Partly Cloudy, 64°
In an effort to stabilize the increasingly volatile temperature swings in Barus and Holley lecture halls, Dean of Engineering Kelvin Farius announced yesterday plans to replace all of the building's thirty-five thermostats with Igor, the "Weather Monkey."
Igor will be stationed in a cage in Barus and Holley's service elevator, where he will be given a machine with various knobs, dials and buttons featuring pictures of wavy blue lines and jagged red lines, among other drawings of climate conditions. "With the thermostats you get an 'overshoot/undershoot' system, where the air conditioning will stay on until the temperature is actually five to seven degrees below the desired temperature," explained Farius. "At that point, the air conditioning will not, in fact, turn off, but will rather turn back on at quadruple speed, so that the temperature of the room will rapidly approach absolute zero. Then and only then, once a cryogenic equilibrium is achieved, will the heating process begin." He added, "But now the atmospheric conditions of the building are based on which button Igor decides to bang his head against."
Engineers across campus are rejoicing at the announcement of the new system. "Before Igor, I could never figure it out. Sometimes I expect it to be freezing, so I'll wear four pairs of long underwear under my parka, and I'll stow an electric blanket in my backpack just in case. But whenever I come prepared to lecture like that I end up walking into a 100 degree sauna and having to do an awkward, semi-erotic strip tease in front of everyone," commented Natasha Tu'11. "Now, if I come in and it's 90 degrees, I'm at least given hope by the fact that the air conditioning can kick in at any second if Igor merely throws some feces at the 'colder' dial."
However, Igor has caused some problems for the department of Engineering. "Granted, we probably shouldn't have included natural disaster buttons like 'Earthquake' or 'Tornado' on the weather machine, but we trusted Igor's better judgment," began Thermodynamics Professor Martin Kzymoyzinzayszyksky, inventor of the Weather o-matic. "And the 'Apocalyptic Meteor' button was probably just overkill on our part."
Recently, all classes have been postponed due to a blizzard watch, as Igor left a pile of banana peels on the snowflake knob. "You know, snow days are good and bad," began John Toosky '12. "Take yesterday. A few friends and I jacked some trays from the Ratty to go sledding in B&H 168, but before we could get started a tidal wave exploded through the doorway and then froze instantly, trapping my bros inside. I thought it was over at that point, because there was this nice rainbow and a cool summer breeze, but then I got struck by lightning as the hail started to pour out of the AC vents and the walls lit on fire. That's when the sandstorm started. The last thing I remember before passing out was a pit bull falling on my head. But on the upside, my midterm was canceled!" "Ah, the 'raining cats and dogs' button," mused Kzymoyzinzayszyksky. "I admit, that one was just me showing off."
