I have another question that relates to embedding.  I've got a few 
objects that were created in C and manipulated in ruby, but are not 
really variables in ruby.  Anyway, when ruby invokes it's garbage 
collector, it sees these objects with no ruby name associated with them 
and assumes they're just garbage.  Worse, these have objects pointers in 
them, and it's causing ruby to call rb_bug, which is exiting my program 
(at least that's what I think is causing the problem).  

Long story short:  Can I have a variable not registered with the garbage 
collector, then reregister it with the collector later (e.g. when I'm 
done with the object)?  I know I can call rb_global_variable to get 
register it, but is there something to get it out of the garbage 
collector?  Or increase the reference count?  Thanks.

-Jeff Ward