It's been a week.

[thecomputerguy]

Monday I go onsite to a church in a quiet neighborhood away from all traffic to do our final walkthrough before we deploy 15 AP's to cover the church in WiFi. I had the building plans on my laptop and I didn't want to have to lug it around so I emailed it to myself in the morning so I could access it from my phone and forward it to all those involved while onsite. The whole consult took about 30 minutes since we've already been out there several times and this was the final.

As we were wrapping things up one of the admins walks back to us and says, "Hey does anyone drive a Ford Escape?" I answer, "Yes I do", already on edge. He says, "I think someone broke into your car" My mind starts racing, praying my window just spontaneously combusted but nope. My passenger window shattered, my backpack with my Laptop and all of my onsite gear stolen. The other vendor onsite with me had his iPad on his dash with his vehicle unlocked but nope, his stuff was safe.



My backpack was on the floorboard so someone had to of been snooping around through my windows and did a smash and grab. None of it, the window, they gear covered by insurance due to my deductible, it wasn't worth a claim.

Did the whole thing wasted half a day with police, insurance etc. Rescheduled my appointments for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because I didn't have a vehicle that could accommodate all of the equipment I need to perform onsite appointments. Window is scheduled for repair Tuesday, gets delayed until Wednesday due to parts availability.

Tuesday I get to my office I rent in a commercial space and I notice the drop ceiling is sagging right above where I sit. There's also an AC duct and a light above where I sit. I and the property manager assume some of the drop ceiling cables had broken as this has happened before. I go out and get lunch and come back and it's MASSIVELY worse. They call the drop ceiling repair guy out on Tuesday, he cancels for Wednesday. He comes out Wednesday and drops a couple of panels and calls me immediately and says he refuses to touch it because it's not the drop ceiling. A Roof joist has cracked and almost split in half, right above where I sit. I apparently didn't save the picture of when it got way worse but this is how it started.



They instruct me I need to move out into a temporary office until they can repair it and get a structural engineer out to certify the repair which will take between 3-8 weeks. So I cancel Thursdays appointments to spend most of the day moving myself and all my stuff into a temporary office.

Thankfully my new Laptop was delivered Wednesday otherwise I would have had no computer at all to work on.

TL;DR: My car got broken into, all my stuff stolen, almost died.

Here's to better weeks.

 

[ThatPlace928]

OMG, I would have cried first, then screamed as long and as loud as I could. I'd be so furious. I hate thieves and liars more than anything else.

On the bright side, the ceiling panel guy could have done shoddy work and just evened things out to look good, make a few bucks, and leave. This guy did you a HUGE favor. Regardless of the mess of having to relocate, he saved your life.

Rough weeks happen. Lord knows, I've had my share. I pray everything gets straightened out and the following weeks treat you a whole lot better.

BTW, did you have everything backed up to a disk or cloud and are you able to get everything onto the new laptop?

 

[thecomputerguy]

OMG, I would have cried first, then screamed as long and as loud as I could. I'd be so furious. I hate thieves and liars more than anything else.

On the bright side, the ceiling panel guy could have done shoddy work and just evened things out to look good, make a few bucks, and leave. This guy did you a HUGE favor. Regardless of the mess of having to relocate, he saved your life.

Rough weeks happen. Lord knows, I've had my share. I pray everything gets straightened out and the following weeks treat you a whole lot better.

BTW, did you have everything backed up to a disk or cloud and are you able to get everything onto the new laptop?

Thanks

My Laptop and Desktop / are dummy stations, I don't keep any data on either of them and everything I use is cloud based. Both are password protected and encrypted.

 

[britechguy]

I'm sorry for your losses, all of 'em. I'm sure you're thankful, though, that "what is lost can always be regained," when it comes to what happened. This, too, shall pass!

 

[frase]

Damn I thought I had a crap week, hope everything works out in the end for you. At least I suppose you didnt get shot or stabbed when confronting the offender or squished by the ceiling.

 

[Rigo]

Monday I go onsite to a church in a quiet neighborhood away from all traffic to do our final walkthrough before we deploy 15 AP's to cover the church in WiFi. I had the building plans on my laptop and I didn't want to have to lug it around so I emailed it to myself in the morning so I could access it from my phone and forward it to all those involved while onsite. The whole consult took about 30 minutes since we've already been out there several times and this was the final.

As we were wrapping things up one of the admins walks back to us and says, "Hey does anyone drive a Ford Escape?" I answer, "Yes I do", already on edge. He says, "I think someone broke into your car" My mind starts racing, praying my window just spontaneously combusted but nope. My passenger window shattered, my backpack with my Laptop and all of my onsite gear stolen. The other vendor onsite with me had his iPad on his dash with his vehicle unlocked but nope, his stuff was safe.

View attachment 16110

My backpack was on the floorboard so someone had to of been snooping around through my windows and did a smash and grab. None of it, the window, they gear covered by insurance due to my deductible, it wasn't worth a claim.

Did the whole thing wasted half a day with police, insurance etc. Rescheduled my appointments for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because I didn't have a vehicle that could accommodate all of the equipment I need to perform onsite appointments. Window is scheduled for repair Tuesday, gets delayed until Wednesday due to parts availability.

Tuesday I get to my office I rent in a commercial space and I notice the drop ceiling is sagging right above where I sit. There's also an AC duct and a light above where I sit. I and the property manager assume some of the drop ceiling cables had broken as this has happened before. I go out and get lunch and come back and it's MASSIVELY worse. They call the drop ceiling repair guy out on Tuesday, he cancels for Wednesday. He comes out Wednesday and drops a couple of panels and calls me immediately and says he refuses to touch it because it's not the drop ceiling. A Roof joist has cracked and almost split in half, right above where I sit. I apparently didn't save the picture of when it got way worse but this is how it started.

View attachment 16111View attachment 16112

They instruct me I need to move out into a temporary office until they can repair it and get a structural engineer out to certify the repair which will take between 3-8 weeks. So I cancel Thursdays appointments to spend most of the day moving myself and all my stuff into a temporary office.

Thankfully my new Laptop was delivered Wednesday otherwise I would have had no computer at all to work on.

TL;DR: My car got broken into, all my stuff stolen, almost died.

Here's to better weeks.

That's terrible!
When you think about all the trouble they created vs what benefit they're going to get out of the whole mess.
At least they can't get access to your data
Lesson learnt, least of the trouble's lagging stuff to safety when going places.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Thanks

My Laptop and Desktop / are dummy stations, I don't keep any data on either of them and everything I use is cloud based. Both are password protected and encrypted.

With a boot pin? Because if you didn't do that, bitlocker unlocks the drive by simply moving the TPM module and the SSD to another machine, login is bypassed because the platform booted to another OS.

This is less of a problem if the TPM is firmware integrated, but mainboards that fit the CPU are even EASIER to source than the equipment to desolder and move a TPM module. Never assume encryption kept the data safe...

Still the odds of the above are fairly low, probably just some tweaker that wanted some cash.

As for the drop cieling... I've been there and done that! More than once actually! It's never fun, and you weren't in any real danger yet, though it is best that beam get replaced sooner rather than later and in the moment? Yeah... terrifying!

 

[thecomputerguy]

With a boot pin? Because if you didn't do that, bitlocker unlocks the drive by simply moving the TPM module and the SSD to another machine, login is bypassed because the platform booted to another OS.

This is less of a problem if the TPM is firmware integrated, but mainboards that fit the CPU are even EASIER to source than the equipment to desolder and move a TPM module. Never assume encryption kept the data safe...

Still the odds of the above are fairly low, probably just some tweaker that wanted some cash.

As for the drop cieling... I've been there and done that! More than once actually! It's never fun, and you weren't in any real danger yet, though it is best that beam get replaced sooner rather than later and in the moment? Yeah... terrifying!

I live in California, and while living in one of the safest counties in the state the homeless problem has gotten increasingly worse over the last 5-7 years because CA politics embrace the homeless issue. There are homeless encampments in any direction in any urban area.

This is most likely 95%+ chance a case of a homeless person on a bicycle smashing the window and riding away with it. It will probably be pawned and factory reset. Thankfully like I said before it had no data on it ... I don't keep any data on any of my devices so I just signed out of everything that device was signed into remotely.

That and I had actually reformatted the system about a week prior so it was just about clean as it gets aside from being signed into my chrome/Gdrive profile. Anything else in there would have been my password manager or Syncro which are both heavily protected.

I'm also continuing to monitor sign in's.

They'll probably pawn it for $100 and someone will end up factory resetting it or it's in the trash now because they couldn't get into it. The chances of this turning into a NVme extraction + tools to do that and do anything with it are pretty darn slim.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I live in California, and while living in one of the safest counties in the state the homeless problem has gotten increasingly worse over the last 5-7 years because CA politics embrace the homeless issue. There are homeless encampments in any direction in any urban area.

This is most likely 95%+ chance a case of a homeless person on a bicycle smashing the window and riding away with it. It will probably be pawned and factory reset. Thankfully like I said before it had no data on it ... I don't keep any data on any of my devices so I just signed out of everything that device was signed into remotely.

That and I had actually reformatted the system about a week prior so it was just about clean as it gets aside from being signed into my chrome/Gdrive profile. Anything else in there would have been my password manager or Syncro which are both heavily protected.

I'm also continuing to monitor sign in's.

They'll probably pawn it for $100 and someone will end up factory resetting it or it's in the trash now because they couldn't get into it. The chances of this turning into a NVme extraction + tools to do that and do anything with it are pretty darn slim.

I agree, but there isn't "nothing on it". That's all I wanted to point out!

As soon as you sign into GDrive / OneDrive, you've got assets on the endpoint. That's why encryption matters so much to begin with. And we are starting to see an increase in thefts driven by the specific desire to take keys off laptops. But, that shouldn't be happening here, the only places I've seen that are high scale areas, if this had happened in Google's parking lot for example I'd be worried.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Update:



I'm 4 months into a 3 year lease.

 

[Sky-Knight]

The scarier part?

All that heavy timber up there came from the same batch... so the odds of another one cracking are substantial.

Again, it's not like the roof will cave in, but it's not fun either!

 

[brandonkick]

*chows voice* but did you die?