Hi, everybody.  My name's Andrew J. Solberg.  Glad to jingle the little
bell.  Gimme a bear claw.

I'm a construction contractor in Houston, Texas -- "The Land That Culture
Forgot".  I'm your standard, typical big guy in workboots.  Hey, what the
hell is this: decaf??

I have a story to tell you.  It is totally true.  It involves people who
build things, and how stupid they can be.

I was at the office on Friday when a co-worker and I realized we were
sweltering.  Neither of us knew where the damned thermostat was, so we
set out to try and find it.  It evolved into a grand quest on epic scale.

A little background on my office: it used to be two buildings, but somehow,
possibly through plate tectonics, they smashed into each other and became
one.  For those of you who know buildings, this is usually not a good thing
because different buildings of different constructions shift differently
with time, so there's going to be a lot of stress and problems where the
buildings join together.  At our office, we have had a lot of leaks where
the two edifices join together; there's always some kind of patching going
on to keep everything from falling apart.  This makes no sense, of course;
we're constructors, so we should bloody well construct us a new office!
That's not going to happen, though.  "Grinnell -- We're Cheap!"

We started looking for the thermostat.  We looked through all of the
corridors and electrical closets first; then we scoped out the workrooms
and mechanical rooms; then the offices; and finally the restrooms,
storerooms, and other assorted spaces.  Nothing.  Nada.  No niente.

"There does not," I informed my co-worker, "seem to be a thermostat."

"Odd," replied he, "since we have this lovely air conditioning unit.  How,
pray tell, is it controlled?"

"Telepathy?"

We weren't going to sit around thinking "Be cooler!" all afternoon, so we
tried to find another employee with some seniority who might be able to
steer us towards the thermo.  We dredged up Earl from his office.

"Earl!"

"Yes?"

"Where's the damned thermostat?"

"We have a thermostat?"

"Hell, Earl, we have an air conditioner!  It comes on every now and then,
like during leap years...."

"Oh, yeah.  Well, I'm not sure."

"....how long have you been here, Earl?"

"About thirty-one years."

"Have you ever, in that time, regulated your personal environment?"

".....um, no."

"I see.  Thank you for your time and trouble."

This avenue of inquiry having been shut down indefinitely for repairs and
resurfacing, we decided to get technical.  "We're engineers, goddamnit!"
We started at the A/C unit, a monster sitting eight feet off the ground
out in the warehouse.  We got a couple of ladders with stingers and climbed
up there with flashlights.

"I think I found a panel," said my co-worker.  I looked; sure enough, there
was a panel for regulating air control.  However, it was about twelve feet
off the ground.  There had to be a more convenient way of making yourself
comfortable.  We kept poking around.

Eventually we found a couple of leads heading out of the control unit and
through a wall.  Now, I don't know about any of you, but I friggin' HATE
mysteries.  I'm willing to do a great many stupid things to avoid not
knowing something.  And so it was that I began sliding along the top of
air ducts above the suspended ceiling of our office, trying to track
down where the wires led.

After an hour of sliding, bumping, and cursing, I found the terminus of
the wires.  Sure enough, they fed directly into a thermostat, which I
set to a comfortable seventy-five degrees.  Too bad it took so much
effort.

You see, about five years ago the join between the two halves of the offices
widened about six inches, and there was a flood.  The whole office got
soaked.  There was considerable construction performed at the time --
a lot of slap-dash, haphazard stuff to just plug the leaks and keep the
office from breaking in half.

In so doing, the ingenius carpenters framed up the thermostat.

I kid you not.  The thermostat was hidden in a little enclosure that was
built around a structural column that was hastily erected to keep the
roof from falling in.  There was no access to the thermostat by any means
other than crawling above the ceiling, as I had done.

The thing that amazes me most is that employees of my company have 
suffered through having the thermostat up high during the hot Texas
summer months for five years, and never did a goddamned thing about it.

This concludes my tale of daring, action, and romance in the rough-and-
tumble world of construction.

Yeah, top it off, willya?