January, 2009

Didn’t check my email over the weekend. I really need to get a spam solution working. *sigh*

So I went away for Xmas and got no call back from the real estate. After returning back to Rocky, I waited approximately a week and rang the Real Estate again.
I was informed that the bond claim form had been submitted with an amount taken out for “cleaning and rent”. I questioned them about this, specifically regarding the fact that I was told they would talk to the owner and come to some arrangement then contact me about it. I never received any call after the initial meeting at the office.

I spoke again to lady at Pat O’Driscoll after this and asked her if they still had copies of the original entry condition report as I believed the state I left the flat in was far better then when I entered it. She could not find them on file and said they could possibly be ‘archived’. She asked if I could supply them with a copy form my records. I dropped the entry condition report in and was advised by the front desk people that it would be passed on to the relevant person. Since then I have heard nothing else from them.

A few days later I received the “Notice of Claim” from the RTA in the mail that said a total of $225.70 had been taken out to be paid to Pat O’Driscoll for “cleaning, Rent”. I knew I owed approximately $85 for rent which was fine (I was told verbally that I owed $85, I still have not received any kind of written confirmation on this), but I feel the $140+ for “cleaning” is simply not justified considering the original condition of the flat when I started leasing and the condition that I left it in after cleaning.

I went ahead and filled out the “Dispute resolution” section of the form, attached all the relevant info and sent it back to the RTA.

Fast forward to today and I received a letter from the RTA stating that my dispute form had been received and action was being taken to resolve the matter.

In the same bunch of mail was a letter from Pat O’Driscoll which contained a bond refund form. The weird thing is this form (which I assume was meant to be my copy of the form they submitted) only mentioned $85 for cleaning. The rest of the bond was meant to be refunded to me. This is weird because the notice I received from the RTA had a much higher value.

The only thing I can think of is that Pat O’Driscoll have taken a look at the copy of the entrance condition report I dropped in and decided I was right. Even though they had already submitted a claim to the RTA they were now sending me another updated claim form.

I have no idea how that works so I’ll be ringing both Pat O’Driscoll and the RTA tomorrow to ask what the heck is going on.

Looks like I’ll get my bond back (minus the remainder of rent I owe) but sheesh it’s been an ordeal.

Was thinking tonight about the new features bought to mail with the release of Leopard. In particular stationary, to do’s and notes. I realised I dont use any of them… and im not sure why.

I guess I’ve just found no real use for them and honestly I can’t say I know anyone who does actually use those features in Mail.

Maybe I need some kind of “Being uber with mail” guide or somthing?

I’ve been working on a new mac app and recently stumbled across a problem. I had a set of ‘actions’ which each had dependency values. i.e. One ‘action’ had to perform before another ‘action’ could. I needed some way of sorting these ‘actions’ in order to list them in the correct processing order, kinda of like a flowchart.

With the help of Google I found out that this type of problem is actually a graph theory problem which could be solved using a Topological Sort.

It took me a while to get my head around it, but with the help of the algorithm on the wikipedia page I was able to get an Objective-C version written and working in a few hours.

Programming can be frustrating at times, but it’s so rewarding if you stick it out and manage to work out a solution.

My favourite smell would have to be the crust of fresh bread followed closely by the smell of books.