What are you, people? On dope?

I made more progress on the office this weekend.

On Saturday, I installed 7 mini blinds, rehung 2 doors, removed the front stairway handrail, cut the rear stairway handrail to length including the wraparounds, marked and installed the hangers for the rear stairway handrail and took pictures of the office.

Jeffrey also helped me identify a burst pipe from the cold snap last week. The burst pipe is behind a wall on the first floor (possibly behind the tub on the second floor) which means I get to cut open the drywall we just installed. Jeffrey and I also picked up some wood at the apartment for the risers.

On Sunday, It was really nice and sunny, so I could work outside and remove the balusters from the rear outside stairwell. The guard rail going down the stairs has to be 42″. I’m not sure if this is for commercial or residential property, but the inspector said it needed to be 42″. I cut the risers to length for the 14 steps, cut and reinstalled a longer post, and reinstalled the railing.

Fun, fun, fun.

I told someone I thought the DJIA would fall below 8000 and hit 7000 at which point I’d buy stocks. It seems that 8000 is a magical number that whenver the DJIA hits it, the market rebounds. I’m betting people have an trigger to buy based on this.

Anyway, massive job cuts: Caterpillar (20,000), Boeing (10,000), Pfizer (8,900), Sprint (8,000), Home Depot(7,000), ING (7,000), IBM (5,000), Texas Instruments (3,500), Corning (3,500), SAP(3,000), Target (1,500).

According to this CNN article, more than 200,000 job cuts have been announced so far this year, according to company reports. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.

And jobs in India at IBM went from 6,000 to 80,000.