Back in Business
No way around it -- this blog has been down for quite some time. It's been down at least since the early part of December, when our laptop computer was stolen. I was at work in the afternoon when I got a call from Penny saying that there had been a breakin at our house. I immediately went to talk to Mark, my boss, and got the okay to go home.
When I got there 45 minutes of high speed driving later, Penny was on the efficiency apartment side of the house talking to a Champaign cop. She had come home from the university for lunch to let the dogs out into the back yard. We normally let them out on the efficiency side, and she noticed the window on the door was pushed in. Further examination revealed that the frame had been cracked.
She immediately looked around and found that the laptop that we had been using as our regular computer was missing from the computer hutch. Whoever had taken it didn't just yank wires out of the wall, which would be typical for a snatch-and-grab burglary. Instead, the wires had been carefully disconnected. Also missing from the hutch was a video camera and a digital camera -- this had been more upsetting to Penny than losing the laptop itself, since they contained wedding photos that she was going to upload. Laptops can be replaced, but wedding photos can't. (Fortunately, we already had quite a few that were either uploaded or from some other sources.)
At this point, the long-time movie buff realized that a burglar might still be in the house with her, so she went to the kitchen and got out a big butcher knife to carry around with her. As it turned out, there wasn't anyone else in the house other than the dogs.
We were very suspicious about the circumstances of the burglary, since the back door had been locked. When the cop dusted it for fingerprints, he came up with nothing. It was almost as if the burglar or burglars had been able to unlock the door, come inside, then crack the window frame to make it look like a random robbery instead of an inside job. In addition, we have two big black dogs who like to bark their heads off, which would deter most burglars other than the real professionals -- whoever broke in here must have known that we kept the dogs on the other side of the house while we're away with the sliding door shut so they couldn't access this side.
Our most likely guess was that the breakin was related to our cleaning service, which was coming in once a week on Wednesdays and would have had a key. The service consisted of mother and daughter team, and even if they weren't responsible themselves, cleaners have boyfriends who easily could have gotten the key. We've since changed cleaning services to an outfit made up of five or six Chinese immigrants, and they come in on Saturdays when one or both of us are home. (Several of them are more afraid of our dogs than the burglars were.)
The other possibility that occurred to me, since I am politically active, paranoid, and living in a country that is no longer free, was that it was taken by the Minions of the Pig State for whatever reason, most likely looking for incriminating stuff.
Either way, losing the laptop was a serious problem, since our previous two tax returns were on it, which in turn, gave the thieves access to our Social Security numbers. (Yet another strong argument against the Social Security ponzi scheme -- forcing everyone to have a de-factor identity number makes everyone a potential victim of the worst sorts of identity theft.
Fortunately, both of us have a good idea of what to do under the circumstances, and the next week was a flurry of contacting banks and creditors, changing account numbers and passwords, and generally inflicting on ourselves several weeks of financial inconvenience. Suffice to say that we are now secure, or at least as secure as anyone can be in George W. Bush's Amerika.
In the meantime, Penny found a special deal through the University of Illinois for a new computer. A large institution like that, especially one with a world-famous computer department (home of the HAL 9000), is always getting rid of obsolete computers, defined as anything more than three months after market release. As a result, we were able to pick up an amazing iMac with the latest Leopard operating system and an absolutely huge monitor for $600 under list price. Too good to pass up.
The hard drive in this thing is housed inside the monitor mount itself. Thus, anyone who wants to steal it would have a much hard time hiding it under his or her coat than a laptop. It's a great deal heavier, too. Nevertheless, we have it bolted into a stud in the wall with a combination lock. Again, an absolutely determined professional or pig state agent would be able to steal this, if they were willing to spend a dangerous amount of time in here doing it, but the sorts of amateurs who are more likely to break into our house probably wouldn't be able to.
So now I'm back in the blogging business with a lot of catching up to do.
When I got there 45 minutes of high speed driving later, Penny was on the efficiency apartment side of the house talking to a Champaign cop. She had come home from the university for lunch to let the dogs out into the back yard. We normally let them out on the efficiency side, and she noticed the window on the door was pushed in. Further examination revealed that the frame had been cracked.
She immediately looked around and found that the laptop that we had been using as our regular computer was missing from the computer hutch. Whoever had taken it didn't just yank wires out of the wall, which would be typical for a snatch-and-grab burglary. Instead, the wires had been carefully disconnected. Also missing from the hutch was a video camera and a digital camera -- this had been more upsetting to Penny than losing the laptop itself, since they contained wedding photos that she was going to upload. Laptops can be replaced, but wedding photos can't. (Fortunately, we already had quite a few that were either uploaded or from some other sources.)
At this point, the long-time movie buff realized that a burglar might still be in the house with her, so she went to the kitchen and got out a big butcher knife to carry around with her. As it turned out, there wasn't anyone else in the house other than the dogs.
We were very suspicious about the circumstances of the burglary, since the back door had been locked. When the cop dusted it for fingerprints, he came up with nothing. It was almost as if the burglar or burglars had been able to unlock the door, come inside, then crack the window frame to make it look like a random robbery instead of an inside job. In addition, we have two big black dogs who like to bark their heads off, which would deter most burglars other than the real professionals -- whoever broke in here must have known that we kept the dogs on the other side of the house while we're away with the sliding door shut so they couldn't access this side.
Our most likely guess was that the breakin was related to our cleaning service, which was coming in once a week on Wednesdays and would have had a key. The service consisted of mother and daughter team, and even if they weren't responsible themselves, cleaners have boyfriends who easily could have gotten the key. We've since changed cleaning services to an outfit made up of five or six Chinese immigrants, and they come in on Saturdays when one or both of us are home. (Several of them are more afraid of our dogs than the burglars were.)
The other possibility that occurred to me, since I am politically active, paranoid, and living in a country that is no longer free, was that it was taken by the Minions of the Pig State for whatever reason, most likely looking for incriminating stuff.
Either way, losing the laptop was a serious problem, since our previous two tax returns were on it, which in turn, gave the thieves access to our Social Security numbers. (Yet another strong argument against the Social Security ponzi scheme -- forcing everyone to have a de-factor identity number makes everyone a potential victim of the worst sorts of identity theft.
Fortunately, both of us have a good idea of what to do under the circumstances, and the next week was a flurry of contacting banks and creditors, changing account numbers and passwords, and generally inflicting on ourselves several weeks of financial inconvenience. Suffice to say that we are now secure, or at least as secure as anyone can be in George W. Bush's Amerika.
In the meantime, Penny found a special deal through the University of Illinois for a new computer. A large institution like that, especially one with a world-famous computer department (home of the HAL 9000), is always getting rid of obsolete computers, defined as anything more than three months after market release. As a result, we were able to pick up an amazing iMac with the latest Leopard operating system and an absolutely huge monitor for $600 under list price. Too good to pass up.
The hard drive in this thing is housed inside the monitor mount itself. Thus, anyone who wants to steal it would have a much hard time hiding it under his or her coat than a laptop. It's a great deal heavier, too. Nevertheless, we have it bolted into a stud in the wall with a combination lock. Again, an absolutely determined professional or pig state agent would be able to steal this, if they were willing to spend a dangerous amount of time in here doing it, but the sorts of amateurs who are more likely to break into our house probably wouldn't be able to.
So now I'm back in the blogging business with a lot of catching up to do.
posted by Da Zedman at 11:55 AM
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