The end of my vacation rental nightmare

For the last 9 months or so, the property next to me has been used as a mini-hotel; some people call would call it a short term vacation rental, I simply call it a pain in my rear. The City of San Diego hasn't budged on its misinterpretation of the municipal code (§131.0422) that prohibits visitor accommodations in residential zones and the owner has said that he can do whatever he wanted to with this property.

I've spent a lot of my free time amounting to hundreds of hours researching laws and anything I could find about short term vacation rentals. I looked for anything that would be on my side and uncovered trash regulations, but those weren't enough to get the City to do anything. I like watching law dramas where lawyers seems to pull rabbits out of their hats to win cases; I was looking for my rabbit.

When we purchased our house, I knew that there were CC&Rs (covenants, conditions, and restrictions) relating to my property. Our neighborhood was developed in the 1960s and a homeowners association was no longer in existence (if one did exist). I read the CC&Rs many times looking for something that would give me legal recourse against the property owner next to me (neighbors are people that live near you and don't just own property near you). It wasn't until I had read the CC&Rs at least 10 times that I stumbled upon a few clauses that looked like they could apply. In addition, the CC&Rs appeared to automatically renew every 10 years and only expired if a majority of owners voted to terminate them.

I started talking to one of my neighbors that is an attorney that deals with real estate law and he seemed to think that while we could go after the City to enforce the code, my idea about using the CC&Rs could work. As much as I want to help other people, my primary goal was to get rid of the vacation rental next to me. I retained my neighbor as my attorney and he said the first step was to gather support from other neighbors; I got several of my neighbors to join and my attorney drafted a letter to the property owner claiming he violated the CC&Rs on a number of grounds.

The owner next door hired an attorney to represent him and basically wanted to settle without going to mediation or court. Without acknowledging that all of our claims were valid, he agreed to stop renting out his property as a vacation rental. Wow, I was stunned when my attorney told me this! Over the course of the next few weeks, we went back and forth hammering out the details of an agreement. As of now, the current owner is no longer going to rent it out for less than 30 days.

While I've managed to rid my neighborhood of this annoyance, my approach probably won't work for many others. I had CC&Rs that were still enforceable, I had the determination to fight, and I was able to afford an attorney to represent me. I'm not an attorney, so if anyone else wants to pursue an action to rid their neighborhood of a vacation rental, please contact an attorney (I now have several on speed dial :-)).

My time with the Apple Watch

More than 3 years ago, I backed the Pebble watch on Kickstarter. My needs for the watch were quite simple; I wanted to be able to tell the time (the summer before that, the battery on my watch died twice and I got tired of replacing it), I wanted to get text message notifications on it and I wanted to be notified when the phone rang. The last 2 were important as I don't always feel my phone vibrate when it is in my pocket. About 2.5 years ago, my Pebble arrived. Initially it didn't do all that I wanted (from the list above), but with software updates and iOS updates, it completely met my needs.

Pebble added apps and I played with a few of them, but didn't really use them. I'm likely an atypical user as I'm at my computer most of the day and when I'm away from my desk, I don't spend a lot of time playing on my watch or phone (I don't commute anywhere).

My only real complaint with the Pebble is that it got confused often and didn't always give me notifications.

When Apple announced the Apple Watch, my main reason for wanting one was better integration with the iPhone. About a month and a half ago, mine arrived (black sport). Since then I've worn it everyday and have been pleased with it for my use. Like the Pebble, I use it for notifications and telling the time. In addition, the watch face I use shows upcoming appointments; that is very useful.

I've been quite pleased with Siri on it as I tell Siri to add things to my grocery list and set timers. I haven't used it for Apple Pay, yet, but hope that more stores accept Apple Pay so I can use it. I don't use it while running as I'm not sure I'd find it all that comfortable with all my sweat; also I don't know how well I can get the sweat out of the watch.

In my use, the battery life is excellent (I charge it nightly and it usually has 60-70% battery remaining). I don't really use the apps, but maybe with watchOS 2.0, that will change. For notifications, the watch performs well. As a watch, it is kind of mediocre; having to lift my wrist is strange and I'd like to just be able to glance at it and see the time. However, having to lift my wrist makes me check the time less often which may be a good thing.

Is the watch for everyone? Of course not. I love technology and the Apple Watch does everything I expected it to do and then some (like Siri), so I guess it was worth it. I knew what it was going to do before getting it and it performs those functions adequately. I know that there are people that hate the Apple Watch and those that love them. Will it be a mainstream product? I kind of doubt it, but that doesn't matter to me as it does what I need.

Surge Protector on Coax - Bad idea?

It seems that most surge protectors that are a bit more expensive than the run of the mill ones have ports for coax, Ethernet and phone lines to provide surge protection for these items. I've always ignored the Ethernet and phone line ones as I use VOIP and it is unlikely that the VOIP box would generate a surge and same goes for Ethernet. However, when I setup my UPS almost 2 years ago, I figured that connecting the coax for the cable modem into the coax on the UPS would be a good idea in case a surge came in through the cable line, it wouldn't blow up my cable modem.

As I've written about in the last few months, I've had some problems with my Internet cutting in and out sometimes and I basically came to the conclusion that it was the router. However, at the same time I replaced the router, I came across a post indicating that the coax surge suppressor will cause signal loss (any coax connection likely does this) and that depending on the suppressor, it might not pass all the frequencies needed for the cable modem. (From what I understand, the newer cable equipment can use higher frequencies. I don't know enough about this to verify what I've read, unfortunately.)

I decided to just connect the coax directly to the cable modem (the coax into my cable modem has no splitters from the street; just a few connections would shouldn't cause signal loss) and see what happened. Combined with my router change, my cable modem connection has been rock solid. Is all this a coincidence? Who knows, but the signal loss issue is quite possible (the cable tech said that the loss was acceptable, however) and what do I have to lose? If there is a surge through the cable line, I'll lose the cable modem.

Food for thought if you're having problems with your cable modem.

Air conditioning in coastal San Diego?

I've lived in a few places in San Diego over the last 20 years; 4 relatively close to the coast and 3 further inland. In that time, I had air conditioning in the places inland, but rarely used it. In fact, when we lived 20 minutes more inland than we do now, I don't recall turning on our A/C for the first few years we lived there; we used ceiling fans and just dealt with the warmer days. So when we bought our house and remodeled it, adding A/C didn't even cross my mind. We're pretty close to the coast, and I figured we'd get a coastal breeze. Within the first year of living here, I knew that this was a bad decision. It turns out that last year was the hottest year on record in San Diego with 12 days over 90 degrees at the airport whereas there are normally 1-2 days over 90 degrees. I thought maybe I had become a wimp and couldn't take the heat (well, that still may be true), but the facts confirmed that I wasn't completely crazy.

So, at the beginning of this year, I had air conditioning installed. It was pretty painless as we already had duct work, a thermostat and a place to put a compressor. Since the installation, we've turned it on 3 times. Twice last week because the humidity was so high and one of the days, it rained which required us to close our windows (it was well over 80 degrees outside so closing up the house rapidly increased the house temperature). I really hate to use air conditioning as it is a dry air and it isn't cheap, but with outside temperatures increasing, this was a wise decision. We still use ceiling fans as much as possible, but knowing that we have this backup just makes our house even more comfortable.