More cleanup, and a new problem.  Notable:

Object.serialize_header():  Stopped stuffing the version string into this
notion of "a header".  Couldn't see any reason for it, and it was
surprising.

ClientCache.invalidate():  Added some asserts to clarify intended
preconditions.  Alas, my guess that it was intended that the passed-in
tid always be greater than the current tid turned out to trigger
errors.  This gets complicated, and hasn't been resolved yet.  The
problem is that the passed-in tid can be (in fact, always is) None
during cache verification.  The code here *really* doesn't seem to
be expecting that, and the on-disk cache file is clearly left in a
wrong state (if we repopulated the cache from the disk file, the
object would not look invalidated any more, it would look current).
Dumped in a giant stack trace so I don't forget this; sent email to
Jeremy asking if he recalls what the real intent was.