Burglarized

Posted by: JJC1138 on: February 5, 2007

• In: Life
• Leave a Comment

The dark shadow of crime overcame the Colverson family’s suburban bliss last night. At sometime between 03:30 (when Ma & Pa went to bed) and 05:30 (when I came down to get something to eat), someone came into our dining room through the open window (which I didn’t know you could fit a person through), nicked both my parents’ laptops, and then skedaddled out the back door.

The most unpleasant part for me is that I was awake upstairs and didn’t hear a thing (I had the TV on; one of those god-awful VH1 “Fabulous Life Of…” shows, if you must know). If I’d have gotten the munchies half an hour earlier, I guess I might have faced a very sticky situation. I’m pretty sure you’d have to notice the light coming out of my window as you walked down the garden towards the dining room so the burglar(s) must’ve been pretty stupid, desperate, or ballsy.

So, as I’ve heard it does, it’s made me feel quite uncomfortable and rather vulnerable to think of some weirdos walking around our garden and house. I guess I feel a little less innocent (but I was pretty fucking innocent to start with), and I’m already thinking of the best places to put security cameras, but perhaps closing windows and curtains and not leaving laptops out in plain sight would be a more sensible start. I guess the important thing to remember is that they really only want to take your stuff, so the chances of getting into any sort of violent conflict are really vanishingly small.

So, in the aftermath a couple of police came round and then a few hours later someone else came to get fingerprints. I was asleep through both of those, but from what I hear they were good. I’m quite impressed that they bother with the forensics. Apparently they probably already know whodunit from the modus operandi, but I don’t know how useful the footprint and a palm print that they got will be (there weren’t any usable fingerprints it seems).

The sodding insurance won’t pay out because we don’t have locks on all the windows (and that’s probably academic since the window was open), so M&D are not in the best moods (they seem to be whizzing around the five stages of loss at great speed).

I have to admit to being more than a little glad that nothing of mine was taken. If I lost my computer I’d be devastated, frankly, so I’m gunna move up my plans to get some sort of remote backup regime going. I already do DVD backups of important stuff, but if they were (inadvertently) stolen too, or the house burnt down, I think I’d give up on this computer stuff and go and live in the woods.

Mum’s already bought a replacement laptop on eBay (exact same model, and no, it’s not the actual stolen one), and Dad’s probably gunna use this as an excuse to get a MacBook, which will make me fume with jealousy, but at least it’s a silver lining that he gets a new toy.