Sometime between midnight and 2:00am last night, somebody pried open my roommate Kai’s locked window and stole his laptop. Thankfully, it is covered by the college’s insurance policy, though he still lost about a month’s worth of work – including draft work on the research design essay. With the police arriving at around 4:00am and leaving after 5:00am, accompanied by the sounds of early morning birds, it was another very late night. Given that Kai had to catch a bus to the airport at 8:00am to fly back to Germany, that is especially true for him.
This is the second laptop belonging to a member of the M.Phil in IR program to be stolen from a house on Church Walk this year. It’s enough to make you rather nervous, especially since those of us with rooms on ground level with large windows can do relatively little to deter theft. I shall, at least, resume my practice of twice-weekly backups to the DPIR terminal server.
Was the laptop the only thing stolen?
Thankfully, no. Whoever did it didn’t even come into the flat, they just pried the window open and grabbed it off Kai’s desk, leaving ethernet and USB cables trailing outside.
R.K.,
That is probably a good idea. There’s even a steel ring bolted into my wall that would serve as a good point of attachment. I will have a look and see if I can find such a cable in a shop, before I try buying one online.
I got one from ebay – good for when you fancy a coffee whilst working in the library, too.
Paul,
Leaving a laptop in a university library with anything less than four stout men with automatic weapons guarding it is an act of lunacy.
At the Koerner Library at UBC, someone stole a blue Mountain Equipment Co-op fleece off the back of a chair that I was sitting on at the time.
Sleeplessness? Bah!
Sleeping is giving in,
no matter what the time is.
Sleeping is giving in,
so lift those heavy eyelids.
People say that you’ll die
faster than without water.
But we know it’s just a lie,
scare your son, scare your daughter.
People say that your dreams
are the only things that save ya.
Come on baby in our dreams,
we can live our misbehavior.
Every time you close your eyes
Lies, lies!
My brother made a video to that song.
It is much better sung than written.
A cable lock for your laptop is a fairly inexpensive and effective form of protection. That’s provided you have something solid to which it can be attached.
For instance, this one is only about forty bucks.
For some reason this video doesn’t appear in the normal list of your brother’s videos.
There are more. So many more!
Interesting. Why don’t they show up when you do a Google Video search?
Well, you see Milan: when you do a Google search for “Mica Prazak,” you only find videos that have those words somewhere in the description… That’s what doing a search means.
Sorry to hear of the loss – glad it’s insured, but too bad the work is unlikely to be covered (and potentially worth far more)
My advice is to regularly email your latest drafts to yourself and keep them in a large inbox (e.g. gmail) – also can be accessed anywhere!
Ben,
I make regular backups of everything school related to the DPIR terminal server (where triplicate backups are made automatically). I also try to keep a reasonably current copy of all school related stuff on an external hard drive, as well as making ad hoc backups to CDs, webspace I run, and my USB key.
The chances of me losing something vital are thus relatively slim.