flightpad.net

The Facebook staff are not without a sense of humor:

I just got word from Barnes and Noble that J. K. Rowling’s seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series is scheduled for release at 12:01am on July 21, 2007. Mark your calendars! You can pre-order it here: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

From the editors: In making the announcement, Lisa Holton, President of Scholastic Children’s Books said, “We are thrilled to announce the publication date of the seventh installment in this remarkable series. We join J.K. Rowling’s millions of readers — young and old, veterans and newcomers — in anticipating what lies ahead.”

So muggles, get your lightning bolt temporary tattoos ready - this is the last time you can really use them - and save the date July 21, 2007!

Among other things wrong with Telegraph Commons (dirty, noisy, mail delivery problems, bad security, issues take three weeks to get addressed, etc), the heater is really terrible. It is operated using steam that flows through pipes up to a radiator in each room. To activate my heater, I needed to pull a lever next to the heater to let the steam through. My landlord seems to prefer the term “red leveler:”

The heat is on a timer, so when it’s off, my room is about 62°, and when it’s on, my room is about 82°. This is not the worst of it. My R.A. (who was awesome, by the way) told me that it is normal for the heater to occasionally spew steam through a relief valve. That was an understatement. I came back from dinner one night to find a fountain of scalding hot water shooting out of the valve about four feet in the air. It was spraying my carpet, bed, printer, and various other nearby objects.

Now comes the really fun part. The red lever (seen above) is located underneath the heater, and far, far back behind my desk. By the time I was able to reach the lever, the valve had stopped spraying its geyser of boiling water, and I ended up burning my hand on the lever, which was very hot by this point. What good is a heater that can’t be shut off if it malfunctions? When the timer in the building finally shut off, I waited for the lever to cool down and I turned off the heater for good, then I asked to borrow a space heater from my R.A.

So long, Ol’ Faithful.