response 25 of 129:

Jun 21 20:23 UTC 1995

Far out -- thanks a bunch!  That's wonderful news.

response 27 of 129:

Jun 21 21:14 UTC 1995

<robh jumps up and down and shouts>

So now that this problem is dealt with, what's the current
situation with the landlord(s)?

response 29 of 129:

Jun 21 21:52 UTC 1995

Nope, that pretty much covered what I wanted to know.  Thanks!

response 31 of 129:

Jun 22 06:36 UTC 1995

Logic prevailed...amazing. Thank you, everyone that worked on it.

response 33 of 129:

Jun 22 12:12 UTC 1995

By the way -- if you have cable TV and live in Ann Arbor, you can see the
zoning board meeting on Community Access TV.  I've no idea when it will be
televised.  I think you can call up CATV and request showings of the things
you want to see.  Grex is second out of I'd guess maybe 5 hearings at the
meeting.

response 35 of 129:

Nov 15 05:47 UTC 1995

We have a real problem with our landlord.

About a week ago, some clown sent a piece of e-mail that upset the secret
service enough that they wanted to locate the person who sent it.  Normally
if something like that happens, it is considered system security information,
so the board and staff are informed about it, and we don't mention it in
public on-line, but in this case it is very relevant to what I'm explaining
here, so I think it is worth mentioning it.  The secret service doesn't visit
very often.

But last week they showed up at the building where Grex lives and talked to one
of our landlords, who lives there.  She reports that they talked to her for an
hour and a half.  I have no idea what they talked about.  Then they called
Steve Weiss, who was able to give them the information about where to find
the person who sent the e-mail.  Steve Andre also talked to them.  They went
on their way, following up on locating the person who sent the mail.

The landlord, however, was quite understandably upset about the visit.  She
called my answering machine and left a long message saying that the daily
aggravation of having Grex in her house was too stressful, and definitely
not worth the $12.50 a month that is her half of the rent Grex pays.  She
said she wants Grex out, and she will do whatever she has to in order to
accomplish that, up to and including selling the house.  I'm a bit unclear
about what kind of daily aggravation Grex causes her.  I sympathize with her
being upset about being visited by the secret service -- that's got to be
creepy as hell.

I tried calling her back, at 8:10pm.  The landlord's daughter informed me that
her mom was in bed.  I asked for the mom to call me back, and heard the
daughter relay the message to the mother.  It's been a few days, and nobody
has called back.

This evening, Grex crashed because someone turned off Grex's circuit breaker.
We had had previous problems with someone turning off Grex's circuit breaker,
possibly accidentally, so we had put a clamp on the breaker to prevent people
from turning it off.  It could still flip by itself in case of a power
overload, but human fingers couldn't flip it.  This evening, the clamp was
completely gone.  Someone would have had to use a screwdriver to remove it.
The circuit breaker was in the off position, which means that a human being
had flipped it.  When circuit breakers trip by themselves, they end up in a
nearly-on position.  This circuit breaker was in the completely-off position.

I'm at a loss for what to do now.

response 37 of 129:

Nov 15 06:33 UTC 1995

  Leave some plant fertilizer and a can of gas in the basement, and tell
the SS how the landlord is the only one who could have sent the message?
(Just kidding, Secret Service people!  {:-)
 
  Serious problem though.  I really think Grex ought to move; there have
been regular hassles there, and each time, we decide "this (building a
new room, dealing with damaged tools, getting a longer lease, passing the
zoning board, etc.) will be the last hurdle."  Many of the problems relate
to the one co-landlord who doesn't want us there.  I say cut losses.
 
  I wonder if IC-Net or ITI might be able to find us some cheap accessible
space when IC-Net moves to ITI?  Then again, ITI probably wouldn't relish
handing out 10 or so building keys for 24-hour access.  Contacting ISPs or
the buildings they're located in might be a good approach to trying to get
a combined deal on below-market rent and Internet access.
 
  If we move, it would be great to do while Mich Bell's phone installs are
still free...anybody know if that deal's still on, and if so, for how long?

response 39 of 129:

Nov 15 07:09 UTC 1995

(Re 37: I *think* the free phone installation deal only runs 'til tomorrow,
November 15.  But Ameritech runs that deal from time to time, repeatedly.)

response 41 of 129:

Nov 15 09:17 UTC 1995

1.) Grex does not create day-to-day hassles.
2.) There are occaisional hassles that are almost entirely the invention
    of this one landlord, not us.
3.) Our primary landlord bought this house as a rental investment property
    I believe. The other landlord then decided to move in and set up house.
     She seems to see us as being "in her house", when in fact, she is a
    tenant just like us.
4.) We have not violated any terms of our lease. Shutting off our power is
    vandalism and we need to start being agressive about not tolerating 

    such behaviour.
5.) Rob, as someone who has invested alot of his own time and sweat into
    getting the current room setup and configured, I do NOT appreciate
    your, and others, suggestions that we simply "cut our losses". What
    losses are you cutting Rob? I'm sorry to be picking on you in
    particular, because several other people have made the same suggestion
    in the past, but I'll listen to such sugestions when they are made by
    people who have actually worked on the dungeon, not just people who
    read about the problems and then want to run away from the trouble.
    Myself and several other staffers have a significant amount of work
    invested in that room and I'm not going to walk away from it just because
    some jerk landlord thinks she can flaunt the law.
6.) Some of this is our own damn fault. We have continually bent over to 
    appease our landlards, in instance after instance where *we* were the
    ones who had been wronged.

response 43 of 129:

Nov 15 10:51 UTC 1995

We're there legally, and we should not have to put up with
this nonsense.  Call the police, and if that doesn't work
call a lawyer.  (If my landlord shut off my power because
I was annoying her, I wouldn't even wait ten seconds to
let the police know.)

response 45 of 129:

Nov 15 14:15 UTC 1995

This arrangement started in good faith.  We were (are) a poor
organization that needed cheap housing.  We are paying $25 a
month for rent.  Would you keep Grex in your basement and
tolerate Grex related traffic at any hour for
$25 a month?  Our landlord was willing to do so.  But if
things have changed I don't feel we have a real big right to
get all hostile about it.  We knew we were getting close to
free rent here and with that comes the risk that the landlord
will continue to feel benevolent.

The landlord could serve us notice at any time that our lease
will not be extended past next September (or was it October).
That would give us about a year to find a suitable space and
not have to panic.  If it were up to me at this point I'd 
approach the landlords and try to negotiate a peaceful
coexistence for the remainder of our lease and start planning
a move.

If tempers flare and the hostility escalates we are asking
for a situation requiring legal representation and possibly
even involving law suits.  Grex can't afford to get into
that kind of a mess, despite all the blood and sweat.

response 47 of 129:

Nov 15 16:54 UTC 1995

Mary, if we had recieved the original room-so-cheap-it's-almost-free, that
we originally rented, that all we had to do was clean, hook up some phones
and move into, I wouldn't be feeling this way.

But that's not what we got, that room disappeared before we could get it.
The room we did get, had to be paid for with a signifiucant anmount of
Grex money and grex staf time, time that could have been better used
on other projects. When you total all the bills, we probably put more than
$400 of our own money into that room, not counting the phone wiring, which
we'd take with us. So, we didn't really get the "cheap housing" we thought
we were getting.

As for "being in someone's house", we were orriginally led to believe that
we would be simply another tenant in a small apartment building. Apparently,
one of the landlords had different ideas about the purpose of this structure
and we are dealing with the fallout of inter-landlord strife.
(BTW Mary, if you'll recall I *did* offer, over 2 years ago, to provide
 grex a home in my basement for the same $25 a month that we're paying now.)

Rob, yes, I wanted to make a point and sometimes that requires strong
language. As I said, I wasn't picking on you in particular, you were just
the 4th or 5th person on the camel's back.

Valerie, a landlord-tenant relationship is to some degree *always* 
advesarial. Mostly, landlords are reasonable people, but if you deal with
a landlord problem by moving, you will spend your life moving.

response 49 of 129:

Nov 15 18:12 UTC 1995

I think Jan summed up a lot of my feelings. We are in the right on this
issue, and have been forced to pay and do far more than is our
fair share. If we do have to move, I would like to see some kind of a
judgement rendered against this particular landlord to recover some of the
expenses we incured rebuilding that room and to pay the costs of moving.

We acted in good faith and put all that work into the room because we had
a reasonable expectation that we would be there for a long enough time to
recoup that expense. What we're seeing now is "Thanks for all the time, work,
and moeny, now get lost, it's mine."