ravencajun: I couldn't find my way thru winmail-general tab-play sound, but I also didn't try very hard because I prefer not to have the sound. So I took a look at adding a tray icon and wow, those directions look like more than I want to tackle! I think all this is trying to tell me that I am trying to be overly lazy, so maybe I'll just do those extra couple of clicks to see if there's any new mail. It's not like I'm walking out to our real mailbox several times a day to see if the postman came! Thanks much!

IF you don't use it I would totally disable the features for it in your windows live. I don't use the IM features or any of that stuff in my hotmail so it is all disabled and I do not take any requests period.

Pipes can certainly crack at low points where water does not drain from them. Sometimes antifreeze ( I think it is propylene glycol like for RV use.) can be added to the drained pipes and then they are drained again, to fix the low spot problem, or sometimes they are blown out with compressed air. It seems like that would be difficult to do effectively. The basement actually becomes a source of heat at some point (local ground temperature), but in a modern house with insulation in basement walls and slab, the heat flux is going to be way lower than with an older home so maybe not so effective. The plumber probably does not like antifreeze for more than one reason. It adds a maintenance task to check it periodically and them expense to purge the system when it needs to be replaced. The glycol breaks down forming acid. It also cuts heat transfer efficiency so you need bigger radiators and probably cuts the boiler efficiency under some circumstances. (You might have to lower the fluid flow rate.) Mike, your boiler can tolerate no water pressure for long periods? I never really looked into it, but I think most have auto fill valves. Is your's set up in any special way for this condition?

Please do your service to society and let your daughter be the ADULT that she is. As a senior in college, she is more than capable of handling this herself. Coddling adult children and taking care of their problems is not the proper description of being a parent, whether or not you are paying the bill. It is also not your or your daughter's place to tell a repair person how to do their job, or use any "words" to that effect. It is your daughter's job to report the problem accurately, something that you, yourself, have been incapable of doing. Being fully aware of the problem and reporting the symptoms fully and accurately is the way to a faster resolution of the problem. You did a disservice by reporting that the freezer was not working, but the refrigerator was cooling adequately, when in fact that was not true. If someone has been out there twice to repair it, and it's still not working, I would venture to say it's because the symptoms were not reported correctly. It is totally on the tenant to report problems in a timely manner, and to be specific as to what the problem is. (Hint: saying "my toilet is broken" or "my refrigerator is broken" is not specific or helpful. No one is a mind reader, and only the tenant actually living in and using the space knows what is really going on.) Making the generalized statement that landlords in big college towns hate to replace appliances just shows your mean-spirited ignorance. An appliance repair technician is very expensive, and unless the appliance is under warranty usually not worth the expense. It can be cheaper to replace the appliance. This a wasteful society we live in. Just replacing a shelf and cracked drawer costs almost as much as a new refrigerator, so there is little incentive to repair, instead leading to replacing the refrigerator and thus filling up our landfills unnecessarily.