I'm going to pull a Ben

[airspirit]

I just moved yesterday and I have to wait until Friday until my cable internet is hooked up. You'll probably be hearing a little less from me since I'll only check in from work (and I've been one busy BOFH).

It's funny how cable availability was one of the requirements for my move ....

[Blackeagle]

Moving is a PITA. Best of luck with the move.

And if I were to move, cable would sure be one of the must haves to get me to move.

[bigben2k]

Lucky dog, at least you'll have a decent connection!

[trit187]

yeah moving really is a PITA, I recently moved and 2 1/2 weeks after having our stuff hauled off, it still hasn't arrived, and found out yeasterday it hadn't shipped yet, so I can expect 1-2 more weeks. thankfully I brought my computer with me,
on a side note, never check a computer on a plane, nomatter how well packaged. somehow the mounting bracket on my Graphics card got bent in and ripped off of the card along with the plastic clip, along with some other things... stupid office of homeland security (grumble grumble) and their searching of bags. thankfully the card still works, although has nothing holding it in.

good news, movies for $1 :-)

[airspirit]

Ugh, back at work and waiting for the hookup.

The story of the move is like this: I've been renting from this property management office for 3 years. During these three years I've been paying for a parking spot (in my lease) but I only get it if somebody else doesn't park there first. They refuse to tow vehicles out of our spots (it is clearly posted, and for us it is the only parking within a half mile), leaving us tenants who are paying for the spot screwed.

Well, after trying unsuccessfully for 3.5 hrs the other night to get a rig towed out of my spot, I finally decided to move. I told the property manager that they could either let me out of my lease or I'd sue for damages for three years x 365 days x $100 inconvenience fee per day that I've not had the guaranteed spot listed in my lease. They said they would see what they could do and they'd call back tomorrow, though it took me getting very nasty before they agreed to that.

The next day they called and said that I had one week to be out and they'd release me ... since I had the upper hand in this dispute I didn't HAVE to comply with their demands, but I figured it would be easiest. This is mid-month, and I was broke, so that posed a bit of a problem, but I managed to find a new (kick-ass) place that morning and sign a new lease.

This left me with the carpet in the living room, though: during one of my projects (any guesses?) I poured PVC glue on the carpet. Whoops. I figured about $250 to swap the living room carpet and we'd be good. Oh my GOD was I wrong.

They wanted me all of a sudden to swap all the carpet in the place. Of course, the carpet in the other rooms is thrashed (burn holes, peeling up at the edges, generally fscked) and the problems are noted in my damage walkthrough from when I moved in, but their opinion is that the carpet is in excellent shape. WTF? So in order to make everything match, they want ALL the carpet to match, so I can't just replace the living room carpet with IDENTICAL BUT BRAND NEW CARPET.

Also, to make matters worse, we had painted the apartment last year with their approval. They provided enough paint for all rooms except the computer room, so we never got to it. They consider that DAMAGES that we never painted that room. Granted, the walls are riddled with holes (again, listed on our check-in sheet), but it is THEIR fault that they didn't provide enough paint.

The solution came easily. I told them they could jump on my jibblies and that if I heard from the {enter choice words here} down there I would petition the court for a no-contact order. I found a carpet layer that will replace just the carpet in the living room (with the exact same carpet), and I used the last can of paint (half-full) and spread it as thin as I could over the back room. If they complain about the carpet and/or try to charge me for it I will sue since I caused no damages ... they just want free repairs at my expense. Further, they can't argue about the paint job since that apartment (even with the thinly painted room) has the best paint job in the complex by far. We moved everything out that first night (ohmigod did that suck) so my wife and I have been cleaning like a mofo since, so if I don't get my deposit back I WILL sue for refund, attorney fees, and damages from before. Fsck em. I have told the carpet layer to give me a call if they try to interfere at all, and I have a big sign painted on the old living room carpet saying: "DON'T RENT HERE! ASK ABOUT PARKING! TERRY IS A C*NT (hi Terry!)!" in bold tan caps ... just in case she shows the place while we're not there (they like illegally invading apartments ... I've considered putting the manager under citizens arrest at knife point for breaking and entering/criminally trespassing after I caught her doing that once before ... they have to give reasonable notice in order to legally enter the premises not that they give a damn).

This has been quite the harrowing experience, and I can't wait until I never have to deal with those bastards again.

[Joe]

Wow dude!!!

I have bad luck, but not that freaking bad!!! I had close to the same thing happen to me but when I was moving in. I moved in to find the place much worse than it looked when I checked it out earlier.

I complained and asked that repairs be made, they told me to leave, and refunded my deposit. All this 3 days before I was supposed to be out of one apartment and moved into the new one.

life sucked!

[airspirit]

This has given me an opportunity to experiment with airflow optimization for my system. I've always thought of my house as one large computer case, trying to tweak the airflow to get maximum cooling throughout the house. In a time where temps are regularly in the 90-100F range, this is doubly important.

I started out with a nice arrangement like the picture below (red = tower of doom, brown = desks) only to find that my CPU temps were flying into the 50-60C (!!!) range easily. It was a nice arrangement, but I think you all can see that all fresh air and exhaust air is independant of the stagnant air building (and cooking) around the computer stack.

[airspirit]

I rearranged the room as shown below last night. Due to problems with wiring not being able to easily follow the wall contours (and I hate those floor runners), I installed a wireless bridge device from my cable system in the living room to the center of the below computer island. All the wiring is centralized in the middle of the desks so it is ALL hidden, and is suprisingly organized. This makes it nice for network gaming as well, since my wife likes to peek if she can ... cheater! The only inconvenience is in swapping disks, though with two drive chambers open it is not that big of a deal. With this configuration, I am floating between 37-47C. That is a 13C difference just from room configuration. Keep this in mind when trying to figure out why your computer is getting too high of temps ... rooms need to flow just like computer cases.

[nicozeg]

Just remembered: Didnt you had all your old neightbors connected to the net throug your sever? I guess now there`s a lot of people missing you

[airspirit]

Damn straight, though I'm already being hit up by all the people in my new neighborhood. Half of the people that were on my service had moved, anyway, so it could have been worse.

[bigben2k]

Your misadventures are worse than mine!

Our property is new, but come to find out that it was previously used as a sales office in our subdivision (the double phone jacks labeled "modem" and "fax" were a dead giveaway). Now I'm guessing that they quit using it as an office some time ago, because there are ants everywhere, and I mean everywhere! (stomp! there goes another one.)

The house is a modular/pre-fab "thing", and obviously, it shifted throughout the past year, to the point where some doors don't close right, if at all.

But there's a nice warranty package that should take care of everything (the list is much longer).

Otherwise, I've got to deal with a septic system, keeping it fed with chlorine regularly (1 lb pucks per month, where a 10 lb bucket of pucks costs $54!), but it has the advantage of keeping the grass watered (if you want to call it grass!).

My watercooling experience is actually helping! I have to raise the sprinkler heads, because they got burried in the shifting dirt, so I'm going to use a PVC extension, as I found when looking for airtrap parts. No digging required.

Now I've got to get enough money together to finish this garage, add electrical wiring to it (it has NONE!) for a bunch of outlets, an AC plug, and some lighting. Then I can add a drill press, a lathe, a table saw, a router table, and the rest of my tools which I'll have shipped here from Canada.

[ezlid]

Originally posted by bigben2k

Otherwise, I've got to deal with a septic system, keeping it fed with chlorine regularly (1 lb pucks per month, where a 10 lb bucket of pucks costs $54!), but it has the advantage of keeping the grass watered (if you want to call it grass!).

Chlorine pucks sound like swimming pool chemicals. If you use chlorine in your septic system you are going to kill it. The little beasties in the septic tank make it work. You want to feed them not kill them. We always flushed a cake of yeast down a toilet once a month to reward them for a job well done and never had to pump out the septic tank. And we had 8 kids plus Mom and Dad usimg the facilities, plus showers and laundry. You better check on the use of chlorine tablets in your septic system.

Grass is always greener over a septic tank and leaching field. I wonder why? LOL

[Zogthetroll]

kinda off-topic, but what the heck. clorine isn't gonna harm a standard septic tank, reason being they don't have the helpfull bacteria that eat/break up solids in the system. and a standard septic tank needs to have chemicals added to it to kill off the really nasty bugs in human waste. now an aeration (aka biojet or similar) system has the helpful bacteria in it, these would benifit from yeast food, and these systems are the ones you need to be careful about using bleach in the washer. you may still need to add clorine to these systems depending on where it dumps to, but it'll be a seperate tank/compartment AFTER the main tank. anyway, my $0.02

[airspirit]

Picture of the new computer room (in front of the desks toward the camera is around 8ft of space). Like my fertility statue in the window?

[airspirit]

This is the already messy living room. Again, there is a ton of space toward the camera lying unseen:

[airspirit]

*edit* fscking mispost ... *grumble*

[airspirit]

Kitchen/laundry:

[airspirit]

Bridge from the street and stairs down to the garage. This was what finally sold me ... no more assholes sitting on my fscking porch drinking beer and rambling on about their imaginary love lives at 3AM ... or if there is it'll be easier to get them forcibly removed by the PD (or a machete, whichever is more convenient).

[bigben2k]

Originally posted by ezlid
Chlorine pucks sound like swimming pool chemicals. If you use chlorine in your septic system you are going to kill it. The little beasties in the septic tank make it work. You want to feed them not kill them. We always flushed a cake of yeast down a toilet once a month to reward them for a job well done and never had to pump out the septic tank. And we had 8 kids plus Mom and Dad usimg the facilities, plus showers and laundry. You better check on the use of chlorine tablets in your septic system.

Grass is always greener over a septic tank and leaching field. I wonder why? LOL

Actually, the chlorine pucks are specifically made for septic systems: in fact, using pool chlorine voids the warranty, and they can detect it very easily.

The way that the system works, is that it has three tanks: the first to capture solids, the second as an overflow, and the third, which gets the chlorine, cleans up the bacteria that is no longer needed, and can now spray the lawn without the smell.


Ok, back on topic: Nice place Airspirit! How long before you become the local ISP?

[airspirit]

I give it a month ... once one person signs up the deluge begins. With the LOS from my computer room, I potentially have around 50+ targets with LOS I could sign up ... I really don't want to be as big as I was previously, though. The support calls really were a pain in the ass for how little I was making.

Put it this way: if I even found out someone existed beyond them handing me their check and promptly leaving, it wasn't worth having that person on. A 20 minute support call translated into more value in time lost to me than their fee was worth, so in the end it kind of sucked, and you all know how many issues there are with wireless! I'll probably hook up a few neighbors and THAT'S IT. The income just isn't worth the aggravation. I'd rather work part time at McDonald's in my afternoons.