I’ve lived at my current place four years now… maybe more, but at least that long, and I’ve never had problems with the neighbors. Yeah the guys next door are a little loud, but only occassionally, and usually on the weekends, so no big whoop. I did have to ask them to move a futon out of the hallway that was blocking my door… but that’s it.
So a few weeks back M and I are watching some BSG and we hear a knock on the door. It’s our new downstairs neighbor (moved in like a week prior) who asks if we can turn the bass down. I was really suprised that he could hear it, but apologized and said no problem. Ever since then we’ve been really careful not to play anything too loud – not that we were anyway. We keep the bass set at -10 (it goes from -10 to +10) and sometimes turn it off altogether if we’re watching really late (usually we’re in bed by 11:30pm).
Things seemed fine. Every once and a while we’d hear banging from downstairs, but it seemed really random and never at a time where we were making excessive noise, so I dismissed it as him nailing stuff to the wall or something similar. No worries. It’s an old apartment building, you hear stuff.
Well then last week we hear another knock on the door. It’s downstairs dude again, who introduces himself. He’s really nice and mentions that this building doens’t have any insulation, and can we keep it down. He talked to his downstairs neighbor and promised to do the same for him. I said I thought we had been keeping it down, but we’d keep that in mind.
He kind of caught me off guard – I was in the middle of cooking dinner – so I didn’t really respond the way I wanted to. I ended up writing a little note and leaving it on his door the next morning. Essentially it went like this:
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for coming by and introducing yourself last night. Ever since you complained about the bass a couple of weeks ago M and I have been really careful about the level of noise coming out of our apartment. We keep the bass all the way down and have tried to minimize door slamming, etc. We have pets that sometimes jump from furniture to the floor – we can’t do much about that. I feel like we’re doing everything reasonable we can to reduce the noise. Honestly, we’ve lived here for four years, and never had a problem with a noise complaint before. If you continue to have problems, you might want to contact the management company – maybe they can come up with a solution. They did renovate your apartment before you moved in – maybe something was done that’s allowing more sound leakage. At any rate, here’s my phone number. Don’t hesitate to call me if something comes up, I’d like to make sure we’re both satisfied with our living arrangements.
And then we didn’t hear anything for a few days. I’m thinking – problem solved. I’ve let him know we’re being as quiet as we can. I’m being the good neighbor here. This morning we get a phone call.
“Hey, it’s Jeff. Is everything alright up there?”
“Yeah… why?”
“I’m hearing a lot of noise.”
“Well, I just showered, and have opened the bedroom door a couple of times, but other than that – nothing.”
“It’s like hammering. Maybe it’s your neighbors?”
So I stuck my head outside our door, and don’t hear anything. I tell him this… I also suggest maybe it’s the pipes rattling. I also let him know that they’re doing renovations on the 1st floor apartment (I’m on 5, Jeff’s on 4), I thought they were done, but maybe there’s still working going on. We both say goodbye, and I tell him to call if he hears anything else.
Of course on our way out the building right after that, we hear banging coming from the 1st floor apartment. So in my head, I’m off the hook… he can’t tell where noise is coming from. He can’t tell up from down. I just wonder if he’s ever lived in an apartment building before – especially and old one… they’re noisy. You hear your neighbors walk around. You hear them talk. Eat. Bathe. Fuck. Oy.
Now I’m just wondering what’s next. I feel like I’ve done all I can. I guess if he calls again, I’ll just mention the fact that the last thing he heard was coming from the first floor – to not always assume it’s us. I really feel like telling him to go find another building to live in… but I won’t.
Thoughts?
So this is what I’m starting with – a Dell Vostro A90. It’s basically the business class version of the Dell Mini 9 which Gizmodo and Boing Boing Gadgets rate has a highly successful platform for creating your own Mac. If you buy refurbished, you can get them pretty cheap. I wanted a larger solid state drive – and the company that provides really nice aftermarket drives were out-of-stock, so I decided on a new Dell with a larger drive. Specs:
Finally picked up 
