> you can certainly use metaprogramming here, but you could accomplish the
> same
> effect with far less code:

My issue is that I've got other methods in the class that use these
particular instance variables, and instead of refactoring all of them in
one fell swoop I'm trying to go in smaller chunks.  Mostly because I'm
working on the "production" system (long story), so if break anything I
need to be able to roll it back quickly.