hmm, not cool of him to keep both checks in the first scenario, even if he opted to hold the 2nd one till next month, but that's just my humble .02. If he is somehow holding 'late rent' against you in attempts to keep deposit, he can't do that. That needs to be addressed directly at the time of payment (typically via charging a late fee). He can put sec deposit towards rents not paid (in my state, anyway) but not hold it as a 'nuisance' fee for late payment. As an aside, I live in the same zip as two of my tenants. They either mail or drop off check here. Typically it's one day via USPS, however if post office were consistently days late, I would simply ask tenants allow a few extra days in mail and date their check for the 1st of the month. Or drop off at my house. OK, on to deposit issue. The privacy invasion is a non-issue now and has nothing to do with security deposit. That's fall under category of issue that should have been addressed "at the time". All too often security deposits are viewed as being deservedly refunded in full because of bad blood. Laws are very clear about what deposits are to be held/used for, and in most cases even a lease cannot override a particular state's law on deposits. So you paid a $1100 deposit, he kept $1000, you provided a forwarding address with keys per his request. You did not receive anything for 90 days and then there were deductions without an accounting, correct? I checked, and Virginia law is much like my state's 45 day rule. Virginia's Landlord Tenant Handbook can be viewed here. Have to hand it to them, VA is quite clear and provides many venues for help (addresses, phone numbers) should it be needed. They are thorough. Scroll to the bottom of page 17 for Sec Dep info. "The security deposit, any accrued interest and any deductions,damages and charges shall be itemized by the landlord in a written notice given to the tenant, together with any amount due the tenant within 45 days after termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession"....If the landlord willfully fails to comply with this section, the court shall order the return of the security deposit and interest thereon to the tenant, together with actual damages and reasonable attorneys' fees, unless the tenant owes rent to the landlord, in which case, the court shall order an amount equal to the security deposit and interest thereon credited against the rent due to the landlord.....If notice is given as prescribed in this paragraph, the landlord shall have an additional 15 day period to provide an itemization of the damages and the cost of repair.....Upon request by the landlord to a tenant to vacate, or within five days after receipt of notice by the landlord of the tenant's intent to vacate, the landlord shall make reasonable efforts to advise the tenant of the tenant's right to be present at the landlord's inspection of the dwelling unit for the purpose of determining the amount of security deposit to be returned. If the tenant desires to be present when the landlord makes the inspection, he shall so advise the landlord in writing who, in turn, shall notify the tenant of the time and date of the inspection, which must be made within 72 hours of delivery of possession. Upon completion of the inspection attended by the tenant, the landlord shall furnish the tenant with an itemized list of damages to the dwelling unit known to exist at the time of the inspection. You need to take time to print that out and read it all, I have only pasted partial quotes below. There is much more on the deposit issue. Then make some calls to the numbers provided. I am not a lawyer, only a landlord who has to keep abreast of landlord/tenant laws, and it seems like your landlord has fudged on a few issues. Even if he had legitimate claims for deduction, 90 days is well beyond the time frame allotted by the State of Virginia. This can all be handled in small claims court. However, I would first send him a letter (Certified) pointing out how he failed to comply (lack of notice to you of inpsection day so you could be present, lack of notice within 45 days of what he was deducting, etc. Quote the Virginia statute that applies. It might be just enough to nudge him to rectify this rather than go to small claims court (where it's typically addressed in my state). Have to run, rental issues of my own, will check back later.

I am sure she could grasp using gmail it is fairly easy and all she has to do is use her browser and she does that to view any website just save gmail as a fave so she can find it easily. I personally would set her up with firefox instead of IE for ease of use and safety and then you could simply put the gmail link directly on the bookmarks toolbar so it is right there for her to click on and set gmail up to remember her info. If she has Vista the firewall in it should be ok for her just make sure once you remove za you turn on the windows firewall in security center. for antivirus I am not sure what you are using but I also like AVAST free you do have to do a real easy quick registration that they send to your email but then it is set , you have to do the register thing about once a year. I would make sure you put some good anti malware programs on there and show her how to open them update them and run a full scan with them have her set up a schedule once a week to run her scans when her pc is on, these 2 are the best SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware she will have to remember to hit the update button before scanning. Also good to have is spywareblaster, this one is not a scanner for it just open it once a week hit update, hit enable all protection, the shield turns green that is it. SpywareBlaster and I agree congrats to her for being willing to take on the technology world! Definitely set up windows auto updates to do them automatically for her she definitely wants to get those and make her understand she does have to leave the computer on so that her programs get their updates. That is one big issue I run into with some elderly, they think they only want to turn it on when they need it then the pc gets way behind on updates and when it is turned on everything tries to update at once and it can be a big mess. leaving it on does not hurt anything mine stay on 24/7. for that reason it is really safer to leave it on rather than keep it off! She could schedule her scans to happen at night while she is asleep.

Owbist is right, of course- try 'em and see! But I did like reviews for K-meleon and Iron, in addition to Chrome, Safari, Opera; I also didn't realize how big an improvement IE8 evidently is over IE7. So first off I'll suggest she go ahead and update 7 to 8, and see how she likes that. (I was wrong to say she's using IE8 now; she never upgraded.) I liked K-meleon on another machine, so I'll download that to this (laptop) computer and she can play with it here, and I think I'll encourage her to try Iron on the desktop, and I'll try it out there. Why, we're even likely to start huggin' in the hallway as we pass each other instead of just sending love-notes via e-mail ... ;-) Thanks all- I appreciate the help yet again! Best, M

djensen, Sorry about misreading your post. My mistake. But your right, the answer doesn't really change much. My point is that the lowest setting is rarely the most optimal. You are also right in that the energy consumption changes as a function of plumbing head loss but what I have found is that the unsually falls within a small range around 1000 RPM. However, it still may not be enough in flow rate but it doesn't hurt to check. To me, this would be the simplest solution. As to the efficiency of the pump, my comment was based upon several factors but mainly Pentair's own data, PG&E (power company) test data on pumps and reports from several owners. VF owners have been kind enough to give me a range of operating points which show flow rates, RPM and energy consumption. I have been able to collect enough data to model the pump's behavior over a variety of operating conditions so I can fairly accurately predict the performance under almost any condition. Since there is a minimum amount of energy the pump consumes even at the lowest RPM setting due to the drive electronics, it really doesn't make sense to run it below about 800 RPM for most situations. The gallons pumped per watt-hour starts to fall below 900 RPM and above 1100 RPM for most plumbing systems. The feedback from the VS-3050 is minimal so it is hard to tell what flow rate you have and how much energy is being consumed. Do you have a flow meter installed? If not, there is a way to calibrate your system using filter pressure to determine flow rates and energy use. If you are interested, I can help you do that. Just post filter pressure at couple different RPM levels. If you can measure vacuum at the pump, all the better to increase accuracy.