Worked on The Lawrentian last night, and I had to come in this afternoon for reasons that are still unclear. I ended up writing a filler piece reacting to our dorm's decision to ban smoking within 25 feet of the building.

And I copy-edited, of course. But since everyone went home early last night — due to a dramatic oversight, our layout editor is not a night person — the final proofs for most pages weren't ready to be checked before my 1 p.m. class.

I'm not quite sure where our layout editor went, but when I came in this morning the managing editor was attempting to layout the paper. She didn't know how to work the computer very well… and between her ignorance and my gypsy curse, we managed to crash the one computer that runs our layout program.

A few frantic phone calls, to Computer Services, to Ben, to Jonas, followed. Some problem with the printer seemed to have wrecked the computer, and it took us a few attempts to get all the info we needed on a zip disk in the five second window between when the computer booted up and when it froze.

Eventually, I had the common sense to tell the computer not to try to print anything, and everything was wonderful again. Though we still daren't print out proofs.

I don't quite know what to do with the managing editor. During today's crisis she excelled only at staring forlornly at the keyboard and fleeing to a chair across the room. She doesn't have the assertive personality you'd look for in an editor.

That's publicly. Offstage, she seems to have some hold on our Editor in Chief. Representative Man is much less tolerant of muckraking and negative journalism when she's around.

She's my coworker though, so I'll make this work. I've got my first Ethics class (with Jubb!) tomorrow afternoon, and I've got a bit of sleep to catch up on first.