Saturday night, after returning from dinner with friends, I opened the door to my apartment and let my wife in. As I fumbled with the string of icicle lights that run around the room to provide a little illumination, she said "I'll turn on the computer.... the computer isn't here!" Before I could even say "What do you mean the computer isn't here?" I noticed that the back door was slightly open, the lamp was on the floor, and my laptop was gone too. We had been robbed.
As the shock set in, I noticed that the cats did not come out to say "hello" as they normally did whenever I walked in the door. With the back door opened, I feared the worst. One by one, though, they came out of hiding and I was thankful they had not fled the apartment. The police came within a few minutes (although I suffered another shock when I saw that my digital SLR camera, the one that has brought you so many "photos of the day," was also gone), and I slowly started to calm down. Unfortunately the robbery was a smash-and-grab event that left no real clues or even fingerprints, and the most we can hope for is that our possessions are spotted should the thief try to sell them.
I don't care so much about the possessions themselves, though. My computer was a piece of crap and the other laptop was a bit old, too, and although I'm angry that my camera was swiped it's the pictures I took with it that I'll miss the most. I had meant to start burning the thousands of photos I've taken to discs this week, but now they're all gone. All my trips to the Bronx and Philadelphia zoos, photos from day trips to Maryland, and even the photographs of the honeymoon with my wife are now lost. I can replace a computer or a camera; I can't recover stolen memories.
Things aren't as bad as they could have been, though. The cats didn't get out (I would have been inconsolable had Charlotte had gotten out), my books were all in place, some other expensive items were still where I had left them, and the damage done to the apartment was minimal. Two days later, it's still hard for me to sleep at night and the rustling of dry leaves at night makes my hear beat a little faster, but things could have been much, much worse. Last weekend I purchased a jump drive and transferred my progress on my book to it, and if I hadn't done that all my work would have slipped out the back door with the thief.
What does this mean for Laelaps? Well, strangely enough, I just ordered a new computer Friday night and it should be here within the week. I won't be able to do the work I wanted to on my book over spring break, but at least I'll have plenty of time to read (Rudwick's Scenes From Deep Time arrived today and I'm looking forward to digging into it). I'll write whenever I can with the computers at the Rutgers labs or elsewhere, but things might be a little slow until I've got the new machine up and running.
Still, some of my best photography was only on those computers, and while I have a number of pictures that I uploaded to my Kodak gallery online, they pale in comparison to the originals. Likewise, I was intending to visit the Philly zoo or other interesting place one day this week during my break, but without my camera, I don't feel very much like going anywhere. Such objects can be replaced, though, and I am more thankful that the damage done was (in the grand scheme of things) truly minimal.
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That sucks, brother. I have a nagging worry about somebody breaking down the easily-broken-down back door of the garage and rampaging through the house, stealing all my video game systems, fairly new TV, and computer. I love my electronics.
I'm so sorry to hear this Brian. Possessions are just possessions; what's hardest to deal with is the loss of the sense of feeling safe in your home.
While it sounds like it could have been much worse (I'd rather replace my computer than my library of books), that does suck that you lost those pictures. I always try to burn my pictures onto CD/DVD ASAP after I take them; even something like a hard-drive failure could mean they would be lost forever.
Is insurance going to cover the stolen items? If not, I'd love to put some money towards getting you a new camera!
I remember visiting friends in New York City - A group of us went out roller blading - gone 2 hours - came back and just like you - all high-tech items gone. With a doorman in the lobby!
That sucks about the Photo's - but you DO still have them in the walking memory at least. So, go make some new memories! Oh. And change the locks.
:(
If you get a Mac, you can get Undercover. It uses the internet and your iSight camera to tag the mo-fos that took your stuff, should lightning strike twice.
Glad your cats are okay, though. I would go on a murderous rampage if someone broke in my apt and Arnie was gone...
Oh, God, I'm so sorry! One of my very good friends in grad school had his apartment broken into our first year. It was quite some time before he felt safe in his own home. I'm glad nobody got hurt and your cats didn't get out.
I was about to suggest you get an external hard drive to back things up onto but the bastards probably would have stolen that, too.
This happened to me when I lived in NYC -- twice. The police advised me to invest in a baseball bat should I ever be home when someone broke in, and I ended up getting bars on the windows. I don't advocate doing that, necessarily, but sometimes burglers return to see if they forgot anything valuable the first time around. Take some extra precuations for the next few weeks, is my advice.
Condolences on the loss of your camera and computers. I trust your various files were backed up, at least? That's always my greatest fear!!
Sorry to hear that Brian. But a bit of advice: backup. You should automatically have these somewhere. If you do get a Mac, consider using Time Capsule, which is a wifi server cum hard disk. You can set it up in a cupboard somewhere to ensure you always have a copy of your files.
I'd be more worried about the cats. But then I always forget to take photos when I do stuff.
Wow, I am so incredibly sorry, Brian. There is a kind of feeling of violation knowing that someone else was in your space, with your "stuff." I'm glad that your cats are fine, and it is convenient that your new computer hadn't arrived yet, but I still hate that you had to go through this.
Let me join the list of folks giving their condolences. I would also, though, like to tweak John's suggestion a bit.
Time Capsule (or any other on-site backup) is good, but doesn't protect you against bigger problems -- like a fire, or some fool dropping a crane on your apartment. What I did was buy two (big but cheap) external USB hard drives for backup; one for home, the other for work. Every weekend I back up my computer to one of them, then that backup goes to work with me on Monday and its twin comes home that afternoon. So at any time, I've always got one reasonably recent (less than 7 days old) backup sitting in a locked filing cabinet at my office, miles from my computer.
With this scheme, the only way to lose both your computer and your data would be through the occurrence of some really huge catastrophe -- in which case, losing your files would be the least of your worries.
Sam
(yes, I have some "interesting" dreams...)
Suggest you consider an "invisible" net backup service such as Carbonite. There are others; that's just the one I chose.
No effort on my part and no worries about forgetting the weekly backup chore; it just sits there in the background and backs things up.
Mind you, this doesn't solve the issue of what to do with stuff that won't fit on your hard drive, but I'm a way from running into that.
As Bart Simpson said, "this both sucks and blows." I've been fortunate enough to never have been robbed like that (did have my car broken into once and its stereo levered out with a crowbar), but I've lost gobs of digital photos when I had an external hard drive crash, so you have my empathy on that front. Since then, I've been exceptionally anal about backing stuff up -- to two external drives and one internal one, as well as a subscription to Carbonite, for which I will second Scott's recommendation. (A few minor problems with their software that required reinstalling it twice before it would finish backing stuff up, but other than that, smooth sailing.) That one in particular is nice to have because even if the computer itself is lost, its contents (at least, what you choose of it) is mirrored remotely, and you can turn a new computer into a virtual replica of your old one easily enough.
One of my colleagues had his apartment broken into back in Philly and lost not only his laptop (with about 4 months of non-backed-up dissertation work on it) but also, strangely, some of his irreplaceable field notebooks...but not his TV or anything else valuable. That's what turned me on to backing up in the first place!
My sympathies, U CAN HAS THEM. Cherish what you have, snuggle with your cats — and store your data in as many places as you can, as frequently as possible!
Glad no one was hurt and your furry family members were alright. I know that would have been the first thing to have gone through my mind! Sorry to hear about your stuff, that super sucks. I am not always a fan of humans, this is just another reason.
So sorry! This happened to us too, going on two years ago now. I didn't start feeling back to normal for a few months.
We have cats too, and ours got out but came back inside after the burglars left. It did result in a vet visit, though, because they were so upset that they got in a fight and I found an abscess on one of them a few days later. If your cats were acting aggressive toward each other it would probably be a good idea to look them over for bites (around the head and rump), although they're awful hard to find.
Just wanted to add my sympathies, as well. Losing the hardware is rotten enough, losing thousands of pictures would be damned devastating. Definitely let us know if your camera isn't covered by insurance, I'd also be willing to pitch in a few bucks towards a replacement.
Glad the cats were wise enough to hide and stay put!
Thanks for the kind words and comments, everyone. I know I should have backed everything up earlier, but if nothing else the robbery will make me more conscientious in making sure I have another copy of my photographs elsewhere in case something like this (or even a computer crash) happens again. I'm just glad that the book didn't disappear out the window, too; I would have been even more demoralized had I lost it.
I've got renter's insurance so I'm in the process of getting my claim through to try and get some money to replace the camera & lens. It'll be a complicated process, but I'm hoping that it doesn't give me too much trouble.
Nimravid; The cats seem fine now, although one was very scared of us when we first came back (she normally doesn't hide from people, so we're thinking that the burglar(s) yelled at her or otherwise scared her). The doors to the outside were locked, though (just the inside doors to the actual apt were broken in), so thankfully the cats couldn't have actually left the apartment. They had upset stomachs the whole night, but they're fine now.
Clearly you'll just have to re-enact all those historic events. If you put up a tipjar, I'm sure people would be happy to help fund that project, and any other expenses you've incurred because of this. I know I would.
I concur to this : backup your data !!!