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A housemate broke his leg on vacation which is now in a cast.  This has led to him receiving the moniker of “thumper” based on the noise created as he tries to remain ambulatory.  But there’s was a bit of a mystery; sometimes instead of regular thumping, there was a few thumps followed by a long pause followed by a thump late at night.  The mystery was resolved today when I went to bed late and witnessed the housemate trying to convince Max to move out of the hallway before he gave up, wound up, and jumped over him.

Good dog.

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While our tenants are theoretically renters we’ve very much taken a “you break it you bought it” attitude to home repairs.  One accidentally flushed a toilet bowl freshener which stopped up the toilet in ways that polyurethane foam couldn’t.  He attacked it for several hours with a combination of a plunger, a toilet snake, a trash bag, and a beer can (?) and I thought he was victorious.  Based on much loud cursing, a little sobbing, and a sticky note that said “DO NOT USE” affixed to the toilet I guess he wasn’t.

A day later, inspiration apparently struck as I was sitting at my computer and heard him yell “aha!” at 2 AM.  There was a flurry of activity that ended with what sounded like a shower and him returning to bed.  His triumph was confirmed by a new stick it note: “USE!!!”  The previous note had been moved to a roll of paper towels that were… browned.

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My tenant’s girlfriend’s computer lit on fire and suffered a rather severe hard drive crash.  He asked me to look at it telling me the drive held important stuff and I started running drive recovery.  The progress was glacial but I bore through knowing “it was important”.  I recovered the first set of data which yielded a collection of emails in txt-speak about concert tickets.  My resolve waned.  I kept it spinning for a day or two more seeing it’s estimated completion time was around Candlemas thinking it’d magically speed up.  The final straw was when files for WinAntiVirus 2009 (a virus program) and I snapped.  This computer was dead, it deserved to die, the hard drive was simply the device who decided to end itself.

After seeing its pain, I’m thinking of having a new mission in life: create something to cause hard failures in PCs and become the Kevorkian of computers.

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My tenant’s girlfriend’s computer lit on fire and suffered a rather severe hard drive crash.  He asked me to look at it telling me the drive held important stuff and I started running drive recovery.  The progress was glacial but I bore through knowing “it was important”.  I recovered the first set of data which yielded a collection of emails in txt-speak about concert tickets.  My resolve waned.  I kept it spinning for a day or two more seeing it’s estimated completion time was around Candlemas thinking it’d magically speed up.  The final straw was when files for WinAntiVirus 2009 (a virus program) and I snapped.  This computer was dead, it deserved to die, the hard drive was simply the device who decided to end itself.

After seeing its pain, I’m thinking of having a new mission in life: create something to cause hard failures in PCs and become the Kevorkian of computers.

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For the first time in a while, one of our tenants was just sitting in the kitchen watching television.  Not moving tons of freight in the darkness of night or smuggling diamonds but just sitting there.  So I pounced:

Me: What do you do for fun?
Him: Well.  I enjoy time with friends, and dancing, and skiing, and horseback riding, and snorkeling, and kissing a beautiful woman, and dirt biking, and motocross, and camping, and slip n’ slides, yes, a good slip and slide, and jai alai, and motor boating, and exploring caves, and imported beer.
Me: Wow, you’re interests are quite varied.
Him: I am.

He later told me he was just listing things happening in the stream of commercials he’d been watching.  Touche, sir, touche.

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A tenant had a friend that stayed for the night who wasn’t probably used to other people in her near acquaintance.  The door to my brother’s former room opened and the guest began petting my dog, Max and uttering traditional dog baby talk.  She suddenly stopped, and mildly stunned faced panned through the door gap to look up and see me sitting at my desk mercing bitchs.  The door closed quickly.  Moments later, the door opened and she walked to the rest room wearing a grey t-shirt held to her knees with a force of determination that’d make most bull riders jealous.  Normally I have to open my mouth to make people feel awkward.