I just found this thread. Thanks for posting it. (And what would a Mudcat thread be without occasional guest pot shots?)

No news on the investigation. Seems the criminal investigation folks take the weekend off, and we had a bank holiday on Monday that they also observed. That probably spells doom for my hard drive. All said and done, I think I prefer that someone format it than they spread the account information around. Speculation is that they won't sell to a pawn shop because they're regularly questioned regarding stolen property, that computers are instead formatted and resold. It is a great loss. Years of work that was imperfectly backed up. I'll get another external hard drive, and this sucker is going someplace totally out of the way when it isn't being written to.

I spoke to the investigator today, and he was surprised to learn that there was information about the theives (because he hadn't read the report yet). You'd think if there was a chance of catching people, like in, there were witnesses, that they might try a little harder to act quickly. "If she recognises them in a line up then there is a good chance of prosecution," he said of my neighbor's role in this. Heck with the "prosecution," the criminal justice system in Texas is a joke. Where are my computer hard drives?

This is turning out to be the February from Hell. Both kids have had the flu (not concurrently), one cat had to go to the vet for an expensive checkup, and now the computers and the house repairs. And guess what--since I telecommute for my university work from home--Allstate caps what I can claim on equipment used for work at $2500! No reason why the limit, it just is there. So now we're doing the dance of what was and wasn't used for work. Everything else is paid for at a "replacement" value (but they want to replace old stuff at the old levels--so there will be a lot of arguing about what comes standard on computers today versus a few years ago, and the relative prices involved). Tons of software went out the door, easily equalling the value of the hardware. I was very efficient, even if my house is messy. I had all of the disks in a shoe box next to the computer, so on those occasions when something had to be reinstalled, it was handy.

There is an essay or two in this.

SRS