Live in a house for a while and you get to know its quirks and idiosynchracies - especially if you are the one in charge of maintaining said house.  I've owned my house for 4+ years now.  Early on, I learned that it's not a good idea to use the microwave and the toaster or the microwave and the tea kettle at the same time.  The circuit breaker doesn't like that.

Today, I learned that the heating system is crap.  By that I mean that it works like it's supposed to work, it's just not very good.  My choices seem to be:  a) accepting the fact that the second floor is going to be colder than the first floor; b) turning up the heat to a ridiculous level so that some of that heat will make it to the second floor.  With my budget in mind, I choose a).

I also learned that steam heat eats away glass.  The handyman who explained the heat situation also gave the furnace the once over, and I asked him to clean out the sight glass because it had a lot of dirt on the inside of the tube.  He took out the tube and showed me the difference in thickness between the top end and the bottom end - the bottom end being much thinner.  So, he replaced the tube before it got any thinner and started leaking.

Incidentally, one of the first things I learned when I bought my house is that it's good to have a handyman.