I hate computers so #$*&ing much. I mean, I despise them. My entire life revolves around them, so when they misbehave, I get really mad, like when I lose 45 minutes to an hour of work because Blogger saves via the internet, so even frequent saving doesn't help. I just wrote a nice long column about the goings-on here at work today, hit save, and poof! Network gets a little sketchy, entire column now gone.

For a change, this isn't Blogger's fault, but CSC's, though Blogger going down has caused similar problems in the past. Can anyone say, "Switching to Movable Type?"

Okay, had to get that out, sorry. I guess I'll just be typing my column again. Here goes:

The building I work in is old. I mean, really old. Almost as old as your mom. It was built in the 19th century as part of a vulcanized rubber plant, and was renovated in 2000 to hold my group of extremely sarcastic UNIX engineers. (For those of you who know Newark fairly well, yes, it's in the same complex as Timothy's, there on White Clay Creek. It's the really skeevy building with nothing on the outside to indicate what it is.)

Being a 19th century structure, much of the pre-renovation interior was wood, particularly the ceiling supports. It's a 5 story building, so the first floor supports are holding up the four floors above us. We are fans of this, since it means our workday doesn't get interrupted by a violent and painful death; our employer is also a fan because of the obvious insurance implications of workers dying on-the-job, even if the reduction in headcount would help with budget issues. Unfortunately, many of the supports were somewhat rotten or termite infested, so they replaced the bad ones with what I assume to be solid steel support beams, the outside of which are drywalled into a square shape roughly the same size as the old wooden supports (about one-foot-square). The wooden supports that were deemed to be in fine shape were left in place.

They are now discovering that some of the wood beams they left in place are not as strong as they had originally assumed, and are replacing them. This sets the stage for this week. They're replacing one of the beams on my floor, about 30 feet from my desk, so many of my coworkers had to be moved to other cubicles. Thursday morning, workers arrived, and in the space of one day:

• Disassembled and removed any cubicles that were in the way.
• Removed the ceiling tiles and all their supports.
• Constructed a large aluminum frame around the work area.
• Hung drywall on the frame to keep dust in the work area and away from the lungs of fragile UNIX Engineers.
• Attached a door to the room they'd built.

It really was impressive to see. I'd be typing away at the computer, probably writing a nonsensical column about writers' block, and I'd glance around; hey, they're taking down the ceiling. I'd go back to typing, and turn around again, and Hey, they've drywalled an entire room off, what the hell? It was neat. So today, I imagine they began work on installing temporary supports so they could saw out the old wooden beam and put in a nice tempered steel I-beam.

Around 10am, I'm typing away happily, listening to some ABBA mp3s and periodically going to the International Male webpage to admire underwear, when I hear a bunch of banging noises, as if the fellows behind The Dry Wall are shoeing horses. Normally, I'm all for a game o' horseshoes (that was for you, DeeDee), but hearing repetitive metal banging is not fun when you're trying to pretend to work. After a minute or so, it stopped, and I thought little more of it . . .

. . . Until around 11am, when I heard a very loud CRASH-MANGLE-SPLASH noise. I leapt up to see what had happened, and noticed that one of the walls surrounding the work area was missing. Well, okay, not missing, exactly, but piled in a crumpled heap on the floor. It seems that one of the workers had been up on a ladder and somehow fallen through the wall, taking the ladder with him. I can only assume no one was hurt, because whoever fell through it was up and back inside the wall by the time I could see what had happened, and I heard none of the horrific screaming usually indicative of the terrible demise of a small Hispanic drywall-hanger with a long piece of aluminum stabbed through his pancreas.

It scared the bejesus out of most of us. I haven't been able to work since. Not that I would be anyway, when I could be looking at this.