Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Monday, 21 January 2002

# 1:30 PM

I usually have dreams that are too incoherent to make weblog material, even if I remember them. Today, though, my subconscious decided to hand me a perfectly realized narrative fragment, illustrating what might have happened if the One Ring had been found by two Ankh-Morpork City Watch officers instead of Sméagol and Déagol. It went something like this:

"Oi, I found this ring, makes me invisible when I put it on."

"Magic ring. You don't wanna mess with magic rings. We'd better hang on to that till a wizard can come and look at it."

"I wonder what happens if I throw it inna fire, see?"

"You idiot, stop—dammit. Gimme them tongs."

"It's not hot at all... oh, lookit, writing."

"I cannot read the fiery letters."

"Yer right, we better get a wizard to come and look at this. Y'know any wizards?"

"There's that one in the gray beard and blue hat, comes by every now and then...what was his name? Mithrandir?"

I don't know why the one who speaks in dialect decided to throw the ring in the fire. Nor do I know what happens next, but I suspect the story ends a lot more peacefully for everyone involved. Well, except that now you have Ankh-Morpork inserted into Middle Earth, that could get messy.

# 3:45 AM

Called a salvage yard to see if they'd be interested in my radiators, but they said they had plenty right now. Still, that bodes well for eventually being able to get rid of them.

In the meantime, I've shoved them into a corner of the second floor hallway (at the bottom of the stairs to the roof) where they shouldn't be in the way, avoiding the whole question of how to get them down the stairs. I am still amazed at how heavy the damn things are. Anyone have a block and tackle I can borrow?

There's also the nagging question of what the landlord will think. Odds are they won't even notice, but perhaps it would be best to dump the radiators in the basement rather than selling them.

With a little WD-40 and a big honking wrench, it was easy to unscrew the union holding each radiator to its valve, but the valves themselves stubbornly refuse to come off the steam pipes. This is no big deal—even if I could get the valves off, it would not free up any significant amount of space. And right now the valves are preventing the apartment from being flooded with steam should the boiler suddenly start up (as if). My sense of aesthetics is offended, but I think my sense of aesthetics will just have to deal.

In other news, I got half the apartment cleaned (the easy half), and fixed a bunch of bugs in GNU C++ (the easy ones).