The adventurer walks across the room. He carefully navigates the pitfalls and gaping chasms inherent to an indigenous shrine before finally arriving at his destination. A glass crystal floats next to the wall. He removes his gravity-defying sand and weighs it out to make the exchange. Not enough sand! The temperature drops to absolute zero! All molecules freeze and the adventurer is the victim of eternity.
It seems like this could be a scene out of the latest ""Indiana Jones"" movie, which hits theaters in summer 2008. This would be so, except for a number of reasons: 1) This scene took place in my apartment; and 2) This scene took place in my apartment.
To the best of my knowledge, ""dumpy college student's room with a distinct, yet indescribable odor"" is not on the location scouting list for Steven Spielberg's latest.
Instead, this scene occurred because my apartment has messed-up heating, as I found out last week. Sure, it wasn't an arctic chill, and I'm from Minnesota, a place that actually gets cold, but I turned the heat on anyway. After all, the reason I chose this apartment was because of the giant ""Free Heat!!"" banner on the outside of the building.
It's times like this I realize I hate banners.
While the heat may technically be free, it doesn't work. Or more precisely, it might work, I just have no clue how to operate it. It's not a standard everyone-has-it-type thermometer where you say, ""I want it this temp, so I'll turn the dial to it! Yay heat!"" That would be easy and understandable. There is no dial or anything, it's simply a glass tube stuck to the wall.
I had no idea how to operate this so-called ""temperature sensor,"" I just knew it really did look like something Indiana Jones might covet. So I donned my roommate's fedora and was ready to kick some Nazi butt. And by Nazi butt, I mean ""warm up my slightly chilled toes.""
Much like the maligned adventurer at the start of this tale, merely turning on the heat did not do anything. In fact, the ""heat"" made the room colder, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what I desired (I wanted heat).
Since it wasn't working, I tried the standard operating procedure for fixing broken stuff—I turned it off and on several times with no luck. After pondering matters more, I tried switching it off and on again. It still didn't work.
I needed to think, WWID—what would Indy do when faced with such great life-threatening odds? He'd catch dysentery and end up just shooting the swordsmen, that's what he'd do.
How could I shoot the swordsman though? If I put a bullet hole in my thermostat, it would probably break, which could affect my security deposit, most likely in a negative fashion.
Finally, it hit me, I knew how to solve my problems and save my life. I simply looked at the extended forecast (caught dysentery), saw the cold spell was ending in a couple days and tossed on a sweatshirt (shot the swordsmen). That is WWID.
