Photo Delays and Cancellations
I don’t want to alarm anyone too much, but the trusty old Sprout House got broken into today. I came home and everyone was looking around to figure out what was gone and . They got my computer, which is the main thing, and also a lockbox I had that was holding my passport and a bunch of legal documents and Great Grandpa’s savings bonds. I don’t know if it’s possible to get anything from those savings bonds. If I can’t cash them, the thieves sure won’t be able to, since they’ve got my name on them, so I guess it’ll just mean the government gets to keep the money. But it looks like there’s some form I can fill out where they can try to search for them to replace them. (Anyone got the serial numbers? Otherwise I’ll just have to guess at the dates.)
On that computer were all my travel photos. I waited just that little bit too long to put them on the internet. The possible good news is that, depending on when I uploaded them to my old computer, I might have the pictures from Europe when Dad sends me my old computer. But I don’t think I’ll have any way of getting a hold of my pictures from my travels around North America. We’ll see what’s on my computer. They’re probably gone for good – unless the computer turns up. We filed police reports and everything, so I guess we can hold out some hope. I’m going to watch Craigslist for a computer matching my model. We’ll call around to the pawn shops.
Other than the photos, nothing’s irreplaceable; I’m just out money. So far that’s a bike, a computer, and a passport. Everything else about Minneapolis is great, but this theft thing is getting pretty old. We’ve got to keep our windows closed better. That’s about all the insight I gain from that.
File under: computers
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6 Comments
Anonymous
HistoryIt stinks to find out through being robbed that there are a whole lot of people out there who want only to take advantage of you, and have no respect for the property of others. Not a very good scenario. I hope you'll take better care for your security from now on, and I'm glad you haven't been hurt or anything. And I sure hope you can recover your photos. What would a thief want with them, anyway? Grandma
Anonymous
HistoryOn some computers, people in the know can track your computer whenever it is connected to the internet. People have retrieved their laptops when the police raid the location where their computer is tracked to. Try contacting your computer manufacturer and/or seller. Also the police probably can tell you who can track it for you. Uncle Chuck
Anonymous
HistoryDo you have a password on your computer? If so, the thief cannot use it, though there is a way around that, but it takes a little bit of time and knowledge to do it. It slows them down enough to allow you time to hurry up and change your e-mail, blog and other website passwords. Uncle Chuck
Chuck Masterson
HistoryNo password, but I got my online passwords changed within a few hours anyhow. PayPal, Google, all that. I looked up ways to recover lost computers and it looks like I maybe shouldn't have been so hasty to change my Google password, because that's one website that would tell me what IP address the thief may have used the computer from. But regardless, from what I read, the odds for recovering a computer that way are pretty slim. You have to file something through the ISP, get a search warrant, and everything.
I do have high hopes for recovering the photos. Even though my camera was right next to my computer, they didn't take it, so I still have the SD card that the photos all lived on. I deleted them a while back, but when computers delete something, they don't overwrite it with 0's, they just mark the space as available to overwrite when needed, so there are various file recovery programs that can look into supposedly empty space. You may yet get Giant Backlog of Photos II and more.
Anonymous
HistoryI hear "Taps". Is this blog dead?
Chuck
HistoryNope! True this is the longest gap it's had, as far as I know, but that's mostly because I had no computer for a month and then, when I got one, had to get it set up, and also suddenly found out that I had so much stuff to do that there was no time to blog. It shouldn't be long now.
For example, it was going to be tricky to blog this weekend while I was at a cabin on Lake Vermilion in the far north of Minnesota accessible only by boat and with electricity only when we ran the generator at night.