The Unspeakable Law

"The Unspeakable Law"
(one of Murphy's Laws)

If it's good, it goes away.
If it's bad, it happens.

After being so impressed with USB2 and how a USB2 socket is analogous to a power socket -- just plug in and it works.

I've got lots of USB2 sockets. Today I found that none of them worked. I didn't realize that all of them were broken because my mouse was working. Oops. It's got a USB-PS2 adaptor.

After trying the usual tricks, I came up in Safe Mode and looked at the Device Manager for USB. It showed nothing wrong. But, then again, it showed a lot of duplication. So I threw caution to the wind and deleted duplicates. When I rebooted, everything was beautiful again.

In troubleshooting, crawling around on the floor, I noticed that the USB cables are mostly nondescript black. So I decided to use my Dymo label maker and label the plugs. Of course, the first label came out on my photo printer, even though that isn't an option of the Dymo program. I turned off the photo printer and tried again. No label. I had a choice of printers: Dymo and Dymo (copy). I tried the other one and it worked!

When you go to the bother to label cables, sometimes you make some decisions about what gets plugged in where. For some reason, I was one socket short on the back side of my PC. So I added a USB2 hub for the slower stuff. Now I have 6 free sockets on the front of my PC and plugged in behind are cables for:

1. PDA
2. Graphics Tablet
3. X-Keys programmable keyboard
4. X-10 remote control computer
5. 250 Gb Archive external drive
6. 250 Gb Music external drive
7. An open case with power supply and USB-to-IDE converter for old drives
8. Scanner
9. Photo printer
10. Dymo label maker printer

The thumb drives and my camera flash card reader plug into the front.

I just looked at my framed Data General ad from the 70's. It shows an upraised fist and the caption is "Power To The Programmer". Amen.