It has not been a day since I felt I was not going to post anything for a while and it happens....The urge to put these words down.....The topic that I am going to be talking today has been widely discussed and researched all over and is quite famous....and I am an absolute believer in the concept...Most of the contents I write here are borrowed from Wikipedia....blended with my experiences.
After I started my Job in Baltimore, I had an official sponsored trip to San Francisco. Some of my Colleagues came along too and the trip was touted to be a fun trip (with some learning here and there of course ;-))....It was like a dream come true for me...I had always wanted to visit the West Coast and thought it was never going to happen in the near Future.....We arrived there and had an accomodation at Hyatt Regency (which I cannot afford in a life time). The meeting was there for about 4 days. It went off very well....Different cuisines for different parts of the day....Shopping and Sight seeing were amongst the top in our Agenda...of Course the meeting was the Top from the last ;-). Finally the day came when we had to leave....We attended a lil bit of the meeting...got off early did some sight seeing with a friend and got ready to leave. We were supposed to take a train from near the Hotel to go to the airport and we had to leave by the 8:00 PM bus to catch our Flight....We just had about 15 minutes to get to the train station.
10 Minutes before the train
It was just about 10 minutes for the train to come when we got our tickets....and when I opened my Wallet...I realized my credit card was missing....I was totally taken aback and I was very sure that the Lady in the Gift store (From where I'd got some post cards) tricked me into it and I was standing there my hands tied. My friend talked some sense into me and made me get my ticket so that we do not miss the train. I got my ticket and she got her ticket....When we had to enter into the boarding region we had to insert our ticket and I realized that my ticket was missing too. That was it....I was totally numb and started looking for it searching everywhere but it was nowhere to be found...
5 Minutes before the train
It was just 5 minutes and I was still standing there dumbfounded...I was so shocked and surprised as to how everything can go wrong all at once....and my friend forced me to get another ticket lest we should miss the train and I totally blacked out...I did not know how to use to ticket machine too....It was like I was in an alien land trying to figure out what was going on with me. The only thing that was running on my mind was "Ok Fine you lost the credit card...but how can you lose the ticket you got just a couple of minutes back....Woow it is indeed a great achievement to unearth a successful fool like you who can lose everything with such great ease". I was torn between guilt and achievement (for being a fool....Can you believe that??? :O)
3 Minutes before the Train
My friend put her ticket in...the door opened and she got on the other side....She knew I was too shocked to do anything and put my ticket immediately after she got out....By the time I went the door closed...It is open only for few seconds....and I did not know what to do...She was hurrying me up and was sure that we were going to miss the train and the flight and everything...I tried putting it again but it would not open as it was already registered and you cannot use a registered ticket to go through the gate again....I was again shocked and stood there like a statue still thinking about...how I can lose all material things so successfully.
1.5 minutes before the Train
My friend opened the Emergency gate as no one was watching and let me in....We shouldn't have had any problems using it as I had a valid ticket...but I wasn't able to think....And finally I was on the other side and had a small surge of hope that we may catch the train after all....I did not know that my suitcase had a long handle and was using a small strap to drag it. The strap got twisted and I was running and both me and my luggage was down with a thud....
60 seconds before the Train
I bucked up myself immediately and started running again...I had to go a whole strech and climb down some stairs to get to the boarding platform....
And the train arrives
And I just got down from the stairs and boarded the train...It was a Red Eye flight and I was totally numb throughout the journey....except that I made a call to the credit card company and made sure they cancelled it immediately.....Whew....It was a Nightmarish End to a beautiful Trip.
Now the moral of the story...."Whatever can go wrong will go wrong and in the worst possible time in the worst possible way"...Yes it is the Murphy's Law that I am talking about....and my experience of it.
I was reading through Murphy's law today in wikipedia and started laughing as I could soooo relate to it. One of the law of natures in addition to Laws of inertias and Laws of Thermodynamics (Are there any more Laws)and yeah Law of Conservation of Energy (Hmmm that's all I remember as important....Any additions to this are welcome)is the Law of Murphy.....Although it states that "If something can go Wrong it will", The essence of it says that nothing in this world is fool proof. The more you try to make something Fool-Proof....The better fools it will make...Fools that can get past the proof and still make mistakes....As the saying goes Idiots / Fools are very smart.....Mostly anti-Murphy design consists of the so called "defensive designs" where the mistakes of the fools are anticipated and made sure that those are accounted for...But there is one thing fundamentally wrong here.....How can a designer think like a fool and anticipate a Fool's mistake? If he does he is only bound to make mistakes with the design itself.....If a designer thinks in a fool's perspective how can he account for all those mistakes that he is capable of doing himself? The Verdict: Designers are not smart enough to figure out how things can go wrong.....Fools are too good to figure out how things can go right.
Now to talk about Murphy's Field....It bears some resemblence with the Magnetic Field that has been widely talked about in Physics.....It is a field that is defined as the one under whose influence everything might go wrong if they will.
Magnet emanates magnetic field. A ferromagnet exhibits spontaneous magnetization which acts as a Magnet under the influence of a Magnet.
I am a Murphet (Ok that was something I made up ;))when I influence everything to go wrong around me if they can (Not all the times....sometime I am a Non-Murpet too). And other times I am a ferromurphic material when I come under the influence of the Murphic field and everything around me goes wrong at the worst possible time in the worst possible way.
Finally to conclude....by being my optimistic self....."Everything can go wrong if it will"....Murphy's Law is no exception. (i.e The conviction that "Everything that can go wrong will definitely go wrong" will also go wrong if it can go wrong).
Monday, June 23, 2008
Oooooooooooh I'm Loving it
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6 comments:
Good one Priti. What interests me is the consciousness of our 'self' when we commit mistakes. It is because I strongly believe that 'wrong things' don't happen but we do 'wrong things'. When you do things, we are in a conscious state of mind which is very much YOU and once you come to know that you have made the mistake/ some wrong thing happens (if you think other way) it becomes pseudo-consciousness. I think the pseudo-consciousness lives in you and hits you in a big time.
Hi preti,
Your posts are really awesome. Y can't you write a novel. Because you have excellent capacity of good writting.
>>How can a designer think like fool?
I do no agree with you here. A designer should accomodate the possible mistakes of his user. May be he does not need to enumerate all the mistakes, but there can be some other people who can do this job. Take any tools you have and the best usable tools will accomodate the users mistake.
Ramki - Your Reply in the next post :)
Dharsini - Thanks for dropping by
Arunachalam - "Take any tools you have and the best usable tools will accomodate the users mistake."
"You" must be living in an "Ideal" world for this to happen...NO HUman is perfect and hence no material things made by Humans are perfect either....Loopholes are there everywhere....Ignorance is bliss when "best usable tools" work right 99.99% of the time....But they always have a failure rate....Any Product that is manufactured for that matter....In case of software bug fixes keep coming all the time and endless versions of the same softwares keep coming over and over again.....and I am sure there is some failure rate for every product that comes out of the Industry.
//A designer should accomodate the possible mistakes of his user.//
How can a designer anticipate mistakes of his users when the user itself has no idea what mistakes can be made....Mistakes are accidents and possible accidents can be guessed due to the nature of the product but not all.....as there might be accidents that need not necessarily concern the product itself but also its reaction with surroundings and its use....a union of which is impossible to gather as a set and much less account for......Thanks for dropping by.
Nice correlation. On reading this, I remember the one incident happened to me. Start of this year, Myself & my friend went to New jersey for different reason.But we booked the ticket together.As per our plan, I need to come from Hartford to Newark to catch the return flight where as she was in new jersey.
I never travelled here (US) before in Train,so planned to take train from Hartford to Newark. I made sure that I would reach the newark three hours before the flight. The train arrived per the schedule,I boarded the train in the morning- Informed my friend in Newark that I will be there in the Terminal by 10AM. She also said - she will be there on that time. After one hour of travel,the train stopped , thought it is waiting for signal.Twenty minutes after that stop, Manager in the Train - announced there is Engine failure. On hearing, I was shocked.Also, they said - they will transfer from one train to another which is about to arrive to that place in another 30 mins. I was bit happy - Immed called my friend and informed the status.She said - "No problem, I will get the Boarding Pass.Be Cool,nothing going to happen".
But the Train took extra 30 mins to reach there . I was nervous and worried - my friend would be tensed becuase of me. They predicted the Transfer would take another 30 .But it took, one hour to transfer everyone.After Boarding , there was announcement- Those who are going to airport,please be attention.The train will reach only there by 12:20 ( My flight was scheduled at 12:35 ). On hearing this, I was panicked,I called my friend-infomed her - Don't wait for me - proceed to flight - if I didn't call you by 12:00. After the train reached New york - it was well ahead of time.So thought to inform my friend - took the mobile .I got tensed again,there was Zero signal...I asked the Lady next to me - How long it will take to reach newark from there.On seeing me,she understood that I was in urgent.She calmed down me - and made a positive reply that I will be there by 12:10.
Ok..I made my mind not to worry.Because I told my friend not to wait ,if i didn't call her 12:00.The train arrived 12:10. I tried to call her and check where she is?..She answered " Hey...Jai ,where are you ..I am waiting for you .Please come near the TSA".
I was completely mood swing..I rushed to that place 12:20,on seeing her I was relieved.Unnecessarily - I put her in trouble.
I asked her sorry.She made me comfortable by saying " I thought to miss this flight if you didn't come on time ".
- from 9:15 - 12:20 , the worst time I ever had . Whatever I thought,it went opposite.
I was just about to tell my boss that we've successfully qualified a huge set of changes .. 24 hours ahead of the deadline to have them ready .. but I decided to take a small break and happened to read this post. While I am doing that, the developer I am working with on this project - Tim - walks in and says 'we have a huge problem' and explains what we'd missed and what went wrong. As I need to wait for a bit for Tim to address the problem in his code, before I can work on qualifying the new fixes .. I resume reading the rest of the post and .. bang it hits me .. the 'Priti Effect' also exhibits 'ferromurphic characteristics' and that's probably what happened! :)
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