Hey folks, meet Steve
We're pretty sick of talking about our other neighbours (who claim to be related to our Prime Minister by the way) so I thought I would introduce you to Steve. A few weeks after we moved into our new place the very nice couple that lived on the east side of the basement moved out and Steve moved in. Amira, jacklynz and I weren't happy about it at the time, mainly because we rented a non-smoking place and Steve smokes both tobacco and pot. A lot. Plus he drinks. A lot. His demeanor is a bit strange too, probably a side effect from years of hard drinking and smoking.
But we like Steve. After much convincing, Steve now does most of his smoking in the garage. He's also completely harmless and he's often a great source of entertainment. I could make an entire website with stories about Steve, but I think from time to time I'll just write a bit here about his latest antics.
For this introduction though, I think I'll talk about how overly-helpful Steve tries to be. His helpfulness isn't entirely saintly however, because it's connected to his constant schemes of trying to get his rent reduced, something which is amusing by itself because his rent is paid directly from a disability fund. Reducing his rent would give him absolutely zip in return. No matter how much ourselves, our landlord or his social worker tells him otherwise, he's convinced he'll end up with some cash in his pocket.
So he mows the lawn, digs in the garden, takes out the garbage, washes the pavement and often tries things moderately dangerous like cleaning the roof, rewiring the house with extension cords and climbing the trees to collect the plums and cherries.
He thought we might like the cherries and decided to skip part of the collection process by simply tossing them into our open windows directly from the tree. Having cherries whiz past your head in the middle of your home is rather strange and disorienting. We had guests over one of the times he did this and the whole thing was a matter of shaking heads and laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
Not long after that, he started washing cars. Sounds simple enough, but what I mean is he washes the cars of people who visit us, without warning and no matter what time they visit. Of course, if they park in front of the house the hose doesn't reach all the way around, so only half of the car gets washed. This brought more than a few chuckles from our friend Ryan who was here late one night after returning from a long road trip because his van left with one side dirty and the other clean.
Next time I talk about Steve, I'll mention his first experience with the Internet.
Update on our neighbours
There were so many people concerned about our situation that I thought it would be best to give an update on this topic...
Because of the difficulties with our neighbours, we had to alter our plans for a Gameslate BBQ and make it a dinner at a restaurant. It would have been cheaper and a lot more relaxed around our place, but we just wouldn't have been comfortable knowing that our neighbours planned to sabotage any social gathering of ours (yes, they were obnoxious enough to tell us so).
On the upside, our landlord has decided that enough is enough. Although he is deeply concerned about what our neighbours may do as acts of revenge, he realizes that we cannot take the sort of abuse that they have been sending our way. We understand his hesitation because it has been for that same reason that we have not called the police during some of the incidents. Aside from which, we have hoped that this situation would be resolved by ourselves and our landlord.
Unfortunately, he cannot evict them instantaneously. In B.C., just like most other places, the laws regarding tenancy are mostly designed to protect tenants from an unreasonable landlord and not the other way around. I've called the local tenancy officer and was told that they have no jurisdiction in disputes involving tenants vs. tenants. Everything must end up officially landlord vs. tenants or be an entirely different sort of matter involving the police. I've been told that spitting on your neighbours is most definitely harassment, but it's not an easy thing to prove.
We are behind our landlord 100%. He's a very reasonable man and as far as we can tell his biggest failing is poor screening of tenants. He also would prefer not to get involved in tenant's affairs, but in most cases that's a good thing.
Without arbitration (which would give them a better chance to fight it), the soonest that the landlord can evict them due to "unreasonable disturbance of other tenants" is the end of September. Notice can be given at any time but does not take effect until the end of the month, after which they have 30 days in which to comply.
Obviously he is concerned that things will get worse once he has given them the notice, so we've agreed with him that it should be given close to the end of August. After that, hopefully our neighbours will be too busy looking for a new place to bother us anymore.
Neighbour troubles
Back in March, we finally moved out of our small basement suite and into the main floor of a house on Bridgeport Road in Richmond (BC, Canada for those who are confusing it with the numerous other places of the same name). We understood that there would be a fair bit of noise, the house literally shakes as trucks drive by and planes fly past to the nearby airport, but given the location's convenience for my wife's daily commute, plus the much larger space, we imagined that we would be quite happy with it.
Indeed we have been happy, but someone else is not. On the west side of the basement lives a couple that at first we only considered quirky. The very first night that we stayed they complained of noise from us, which we thought must have been a simple misunderstanding since as far as we could tell we had been very quiet. Still, we took conscientious actions such as locking the cats up at night on the east side of the house, tip-toeing whenever we get up for a midnight snack and alerting our neighbours whenever we expect guests to come over.
After that first complaint, they seemed very civil and invited us into their apartment for us to hear the sounds. Just like upstairs, the basement shook whenever trucks drove by and as well you could in fact hear every footstep above. Nevertheless, having lived in a basement suite for so long ourselves, we know that such sounds are commonplace and considering the location... We assumed there would be a little tolerance on both sides.
Unfortunately, they have taken every possible sound personally. Despite our best efforts to stay silent, we have made some noise, just like any other family in their day to day lives might. And it's true that I'm often awake at night. However, there have been many nights when I've been quietly at my computer or even sound asleep when they have seen fit to pound on the walls and scream about the noise.
This past week, the situation has escalated. They have been rudely shouting on a continuous basis, claiming that we have "provoked them" into doing so. They insist that I in particular have some evil desire to disturb them. They are absolutely convinced that I do so on purpose. The truth is that while we've been occasionally exasperated with their anger and violent tempers, we have never once banged a wall or stomped on the floor as they claim.
It has gotten so personal that this morning when my wife was making her breakfast that they shouted such nasty phrases at her for doing so at 7:30am, which they consider unreasonable (they believe that "normal" people should not make noise after 10pm or before 10am). Amira ended up leaving for work visibly shaken and crying.
We have now made our third complaint to our landlord, but he is concerned about the difficulties in evicting people who are so paranoid to think that we are all out to get them. They also deny everything of course, claiming that we are too noisy for them to bear. They have made it very clear that if we try to have them evicted they will retaliate. They also mocked me when I said I was considering calling the police, claiming that they have friends in the police department and we have nothing to prove anyway.
Just an hour ago, jacklynz and I were taking the garbage out and our neighbours rushed out of their suite, threatening and insulting us and even spat on jacklynz before we could go back into our place.
Now we are concerned about our property stored in the crawlspace in the basement, and you can imagine what else we are worried about. We'll be leaving the webcam on in our place, considering it an added security caution.
Still, we would like to live in peace here, we love the place and our neighbourhood. If they don't leave (by one means or another) we will have to.
40gigs of toast
The revitalization of the Rog-Cam was cut short a bit on August 5th (as you might be witnessing from the timestamp of the latest "live" pic) when jacklynz' hard drive decided to give up the ghost. Since jacklynz is a Buddhist, the drive might have been reincarnated as a door stop if it wasn't for the fact that Maxtor is more likely to refurbish it (it's still on warranty).
We've been trying for the last few days to pull data off of the drive in a myriad of ways, but not much has been retrieved, which has left jacklynz more than a wee bit depressed at her lost data. Normally we practice almost paranoia-level backups, but we've been shy on CDRs and I was still in the process of reinstalling my machine, so my data was backed up on her machine rather than visa-versa.
Aside from personal emails and documents, jacklynz lost virtually all of her source files for the graphics she created for Gameslate and her own website.
Thankfully, she will not have to go without a working machine for long though, since we have excellent support from our PC supplier. Whomever said beware of Greeks bearing gifts was just an ungrateful Trojan. Hmmm, I couldn't resist looking it up, it was a priest of Poseidon named Laocoon. Well Laocoon, you obviously went to the wrong horse supplier, because I'm sure you would have gotten better support from a one of Alec's ancestors.
Regardless, "live" images will be returning post-haste.
Credit where credit is due
From time to time I receive a comment from someone about the "other pictures" in the Rog-Cam archives. Most webcams keep archives of pics captured by their cam, but our archive also includes images from additional sources.
Originally I had simply added childhood photos of myself & Amira because I felt the archive was too sparse and plain. Then once the archive had grown, it seemed silly to replace any of the existing content. After awhile it just became an archive of pictures ~related~ to the Rog-Cam, including photos from road trips, webcam shots from friends and digital camera snapshots.
Now that the archive has grown to a substantial size, it's about time that I give credit where credit is due as to where these images have come from. Out of the current 541 images:
- 348 of the images are from the Rog-Cam itself, in it's various incarnations.
- 109 were scanned from Amira's photographs.
- 42 are from Ryan's digital camera.
- 31 were scanned from childhood and personal photographs (Amira & Rog).
- 2 are collages from jacklynz.
- 2 are strange scans from misc. objects.
- 1 is an image drawn by Chris.
- 1 is a screenshot from PSO.
- 5 images simply give credits similar to this article.
At some point I'll create credits for each and every image in the archive (viewable by clicking on the image as it appears in the Flash version of the image refresher), but for now I hope this simple explanation and list will suffice.
