S.E.P.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote about a race of aliens who sought a way to make thier ships invisible. In time, they found that the amount of energy required to render even a small object physically invisible was nearly infinite. Instead, they hit upon a simpler soloution and developed a device that did not affect the actual visibility of an object, but instead influenced the mind of the viewer, causing them to think that it was Somebody Else's Problem (SEP) and therefore blocking concious perception of the object. I could really use one of those.

I could use it to counteract another odd effect, the Murphy field. A Murphy field maps areas where Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong will) is more or less likely to apply. Pt Lepreau seems to posses a number of powerful Murphy fields, such as:

1. It broke and we have no spare parts.
2. The parts we need are not here/not documented so we know what to buy/supplied by a company that no longer exists.
3. It is clear what needs to be done but no one has any idea which process it falls under or which department is responsible.
4. The only person who understood the thing is retired/on vacation/on training out of town.

Okay, maybe the SEP generator would not directly counteract the Murphy field, but it would give the person using it and possibly the people in surrounding cubicles a couple of days of peace and quiet in which to sort out what to do while the management types think it is someone else's problem and is asking them about it instead, probably in a long, boring meeting. Make the physics of cubeland work for you!

Alright, enough insane rambling. In other news, today marks one year of Rantings of a Mad Engineer. Hooray!