Neighbor Story and Other Updates

My girlfriend and I live in an old business storefront right near the downtown area of the town. There are two other units in the building, one that is the same size as ours right next door, and a very small one room studio above that. The guy that owns the building owns a ton of real estate and a pretty big sports store that supplies a good amount of the Chicagoland area with team shirts.

When we moved in, we met the guy next door, Jack. He worked for the landlord, maintaining a few of his properties. In exchange for this, he lived next door for free and received 400 dollars a week.

We noticed right away that Jack did not seem to do much work. He's a 55 year old former everything, construction/carpenter/pipe/etc. worker. Sometime in August we called the landlord because the screens Jack was supposed to put up in our place were not up. We found out Jack was fired and would be moving out shortly. Then Jack disappeared for a few weeks. Apparently Jack went on a coke binge and sold all of his stuff and was now in rehab.

A few weeks later he was back and has been back since. The landlord won't return calls and Jack keeps saying he's suing him because he did a lot more work for him than he should have. Whatever.

So last week I see Jack outside, by the unfinished basement that is used for storage for the units. It's about4 decently sized rooms filled with this and that. We don't store much down there.

He tells me he's getting DSL and he's fixing his phone line so he doesn't have to pay extra installation charges. He says Wednesday (yesterday) that ATT is coming to set up his DSL.

He also tells me he's cleaned up some of the random junk that was in the basement (appears to be true).

That night (the tilt night) I lost connection during those last 2 games. The connection has randomly come in and out since then, and I cannot play poker. I looked at our connection wires downstairs, there are 4, 3 on one side of a splitter, 1 on another. 2 of the wires go into our place, the other 2 disappear towards his place. One of these goes towards our electrical box (I'm guessing that's the main connection, I couldn't get all the way back there because I couldn't find the light) and the other goes right up to the side of his place and disappears into the wall. This is right where he "cleaned up" the basement the other night.

So I refrained from questioning a drug addict about this, and we called Comcast, our cable service provider. They said our connection was not stable and they would come out Friday, in between 8am-8pm. Nice window.

My girlfriend also called the real estate business owner who helped us find the place (she set us up with this lady that does rentals for her, nice people). She got in touch with the owner of our place and said that he was very surprised that Jack still lived here and he was going to be getting the police to throw him out soon. This remains to be seen, the guy that lives above Jack is a very nice man, owns a sign business, he talked to the owner of our units off and on in the last month and made him aware that Jack still lives here.

The point of all this bs is that none of this had much to do with me until the internet fiasco. Now it affects me. I'm staying away from that side of the property until Comcast comes tomorrow and I hope that it's just some connection trouble that is easily fixed, and not him stealing our internet. If it is, he owes me 69 dollars, as per those two disconnection losses in the 33s the other night. I'll let him off the hook for me not being able to play for 2 days, I'm a nice guy like that.

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The website guy is MIA again. Just when I email him a proposition, how convenient. I really don't want to have to drive an hour each way to find this guy, but I may have to soon. It's pissing me off more and more each day, a total lack of respect/professionalism on his part. I've called, emailed and waited for his AIM sn to be online, but nothing is doing.

I didn't get to do my daily walking yesterday, but the two days before I walked 2-3 miles each day. I'm going to keep doing this and probably increase it to 4-5 miles soon.

Yesterday my buddy and I made another beer. We didn't start until 1030-11 so we were up until around 3am with it. We changed some ingredients and are going to add a little coffee to the beer in 3-4 days when we start our 2nd ferment.

We're also going to brew another beer Saturday or Sunday and probably use some molasses in it. We have to be careful not to use too much, but one of our favorite beers uses a bit of molasses and tastes delicious. Both of our beers are dark beers, the second being a little lighter in all regards, but nonetheless is also a very solid stout. If we improve upon the last beer we will be very happy, as that beer was very good.

I'm going to go for a walk now, hopefully try to play a few games on Pokerstars later (their disconnection policy favors shitty connections) when one of 2 people I trust on my account are on and can take over for me if I disconnect. The last 24 hours it seems I disconnect about once every 2-3 hours, so it should be ok if somebody is on to take over for me (on Pokerstars though, FTP kills you too quickly).

BR Same