Coming from the countryside, I'm never completely used to the big city, even after being here for five years. Yesterday, the alien-factor increased to eleven as we came home to find our house had been broken into. The first back door was pulled off it's hinges and the second back door had a glass panel smashed and the robber climbed through it, losing a small amount of blood in the process.
Having every form of storage opened and emptied is a weird thing to find, everything normally unseen is now seen, everything once hidden is now on view. It also ruins your plans for the evening and the next day, time and a merry disposition are uninsurable commodities.
The police officers who came last night were friendly and understanding, the contrast between their towering stature and the small ceilings of the old house seemed oddly appropriate for the situation. A pair of equally friendly and polite, yet more conventionally sized, officers came today to do the forensic bit. One of our close friends dashed over and bought us a Chinese last night, while our handyman came and nailed the back door in place. We have talked to the banks, changed the sheets, cleaned the toilet, done the washing up.
I just ran emerge --sync on my server, and now I am sitting at Elinks blogging. We now try to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, tidy up the house and realign my home network. Having your main study bag and laptop stolen is rather inconvenient to say the least. If anyone sees a white Macbook with a Dvorak keyboard running Gentoo Linux, let me know.
This ward has one of the most concentrated population of students anywhere in the world, so it is a really cool and trendy place with loads of pubs, restaurants, shops and so on. After googling today, it seems that it also has the highest burglary rates in the city, and of one the highest burglary rates in England (outside London). Like scavenging animals that prey on young birds still in the nest, so these criminals target students.
That's all I have to say at the moment, except for "oh, poo".
<p>Sorry to hear that, Zeth - having your home broken into must be a horrible
experience. I hope that everything goes smoothly with the insurance etc.</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Phill</li>
</ul>
<p>Hi Zeth, that really sucks man. The same thing happened to me 2 months ago,
except that nothing but my computers were stolen.
The most important thing is getting the insurance money. I didn't have much
trouble with that and I do have a better computer now.
The biggest thing I lost was the data on the hard drives, but I forgot most
of it, so I don't really care anymore.</p>
<p>It's good to hear you have friends to help you through the aftermath. Being
able to do fun stuff helps a lot, and looking - and being able to buy from
insurance money! - all new things is fun too.</p>
<p>I hope you'll be able to take it easy and just concentrate on your emotional
wellbeing.</p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>Check the pawn shops. When our house was broken into we found a load of my
N64 carts in the nearest "pawn shop". Indentifiable because they had <em>my save
games</em> on them. The owner of said shop was also a crook (when we asked him if
the person who had sold him these had sold him anything else he said no; that
turned out to be a lie when we recovered my N64 from the same shop a few days
later). Police were, in my case, completely useless.</p>
<p>Needless to say, it sucks and you have my sympathy.</p>
<p>I sorry to hear that. about 2 months ago We had are house broken into as
well. The feel that someone just looked though all your stuff it's really
hard.
It took some time but we are finally getting things back in order. I hope the
same for you too.
Todd</p>