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I have been nagging the landlord/maintenance people about this for about 2 weeks now. The first time I complained about it was after I came home from teaching in the evening and it was over 80F in my apartment (on an over 90F day). The next day, they came by and it was about 70F outside, so I wasn’t even using the HVAC system. I’m sure the guy went, “feels cold to me.” Which is true, on a cool day, it works “fine.”

However, I finally got them to come on a hot day, while I was home. The man measured the air coming out of the vent to be only 11F colder than the air at the return duct. I asked him what was the determination of whether the unit was “working” according to him, and he said, “I’d like to see at least 15F.” Of course, I looked it up and in reality it should be even more like 17-20F. Nevertheless, he agreed that there was a problem and that he would take care of it this week.

At the time, he said, “it isn’t that bad in here,” because it was around 76F on a 90F day. However, I pointed out to him that since I know it can’t keep up, overnight I have been running the A/C down to around 70F or less to get ahead. What particularly irks me is that their slowness in taking care of this directly affects how expensive my electric bill will be this month (and the coming months).

I continue to wait and bake.

UPDATE (06/26/09):

The fan died yesterday, and the compressor died too. But, they didn’t come until it was already 4pm.. and they said, “this is the best we can do:”

These two units could barely make my bedroom pleasant to be in, with the sun down. I’m supposed to survive two more 90F+ days with these..

Something about lightning still fascinates me.. I spent some time last night taking photos of the storm from my veranda. Sadly, I kept over-exposing a number of excellent looking lightning strikes.. by the time I got things all figured out, I had only captured two strikes that were not particularly amazing. *sigh*

I enjoyed the time just sitting outside in a chair at night too.

“Sorry ” is what the post-it read, which was affixed to the driver side door.

I suspect this to be the escalation of what was my one of my neighbors’ drunken friends throwing wine onto my apartment door. I confronted them about it and told them to clean it up, but they gave me every excuse they could come up with about how it wasn’t them, wasn’t one of their friends, must’ve been some random stranger, ok-maybe it was our friend who had wine, but it’s still not our problem.. I ended up cleaning it myself.

However on the 11th of April, I contacted the local police with a noise complaint, which almost escalated into their door being kicked down by BPD. Ultimately they got fined for the noise, were given a slap on the wrist for the bowl of marijuana, and BPD didn’t bother to ascertain anyone’s age (except for whoever claimed to be the renter of the apartment).. Go BPD!

As far as I can tell, the scratch was placed while I was out riding my bike during the day on this Saturday. The car beside mine had not come or gone for some time and still has not, so I find it difficult to come up with any other scenario for how this occurred other than deliberately. I also find the post-it note quite peculiar because of the smiley face; I can only assume it was to rub it in my face.

I’d like to open the floor to suggestions of what to do, thanks.