You are in an open field west of a big white house…

This could be good for all sorts of time waste: a PHP version of Zork. Actually, judging from the leaflet in the mailbox (you did open mailbox and take leaflet, didn’t you?), it’s a port of Dungeon, the predecessor to Zork, but who’s splitting hairs? As long as it has grues, it’s all good.

See also my previous mini-post about an implementation of Zork (and other Infocom games) over AIM. Judging from the comment thread, the bots are still a-runnin’.

Progress report: no radiators; livable master

Last week initiated the second half of our first major systems overhaul project on the house. We had completed our AC work with two working cooling zones; last week work started on the heating side with the removal of our old steam radiators and the demolition of the big steam pipes throughout the house, wherever they were visible. Our HVAC contractor did a great job removing almost all vestiges of the radiators with minimal damage to walls, floors, and ceilings.

The contractors deposited the radiators and steam pipes in the bottom of a eight-yard roll-off dumpster, which I then filled about halfway to the top with miscellaneous debris from the garage and the storage space under the stairs, including a rusted solid reel lawnmower and lawn spreader, a manual snowplow, four rusted apart metal lawn chairs, fifty-year-old trim, thirty-year-old spare shingles from the previous roof, broken storm windows (which are going to be replaced during the next major project), and all kinds of other odds and ends. Heap strong back, heap sore back.

The next step in that process will be the installation of the new boiler and connecting it to the radiant heating coils in the blowers. That project is slated for two weeks from now, so no exciting machine-room pix today.

Next: the bedroom. While I mucked out our storage areas, Lisa started painting our bedroom. This was a relief because we finally got rid of the bland cream color that was previously everywhere in the house, but it was also necessary thanks to our wall-opening escapades. I helped her finish that work on Saturday. The room is now a cool blue-grey called Yarmouth Blue, and looks much nicer.

On Sunday, we finally figured out how to rearrange our space to make room for more storage. We have had our eyes, like Aaron and Jeannie, on PAX wardrobes from Ikea. We have very limited closet space and desperately need to get some more room in a hurry; only problem was, with our cool sloping rooflines (visible in some of the photos from the beginnning of our AC installation), we didn’t have enough room to get the full 78 inches of the wardrobes in without standing the wardrobes in the middle of the floor. Fortunately, once the radiator was gone from the room, it suddenly became apparent where we should move the bed to gain the extra headroom. Bottom line, our wardrobes should be on the way shortly.

And the work continues… as always…