One Land O' Lakes employee and two consultants were killed today when the server that powers the corporation's instant messaging system exploded at the IS facilities in Arden Hills, Minn. FBI and local officials looking into the blast believe the

Some experts say the company should have been aware that a software patch was available due to similar incidents at Cleveland's OM Group(OMG) Inc. and in the cyber café at the World Travel Fair (WTF) in South Korea last year.

trouble began when two consultants were called in to enable the logging features of the server.

System Analyst II Jeff Miller was getting the consultants coffee when the explosion occurred. "That could have been me," reacted a shaken Miller. Miller says the IS department received a memo from the legal department last week requesting that the use of certain words be logged and tracked.

"We called the consultants in and after two billable hours of shooting the shit, they showed us which checkbox to check in the software to start logging what we wanted to. I walked out to get them more coffee and that's when I heard it."

The company had apparently decided to start tracking phrases to make sure no corporate secrets were being leaked. Unfortunately, the list included "LOL" the traditional abbreviation for Land O' Lakes, as well as the chat shorthand for "laugh out loud". Experts say the server probably exploded because the hard drives filled incredibly quickly causing the computer to "go crazy", or more technically, "crap out".

"It's just bad luck that the one thing that people type in chat more than anything else was something management wanted to track," notes Miller. "And it was even more unfortunate that there was such a funny joke going around today involving Clinton, Bush and fellatio. I'm sure that didn't help."

Company officials will not release the names of the victims until their families have been informed. A company spokesperson noted that while the company is trying to notify the families there will be some delay because notification will have to be done through the "infinitely slower", old-fashioned method of email since the chat server was ruined in the tragedy.