Sometimes Things Just Suck

Sorry for the rather prolonged delay between posts. I've spent most of the last week having a shit-load of fun . . . yeah, right.

Last Wednesday (March 28) night my truck was broken into. They got away with my laptop, my portable hard-drive, my palm pilot, and one of my digital cameras. Somewhere between $1,800 and $2,000 worth of stuff. Yeah, there were many, many, MANY of those words your mother always told you not to say. (Of course, my grandmother always just to say that you didn't want to say those words too often, because sometimes there's nothing else left to say, so you have to save them up for those times.)

So, I have have been spending the last week or so alternately dealing with the insurance company (who replaced the window, but said I was out of luck on the stuff inside the truck!) and trying to get caught up on my work. On the latter, things could have been worse. I have a CD back-up of all my files from the beginning of last month, so I have all the old stuff. The more recent stuff, however, is another matter. Usually, I would just carry around the portable hard-drive, backing up that information onto my laptop at home on a very regular basis. On this particular Wednesday, however, I was at a workshop and had decided at the last minute to take my laptop along - my note taking is faster and more efficient when I type them than when I hand write - so both pieces were in the same location at the same time. Fortunately, my professors were cool and gave me some time to get caught up. I was supposed to turn in a rough draft of a research paper that Thursday - but since it went away with the rest of my stuff, that wasn't going to happen. Luckily, I had printed out a hard copy of the paper on Friday (March 23), so I didn't have to recreate the whole thing, but all the work I had done over the weekend and during the first half of the week was gone. FUCK! In many ways, this pissed me off the most. This fucker has cost me time and work, in addition to the material loss. But the material loss is just that, material. Things can be replaced. The time and work? No so much!

Things are getting back to normal at this point. I have a plan (sorta) to replace the laptop soon and I have already replaced the palm pilot. Those two are the most important to my day-to-day functioning, so they need(ed) to be replaced first. The portable hard-drive was a convenience more than anything else. I still have an older flash-stick and I can always borrow one of The Overlord's spare portable hard-drives for a bit if I need, so that one can wait a few months. The camera - it was a REALLY nice camera and is one I will definitely replace. But . . . I have another digital (it's just older and not as nice) and I still have my SLR cameras. Replacing my lost digital can wait even longer, then. The last thing this bastard got was the bag all my stuff was in. It's the cheapest piece and it's the easiest to replace, so I'll wait a pay-check or two to take care of that one.

The long and short of it all? My stuff is gone and I probably won't get it back (the Tempe Police took a report over the phone and . . . that was it), I've been busting my ass to get caught up as best I can, and am slowly replacing the material stuff.