Since work is heavily occupying my time and energy this week, I will post Murphy’s Laws of the Lab, which I copied off of the bulletin board at work today.  (Hey, I don’t work hard all the time!)  These laws apply to any technical field.  I’m sure that some of you will be able to appreciate these little nuggets of truth!

1.  When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
 
2.  Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.
 
3.  Science is true; do not be misled by facts.
 
4.  Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
 
5.  If reproducibility of the test may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
 
6.  If a straight line graph is required, obtain only two data points.
 
7.  In any series of calculations, errors tend to occur at the opposite end at which you begin checking for errors.
 
8.  A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.
 
9.  When putting a file into the computer’s memory, remember where you put it.
 
10.  Never test for an error condition you don’t know how to handle.
 
11.  Hindsight is an exact science.
 
12.  Never create a problem for which you do not have the answer.
 
13.  You know you are in a crisis when you cannot say, “Let’s forget the whole thing.”
 
14.  The time it takes to rectify a situation is inversely proportional to the remaining time of your shift.
 
15.  Don’t let your supervisors know you’re better than they are.
 
16.  When the going get tough, everyone leaves.
 
17.  No what what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.
 
18.  Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.