Well, I haven’t bloged much for the last few weeks, and I thought I should give some explanation, and catch up to date.
During the first week of this month my computer hard drive died completely, the computer wouldn’t boot, nada. The drive was completely dead. I have been making backups but… the last one was over a month old. So I bought a new drive, installed it in the laptop, re-installed linux, then restored. It wouldn’t have been to much of a problem; but as some of you know, I am working on a website at www.SmallBusinessSense.com and I had been writing a book(let) that is to be a major part of the site. I didn’t have any backup copies of the book at all, so I lost it. It was discouraging, and “motivating” (angering) so after getting the computer re-setup I attacked it and haven’t written much of anything while I was working on it since. But the text of the book is now finished, and I am working on proofreading and page layout, and then will post it to the site at www.smallbusinesssense.com/how-to-start-and-grow-your-mowing-business I finished it on Saturday, and was planning on blogging, but then we had another event.
Last Sunday Heather and I decided to take a walk in the afternoon, it was a rather dreary day, grey, and with a light rain trying to turn to snow. Salt Lake is pretty grey anyway in my opinion, but that day there just wasn’t much life out. There is a decent park about a mile from where we live, and we went there, almost no one else was around, and parked, no one else was in the parking lot, and then had a nice walk. I think we where back at the car a bit past seven. Heather likes to drive around, so we drove about town, found new streets/areas we hadn’t seen, talked, and got back to the house at about 10pm, we got out of the car and didn’t see Heather’s purse, shrug, we thought she probably didn’t bring it so we had a look in the house, and it wasn’t there either. We knew that she hadn’t taken it out of the car, so it couldn’t have been lost, but it just wasn’t there. Heather remembered taking it, but it wasn’t in the car, we didn’t lock the car. We never had problems before. (Once someone did break into the car of one of the other tenants that is parked near our car, and rummaged through our car, but since we didn’t lock it they didn’t break anything, and that time there was nothing worth taking. But that was a while ago, and we didn’t see a need to lock it.) We where concerned, Heather had her drivers license, SS card, debit card, camera, phone, etc in her purse. We immediately checked online to see if the debit card had been used, and it had been used four times, for a total of about $200. We immediately called and froze the checking account, and our main debit cards. We then decided to go back to the park and just check around, since we thought that whoever stole it might just keep the valuable items and discard the purse, and Heather’s journal which was in it. We checked all the trash cans in the park, and all around the road that runs through the park but didn’t have any luck. Then headed back home. Once we got there we canceled Heather’s phone, and then started to make a list of things that where in the purse, so we would know what they had, and what we needed to take care of. I was thinking and noticed that Heather wasn’t wearing her ring, the last time I had seen it was in church that day; Heather’s hands are swelling some with being pregnant, and she sometimes takes it off and puts it in her wallet. I asked her if it was still in her wallet…. it was.
Losing the ring is the big deal, we wouldn’t care so much about the other items, but the ring was her wedding ring, and it was expensive, about $1900. We have filled a police report, and are going to go around to pawn shops latter today, but I think we only have about a one in three chance of finding it.
It has been eye opening how much value and information was in her purse, and has made us think about how we are keeping things safe. It has been an interesting month with me losing information from my hard drive failing, including the part of the book I was working on, and the baptism photos, and then all the stuff in Heathers purse. I had taken photos of most of the cards in Heather’s wallet, which is really nice because then we know what they stole, and what we need to close down, or get new of. There was alot of stuff, insurance information, ss card, drivers license, two debit cards, all her passwords and such where in her journal/notebook, library cards, her aircraft mechanic certification card etc. I think to that we haven’t heard the end of it. I think they didn’t just happen to see the purse and take it, I think they where looking, and know how to make the most of what they stole. We are placing freezes on her credit report, and planning on getting identity theft insurance (it doesn’t cost very much, and they will handle any problems that crop up from someone pretending to be you). Heather’s information has really had bad luck. About a year ago Heather was sick and went to the ER, and then a few months latter the hospital here in Salt Lake had a backup of its database stolen. It was big news here, they had the medical records, and personal information for about 600,000 people, including Heather, in that backup. And now this theft as well.
I have been surprised lately by how much criminal activity there is. It used to be that I never saw it, but besides Heather’s purse beings stolen, and another of the tenants car being broken into, I have had several people try and scam me. I have been trying to sell our car, and a ring we found, on craigslist. We found the ring in the road, it looks like someone lost it in the snow and then it was run over by a snowplow. We cleaned it up and repaired it, and then posted signs for anyone to claim it. Since no one has we are trying to sell it, and the our car. Everytime I post the ring to criagslist, I get several emails within the hour that end up being people trying to scam me out of it, I have lost count now, but it has been more then 20 times, and I have had three people try and scam me out of the car, which I am a bit surprised at. I also know of a musician who was just scammed, I had never heard of it happening exactly as it did to him: he has a band and they regularly play at gigs. Someone contacted them and asked if they would play at a wedding, they said sure, and a price of $2400 was agreed upon. The musician suggested that they pay half up front, and half after the wedding, but the couples said, no, that ok, and just gave them the $2400. A week or so latter, they called back, and said that the brides mother had died, and that they where going to wait on the wedding, and could they get a refund? The musician saw that the check had cleared, so he wrote them a check for $2400 and sent it back and forgot about it. Now a month latter the bank tells him that the original check wasn’t valid after all. They are required by law to clear funds within a few business days, but don’t actually get around to checking the accounts for up to a month. So he is out over 2K
Heather and I are now going to be a little paranoid. We will get some insurance money back for the ring (a thousand) because of renters insurance, but we are getting jewelry insurance, and going to have Heather’s other pieces appraised. We are also getting some identity theft insurance, and going to take pictures and document everything of value, and are thinking about keeping very little of value in our wallets, and finding some way of keeping things safer. Probably keeping everything on the computer, encrypting it, and getting some remote/online backup as well. I am glad we had the insurance that we did, but we are also looking into how all our other affairs stand. We have upted our auto insurance, and are just looking into what steps we should take. Time to make it impossible, or harmless if Murphy’s law should come into effect again. We somewhat had a warning last month, when my boss was in an auto accident and I saw how much of a mess his records where in (I helped his family search through his office and house here where we are working) We are going to have everything in order now.
/
