The reason I like programming computers, see, is because my ability to get the job done is rarely related to the size of my ass.

I've been crawling around in fine, silty dust under my house all morning, making my way around the foot and a half of clearance the foundation graciously allows me. I'm moving a cable plug from one wall to another -- we swapped sides with the sofa -- and it's ugly, dirty, messy, awful work.

It's not so much the sweat turning the dust to mud or the thin coating of black death that my lungs are getting that bother me, so much as the fact that every time I have to crawl over a drainage pipe or under a water uptake, my ass gets in the way. I worm my chest through a too small space, pull myself along with my arms and... Damn.

This sort of thing never happens when I'm programming. I just walk down into the code, peeling back layer after layer, until I'm where I can fix the problem. Panting and out of breath, my butt wedged between a pipe and a supporting beam, I can't help but wish that reality worked the same way. Helicopters would lift the house off the foundation, and half the flooring would roll away, letting me drill a quick hole for the cable without even getting my knees dirty. I'd punch a rectangle out of the wall for the junction box and loop the wire through just as the house settled back down. Problem solved.

But instead, a spider crawls across my face. The physical world sucks.