We apparently got tremendous value from our free burner service today - the last inspection tag on the furnace was from 1998, and it appears that was the last year it was actually serviced. According to the wife, the technician said he was surprised that the thing was working. He spent a couple of hours working on it, which I imagine was more than he planned.

And we've finally got a thermostat in place, so we can control what is hopefully the more efficiently-generated heat. The problem is that the wires were backwards, and given how some of the other stuff has gone, why wouldn't they be?