Taken from PC World Magazine, March 2011 Edition

Most of us love a good mystery, as long as we eventually find out who dunnit or, in the case of high-tech, how it’s done.  Ultimately, we’re looking for a resolution – something that ties up the loose ends so that we don’t have to waste time noodling over the unknown.

Some mysteries, though, have no neat answer.  Although verified by personal experience, these enigmas can’t be explained by physics, psychology, or even logic.  When faced with such digital brain-twisters, we can toss them off with a shrug – or better yet, we can codify these conundrums into a set of rules, along the lines of Murphy’s Law.

Here, Nine Regrettable Rules of High-Tech Happenstance.  Read ’em and weep.

1 – The likelyhood that any digital device will fail is directly proportional to your need for that device to work properly.  This is why screens go blank when you’re on deadline, and why unstoppable Windows Updates occur just as you’re about to shut down your PC.

2 – Your laptop will wait to die until just after your warranty for the system as expired.  The encouraging news here is that taking out an extended warranty of one year, for instance, will likely extend your machine’s life by exactly that length of time.

3 – Voicemail messages always break up and become unintelligible just as the caller is leaving his or her call-back number.  Note that this rule applies only to important calls that you absolutely need to return.

4 – “While supplies last” is a synonym for “until the guy right in front of you buys the last one”.  The same rule applies to online purchases, though you can’t actually see the person who clicked on that link for the $29 Blu-ray player nanoseconds before you did.

5 – Patch Tuesday (when Microsoft sends out fixes for the latest Windows problems) is invariably followed by “Frequent Rebooting, Gnashing of Teeth and Pounding Your Desk in Frustration Wednesday.”

6 – When you’re entering serial numbers or other tediously long character strings, you will type every zero as an uppercase O and every numeral one as a lowercase l.  And vice versa.

7 – When you finally get around to sending in your request for a rebate, you will be missing at least one piece of required documentation.  There’s a silver lining in this case: The manufacturer would probably have lost your mail-in form anyway.

8 – You know the next great version, with all the features you really want?  It won’t be released until right after you’ve bought the previous version.

9 – Corollary to Rule 8: If you decide to wait for that next great version, it will be delayed.  Probably for a long time.  Or maybe forever.