Mostly Harmless

It is a dark and stormy night. The power went out. The UPS made a lot of noise. After leisurely shutting down the desktop computer it is eerily quiet. Also it is dark, as I have mentioned.

Note to self: get a UPS for the TiVo. Also include the Firewire drive on the other UPS.

All the networking gear — in the living room “data center” — is not on the UPS. I could plug it in but I doubt that’d be very useful. For the moment my laptop is an island, which will last about another 2 1/2 hours unless the power comes back. If I get terribly bored working on my self evaluation (and “dry-blogging”) I’ll pop in the Hitchhiker’s DVD and watch it with the other audio commentary.

I don’t need to guard my car in the garage, I’d wager, since it’s very dark down there (thus removing one of a potential thief’s convenience factors) and I could very easily hear the alarm since it is eerily quiet, as I have mentioned.

Speaking of car security, which I’ve been investigating a lot since the break-in, the PowerLock seems to be the best anti-theft device you can get. It won’t necessarily prevent your steering column from getting thrashed, unless the potential perps know how to read window stickers (which I think I’ve established is not the case with the dumb-asses around here), but it is “guaranteed” to prevent them from hot-wiring the car. The price isn’t too bad, $200-ish + installation. I’m going to see if anyone around here sells ‘em.

I did order a security camera today, however. Not a crappy X10 camera — I borrowed one and couldn’t get a decent video signal from across the room so I didn’t even attempt sending video through all the concrete and metal between my apartment and the car. (Interestingly my 2.4 GHz cordless phone works perfectly fine by the car so it’s theoretically possible to get a clean wireless video signal from there to here.) What I bought was the MicroEye Digital Video Capture Camera (aka Home Guard). It’s 1/2 the price and has 1/8th of the features of a MemoCam, but it should suffice. All I need to do is point it at the car and any scofflaws who meander past will get their picture taken, covertly. It’s entirely self-contained so no wiring is required, it saves 2,000-8,000 pictures on its smallish (64 meg) flash memory and outputs video directly to a TV. The picture quality should be adequate, I’ll find out in a few days when it arrives.

(and now, after a 3+ hour power outage and just as I hit the red-zone on my battery, we’re back online! And right in time for MythBusters and Top Gear. I’ll have to consult the internet for the “Lost” premiere…)

Well, at least the alarm went off eventually, thus preserving my stereo equipment.

If you were wondering, you get about 1/2 a bucket worth of glass from the back window of a WRX wagon.

I’m waiting for the cops, currently. Someone else right around the corner from me had her car hit too so the cops have been here once today already. No alarm in her car though since The Perp had time to destroy her dash to get to her stereo. She said that every neighbor she’d talked to this morning had had their car broken into while living here. This would be my third time, but the first time nothing has successfully been stolen. (There’s always tomorrow, I suppose, but the subwoofer will be in the apartment.)

Not the brightest bulb, this guy, because he was trying to pry the front door window frame to break in. My car doesn’t have a frame around the windows… which makes it much easier to get in, in fact — which would be the reason for the alarm. Some people don’t notice alarm stickers or blinking red lights, but I guess the actual alarm wakes them up.

If I had some fricken lasers I’d set up a perimeter around the car. Sometimes I think it’s a shame that booby trapping is illegal.

Update – 9/13/05: So, first of all, you can’t get that rear window without ordering it from the Subaru dealer, which took days and days. I was driving around with plastic in place of the back window for a week (I did a lovely job though, it handled highway speeds and was rained on plenty, without incident). Second of all, it costs $1,000. My price: $0.00. Tomorrow I get an estimate on the damage around the driver’s door & the prior hail damage. Pretty much guaranteed to be out $500 + 20% of the cost of a rental car. (The $500 is my $250 deductible twice, once for the hail and once for the vandalism.)

I’ve had a week to think about security system upgrades. I may yet be able to include some frickin’ lasers, along with a motion detector, camera, and bucket of UV dye. I think I’m going to pass on the smoke screen in the car, because by the time the perp has broken in the damage is done. Why can’t these bozos learn how to use a slim jim or something and not cause thousands of dollars of extraneous damage?