I'm writing to report why I haven't been as active on this site and as supportive as I had been months ago. We had a fire in our condo, and although the fire started 7 doors down, it affected our place the worst. See, we live 2nd from the end, and there's a thing called "flashback" (I believe that's what they call it). Basically, when the fire moves across the building and runs out of places to go, it bounces back on the ending wall and starts to burn all the hotter as it moves back the otherway. Being 2nd from the end, we received the initial blast and then the bounce back as well before the fire was eventually put out. The fire travelled along the common attic between the different condos in the building. Luckily, the fire remained in the attic and didn't burn down the walls or anything. However, the fire department's delay in putting out the fire, and then the 30,000 gallons a minute of water they pumped into it didn't help things any. Needless to say, we lost probably 95% of everything we had in the upstairs. I lived out of my bedroom (which is upstairs), and really only came out to go to the bathroom or go eat. I admit, I'm a hermit. But that just further shows how much I lost. My Media Center computer survived, thank God, but my server didn't. I can't seem to get it to turn on and stay on, and what makes it worse..it reboots itself after being off for 3 seconds! Another tragic loss is my new TV I just bought last year, a 37-inch LCD HDTV.
I don't have a job, and searching has dramatically decreased due to the fire. I've not felt like doing much of anything other than sleeping. They say they're going to gut the place and rebuild it within 6 months. Only problem.. they can't get the premits. It's already been a month as of June 27. They've done nothing yet.
So, not to sound like I'm begging or anything, but without a job it's going to be very difficut to progress with all my losses. I need to start replacing, although I'm in no hurry to do so. I haven't even really gone though yet to see what all I have officially lost yet. But I do know, as I said, that I have lost the server with all my TV shows, and my tv.
We've created a Paypal donation button, and request that if there is anything anybody can give to help out in recovery, it's more than appreciated. It is located in my signature.
Thanks for understanding and I look forward to hearing your comments/replies. I will be back more often (now that I have re-established a temporary internet connection with our landlord's dialup AOL) and answer any questions I'm sure you may have. Thanks again!
- Aaron
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side..."
Donate to my Fire Fund
Sorry to hear about your situation. Do you not have home/contents insurance?
hansolo77: So, not to sound like I'm begging or anything,
So, not to sound like I'm begging or anything,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging
We were renting the condo, we didn't own it. The owner didn't have any insurance on it. She used to when she lived there, but when she moved out, she stopped paying the insurance premiums. There was a lot of fuss over the fact that LEGALLY she was supposed to have insurance, even if it was just bare minimum, to be able to rent out the place. But apparently, it slipped buy, and everybody just assumed she had it, when in fact she didn't. Kinda like auto insurance here in Ohio. It's illegal to drive without it, yet a lot of people don't have it, and just hope they don't get caught.
I had bought the extra protection plan coverage for my TV when I bought it though. We went to the place I bought it from to try and get them to honor it. They couldn't find my name in their computer for some damn reason (how convient). Then the manager had the gall to say "Oh, well it wouldn't cover acts of God anyway", and ended it with that. We argued it wasn't an act of God, because it was declared Arson. Still, he said they were unable to honor it since they couldn't produce the proof in the computer. I had a copy of the receipt, but it was lost in the fire, so it was really my word against the computers. And wouldn't you know? That store I bought it from got closed 2 days later (saying something about economic impact forced this location to close). I suspect they didn't even bother looking up my credentials because they were pissed about their store closing. We called their corporate office, and they told us we could only get it replaced if we had the original receipt and could only make the transferance at the store we bought it from. Bunch of f*cked up sh*t. It's been like that about everything. I don't know why I spent the extra money for all these protections when they aren't worth nothing.
ugh, that sucks :(
hansolo77:We were renting the condo, we didn't own it. The owner didn't have any insurance on it. She used to when she lived there, but when she moved out, she stopped paying the insurance premiums. There was a lot of fuss over the fact that LEGALLY she was supposed to have insurance, even if it was just bare minimum, to be able to rent out the place. But apparently, it slipped buy, and everybody just assumed she had it, when in fact she didn't. Kinda like auto insurance here in Ohio. It's illegal to drive without it, yet a lot of people don't have it, and just hope they don't get caught.
The owner should have a HOI policy which would cover the actual building/condo against damage, but it's still up to the person or persons renting to take out contents insurance though, is it not? I guess it could depend on the type of rental agreement in effect, but the norm is for the owner to insure the building and the tenant to insure their personal effects.
Either way it sucks of course and I wish you the best of luck rebuilding.
On a slightly different topic, if it is arson and they actually catch the guy who set the fire, what are the chances of you being able to bring him up on civil charges for damages? I guess it would depend on whether the criminal charge stuck and/or he admitted to it, but surely there is some scope for a civil lawsuit here also?
Oh, and those "protections" are almost always just a way for the retailer to take more of your hard earned money. They hardly ever cover real-life events and there always seem to be some clauses available which will indemnify the retailer (or their insurers) for just about anything other than "it just don't plain work no more" type of issues.
It's like communicating with god. You pray and pray and pray for that bike, but you never get a response or the bike.Then you figure out how it works; you steal a bike and pray for forgiveness.
Ok, the details on the living arrangements are tricky. See, Louise (the owner) used to lived there, and everything was fully insured, the condo and it's contents. Then her mom hurt herself really really bad about 8 years ago by slipping on some ice. She lived about a block away in a house Louise actually grew up in. When her mom had to move into assisted living because of the damage to her back, she didn't want to just sell off the condo. My mom and dad had just split up (strange coincidence) and dad and I needed a place to stay. We were mortgaging a house but when mom left, we couldn't afford it anymore. We immediately got papers from the bank saying they were going to foreclose and we had to get our stuff out within a week that we wanted to keep. Well, since dad was good friends with Louise, she agreed to rent out the condo to him. And we got a sweet deal too. It's value for rent is something like $650 a month. We were getting it for $300. The only conditions were that we would have to help her renivate (probably mispelled) the condo, and then after we move we had to help her at her house with yard work (the woman is like 60 and can't take care of such things herself... the condo complex took care of yard work when she lived at the condo). So we agreed, and started moving all her stuff out and renivated (basically we pulled up the cat soiled carpets upstairs and repainted). So there we were, living in her condo for $300 a month, plus utilities, and she was living in her mom's house. Overtime, she lost her job and things needed to be cut back. She stopped making payments on the contents insurance, but still made payments to the "condo fee". From what I understand, this took care of yard work and maintenance. She still had insurance payments for the condo itself though, as she intends to keep the condo for retirement. When the fire broke out, she was told the condo association would be using her condo fee's along with owner's insurance to rebuild the condo. However, she no longer had content's insurance through the owner's insurance as she had before. 8 years is a long time, and she just forgot she hadn't been paying for it. She found out when she got a call from them inquiring on details of the fire.
So basically, we were told she didn't have any content insurance and that the only coverage she had was enough for them to rebuild it. They were going to be rebuilding anyway, but now she can continue to own it. The condo complex association still wants her to pay her monthly condo fee's though, even though they said it might take 6 months to rebuild. She was a little upset about that, seeing as how we're not living there everything. But all in all, we're just waiting for everything to get rebuilt. It's been 5 weeks already, and they haven't even started to gut the place yet and throw out everything we couldn't save. Apparently they're having difficulties aquiring the necessary permits. I'm guessing it'll be 6 months before they start, THEN it'll be 6 months to rebuild if they rush it. They gotta rebuild to code, which means including firewalls which it didn't have before. It's insane, and a lot of depressing things happened all at once.
So off topic.. does anybody know why my server would be acting the way it does? It was a custom build Windows Home Server. The cool part was it would run without the need of keyboard, mouse, or monitor plugged in. I had configured the BIOS to ignore all these things too. But now, since the fire, I've got all these plugged in and try to turn it on. The power comes on ok, and it looks like it might start running. But there is no display on the monitor. After about 5-7 seconds of it running, it shuts down completely with no power running to anything. Then, magically, after about 2 seconds, it turns itself completely back on again all by itself. Again, another 5-7 seconds of running with no display, and it turns off again. It repeats this forever until I switch off the power to the powersupply. Any ideas? I've tried googling and had some potentials. The BIOS may have been configured to turn itself back on after a powerfailure, which could explain the power on, but not the power off. I've already tried booting with just CPU and RAM. No expansion cards, harddrives, or anything else cable-wise plugged in. It still does it.
Might want to try out a different motherboard in there.
I thought about that, but didn't want to waste any money yet since I don't have a job, and what money I have has to last. I thought it might be the power supply too, but wasn't sure. Is there anything I should try before going out and replacing stuff?
How badly damaged is it? I mean, is it actually fire damaged, or "just" water/smoke? Either way it could be a multitude of damaged components, but I would start by removing everything from the motherboard (ie. CPU, RAM, Add-on cards etc) and re-seating the CPU/Fan, RAM and videocard. Once that's done and the problem continues I would try replacing the PSU (borrow one from a friend/relative/store/whatever). I'm guessing it's the PSU as I had similar problems last year after my visit from Flash Gordon.
