Dark clouds, silver linings
Originally published at Chrisgill.net. Please leave any comments there.
What a week it’s been! I’ve promised to post something about this for those who’ve asked, since I’ve been telling the story over and over again. Why, you ask, am I living the back room of my parent’s house? Ah, now therein lies a tale.
When I moved into my place in Arlington back in 2004, it seemed like a great deal. A big place, fairly good location, and utilities included. It’s a basement in a house, which didn’t seem problematic at the time. When I moved in, I was provided with a cable modem for internet, which worked great for a while. The power connector on the modem was flaky, though, and over time it got worse. I wound up replacing it with one of my own ($30 at Best Buy) and again proceeded without any trouble. Then I decided to move my desk into a different room, and the modem went with it. Trouble.
The cable wiring in the apartment wasn’t so much “wiring” as it was “a coax cable running around the baseboard”. The actual length of the run was far longer than the straight-line distance would be, which degraded a signal already being split eight ways to various parts of the house. Problematic, but not a show stopper. A bidirectional power booster ($20 at Radio Shack) fixed the problem, and improved my TV signal to boot.
About two months later, the owner decided to sign up for some crazy Comcast wireless deal. I don’t know the details of it, but she wanted me to start using that instead…problematic since there’s no wireless in my desktop, and it would be troublesome for things I do between my machines, like roaming profiles. (Yes, I’m a geek.) My impression is that the comcast wireless is really just an AP hooked up to the cable line. The real kicker is that, for whatever reason, Comcast decided that there were too many modems on the line. Now, this had never been an issue before - remember that there were two modems when I moved in, one for me and one for the owner. Now, though, Comcast wanted an extra $45/mo for an additional modem. In the interests of expedient resolution, I said I’d pay for that. The $45 was tacked onto my rent, and things seemed fine.
Fine until Friday, that is. I came home from work to discover I had no internet, not a good thing when doing research for a paper. All the devices were working, though, so I went to the back storage room to check out the signal booster. Unplugged. No big deal, I assumed. Probably got knocked out while something was being moved. I plugged it back in and got back to work. I was out part of Saturday, ready to do further school work Sunday morning. When I woke up Sunday morning, I discovered that once again my internet access was out. This time, not only was the booster unplugged, but entirely missing, with the coax hanging on the floor. Highly unlikely this was an accident.
Admittedly a bit upset, I went upstairs to talk to the owner. The response I got was bitter and nasty. “What do you want? Don’t talk to me, go away!” Couldn’t even get a word in edgewise. I went back to my apartment. Now, the thing you have to know is that I was already planning to move out April 1st. There had been past friction over my guests, who while sometimes animated are hardly the crazy shrieking lunatic class. The owner complained about our noise level, and became more intrusive and exasperating about it. I have little patience for such things, and by this time had already planned to move, already told her I was moving, and already found a new place.
About 15 minutes after being told to “Go away”, she called my cell phone and explained that she had been quite upset the night before because her own internet wasn’t working. Apparently, I was taking up all the space, because, remember, the internet’s not a big truck. She then explained she hand’t had working internet for months - news to me - and didn’t know what the hell the booster box was and where it had come from. I recall mentioning it to her when I got it, but it was long enough ago that that may actually be true. (The kicker here is that she allegedly works in IT security for DHS). The general tone was quite hysterical, and included such phrases as “What do you think you’re doing?” and “Just leave today”. Pointing out that I had, in fact, paid for the service she was now complaining about didn’t seem to matter.
Well, I’d had it. Really, seriously had it. A few quick calls got me set, and I decided to move out then and there. She’d offered to pay me to do so, prorating back the rest of March’s rent, and there was no way I could get work done without Internet access. Unlike many of my peers, I actually like working from the comfort of my home. Fran helped get me a line on a storage locker, and I consulted my folks briefly, and then went to talk to her.
Maybe the meds had kicked in, but she was far calmer and more concilliatory than a half hour before. “Maybe we can work this out.” I wasn’t having any of it, and said in no uncertain terms “I’m leaving today.” Further calls rounded up a bunch more people, who helped me finish packing and move things to the storage locker. They were all lifesavers, and deserve mention here:
Kristine, Fran, Steve, Tom, Kim, Genty, Alex, Rebecca, Cassia, Neil, and my father, Richard.
It took us about five hours to get done, but everything’s now in a storage locker off the freeway and I’m camping out at my folk’s place. Somewhat to my surprise, the owner not only wrote me checks for the unused portion of my rent and my security deposit, but they cleared too. It’s a significant chunk of change, enough to cover my remaining moving expenses and have some left to pay off the rest of my credit cards. The silver lining isn’t only financial, though. To veer into sappiness for a moment, it’s comforting and reassuring to know I have friends good enough to help out in a pinch like this. It was last minute, disrupted a lot of plans, and was hardly an “easy” or “fun” kind of favor, but they worked hard and got it done.
After it was all over, and a thorough shower, I did a little research. I am now almost certain that my apartment was, in fact, an illegal dwelling. Consider: no separate electric meter. No separate address, everything was delivered to the main house. And, you know, the building permit. Note the message from Zoning down towards the bottom. Thankfully, Arlington County makes it easy to do one’s civic duty, here.
Everything’s set to move into the new place, run by a local property company that actually seems to care about following the law. The apartment’s nice, if a bit more expensive, and closer to the Clarendon area and school, useful for the time I’m still there. And then I can focus on finishing the semester.