a difficult decision since the Audi was such a fun to drive and comfortable sedan. We also decided to sell our Infiniti since it had 215,000+ miles and were worried about expensive repairs. We decided to keep our low mileage Jeep. Shortly thereafter our Jeep had some very expensive transmission problems.
9) We purchased a diesel Jetta which achieves 45-50MPG. Mandy killed the clutch and fly wheel while learning to drive the manual Jetta. Between the timing belt kit, clutch kit, flywheel, and other preventive maintenance we have had some significant start up costs with this vehicle. It is still a great vehicle and every time I drive 700+ miles between fill ups I am very satisfied.
10) While the Jetta was in the shop for repairs and the Infiniti was for sale, the Jeep failed stranding Mandy. Fortunately, the Infiniti had not yet sold since it was our only working set of wheels. We drove the Infiniti to a wedding I was in and on lots of other excursions. It now has 220,000+ miles and we are thinking about keeping it.
11) The Jeep’s cam shaft sensor was replaced and it is running well again. With all the towing needed for our car issues Mandy and I both depleted all the free tows included in the AAA preferred plan.
12) Bills begin arriving for all the car repairs. All sorts of bills associated with my waterskiing accident start arriving since the hospital’s scanner didn’t read my insurance plan number correctly off my insurance card. A couple of phone calls later and the huge medical bills aren’t due in 15 days. You have to love Murphy’s Law!