Today my laptop was stolen. Ask me why I'm in a good mood.

[yesthattom]

Today at 9:53am I parked my car at the Elizabeth, NJ train station so that C and I could go into NYC to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. (It was fantastic, by the way.) I had locked my laptop bag (which includes my laptop, my iPod, and my datebook/organizer) as well as my overnight bag in the trunk. I was careful not to leave anything obviously valuable in the car seats, except a bunch of messy papers and a candy bar. Anyway, when we got back to the train station the driver’s side door was ajar. Oh wait, it isn’t ajar, it’s bent back as if someone had broke into the car. F**K!

Inside the car my cell phone was sitting on the seat where I had left it (by mistake), but the candy bar wasn’t taken. Of course, if you can get into the car you can get into the trunk. So I popped the trunk and...

My laptop bag was stolen.

I didn’t panic too much... I’m about to start a new job and they’ll be providing me a new laptop. My data is backuped to an external Firewire/USB drive. Even though the backup is about 4 weeks old, being between jobs means there wasn’t much “new” data there. Plus, anything important I do is on a server. Considering everything I had lost, I was rather calm.

We reported the theft to the guys running the parking lot, but they weren’t helpful. In fact, they said that if I reported it to their management nothing would happen so there’s no reason to do it. They let me use their phone to call the police, who told me to drive 4 blocks to the station to make the report in person.

I gave the police my report and when I was done my cell phone rang. It was someone named “Victor” saying that he found my laptop and was wondering how we could meet so I could get it back. ***unbelievable***

The guy found it about a block from the parking lot!

I didn’t ask him about the contents of the bag, figuring it was best to see what was there when I got to his place. I assumed that the iPod was gone, since that’s easiest to pawn. The Mac Powerbook would be a little more difficult to pawn, so it seemed to make sense that it was still there. The datebook/organizers is a leather-bound paper holder, worthless to anyone but me. So I assumed that would be in the bag.

The guy was a young, friendly guy who is the super at an apartment building in town. He gave me the bag and it contained my laptop, my iPod but NO DATEBOOK!

Since I’m between jobs and since I’ve just started a new year of filler paper my datebook had very data in it. My “todo” list is very small, and my dates are, well, the three speaking gigs that are on EverythingSysadmin.com. No big deal.

But why would some crackhead[1] steal the datebook? Has he gotten in trouble for missing appointments with his dealer? WTF? WTFF?

But who cares about the dateboo! The laptop and iPod are safe. That’s just a freakin’ miracle. And I’m very grateful. In fact, I gave the guy that found it a bunch of cash as a reward.

So now I’m at C’s place and we’re drinking egg nog and celebrating. It’s going to cost me an arm and a leg to get the car door repaired, but all-in-all, this was a very good day.

And this is all just further proof that I am a brain in a vat attached to the happiest VR simulation ever made.

-------

[1] I dislike when people assume anything stolen was “some crackhead” however Elizabeth, NJ was spotlighted during the 1980’s “crack” media blitz as being a town where crack is “being sold on every corner”; and everyone ELSE I talked to has used that term.

Comments

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

Wow... that's so fsck'd up! Why on earth steal the *datebook*?! That's so freaking weird...

I am, however, glad you got everything else back! :)

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

Maybe the datebook was the only thing that looked like it might contain credit cards.

Not to freak you out or anything

[mrfantasy.livejournal.com]

But it's almost like someone knew what they were looking for . . .

Re: Not to freak you out or anything

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for making me paranoid :-)

(P.S. New episodes of "24" start soon!)

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

Weird. I'm glad it turned out so well.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Yeesh! I'm glad it wasn't worse.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Jeez, who knew that consumer electronics would be so hard to fence? I mean, the phone was lying right there on the car seat, and they went to all that trouble just to take the date book? It just doesn't figure.

Of course, I'm assuming (no doubt erroneously) that a rational thought process was involved ...

[whc.livejournal.com]

If the phone company does their job, a stolen cell phone is worthless seconds after it has been reported stolen. I think some laptops can be traced if the new "owner" ever calls for tech support.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

w00t!

When I had my purse stolen, the thief ran with it and went through the purse while in pursuit -- he got away, but the contents of my purse followed him like a trail. Perhaps the thief had very little time, the datebook was the first thing zie saw, and zie ditched the bag after taking it.

w00t!

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

Maybe he was just hard-up for a New Year's Eve date. Everyone knows that biexuals' address books are chock full of people dying to sleep with them.

[lovingboth]

:) It's also possible that it fell out somewhere and no-one bothered to pick it up / had a look through and chucked it in a bin.

[freeko.livejournal.com]

God That Sucks!

[jwg.livejournal.com]

Very odd occurance, with a pretty good result other than the car door. Are you absolutely sure your date book was in the bag?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I'm still at C's this week, so I won't know if it is at my place for a few days. It is unlikely, but I still have hope.

[cpj.livejournal.com]

Well, the datebook could always be an easy vector towards identity theft, if the original datebook owner keeps really personal items inside of it.

And, maybe the crackhead was really some haxor that installed a keylogger on your powerbook.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought about the ID theft stuff, but I don't think there is anything good in there.

As far as a keylogger... I don't #*$&#(@&#(

DISCONNECT

OK

[cpj.livejournal.com]

11eleventy11!!!

p0wned!!!

All your base!

etc, etc,

in high school

[cthulhia]

when my sister's purse was stolen, everything was returned.

her wallet was intact, EXCEPT for the photos in it.

I always imagine someone who wanted stories about the people in the pictures. Thieves operating on a mystic logic. Not looking for money or worldly goods, but the personal records of our soul.

Thanks to LJ and the like, THAT's all backed up on servers now too.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Some people leave credit cards or similar in their datebooks.

*giggle* Search on ebay for your name; maybe someone's selling it off as a collectors item *giggle*

[kazmat.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's your biggest fan, looking for where you can be accosted next.

[vees.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't leave a penny on the dashboard in Lizard Breath, N.J.

One night after I got home from work to my apartment in Baltimore I left my cell phone in the car. I couldn't sleep because I felt something was wrong. Wound up getting out of bed at 4am and walking out to the car on impulse without knowing what I was going to find. I found the cell phone on the passenger seat. Once I got it in and on my dresser, I slept like a log.

A few months earlier I got my ham radio stolen from under the seat. I always wondered what the heck the thief did with a VHF two-way, or who was buying.

[gadlen.livejournal.com]

Tom, when did you put all your stuff in the trunk? I've always felt uneasy parking and then putting all my stuff in the trunk. A thief who's casing the parking lot would see me rearranging and know I had something valuable...

How did it go down with you?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I put stuff in the trunk back at the house, so that people at the train station wouldn't see me putting something in there.

[gadlen.livejournal.com]

:-(