Burgled

Of course, my daughter hadn’t gotten around to getting renter’s insurance: she was too busy at school. I have a call in to my own insurance agent, to see if my homeowner’s insurance will cover some of the loss. I don’t have much hope: even if they do cover it, they’ll probably depreciate the value of what was stolen from my daughter to something below the claim deductible.

Meanwhile, my daughter had papers and presentations due, and needed another laptop pronto. I picked one possibility out of a CompUSA sale flyer for her, a Compaq Presario, but it wasn’t exactly what she wanted, so once she and her roommates got things under control at the apartment she went shopping for a laptop, as she really couldn’t wait for shipment.

The laptops on offer at Circuit City and Best Buy didn’t impress her; she wound up at a CompUSA near campus. She eventually decided on a Toshiba Satellite U205-S5058, an ultra-portable full-featured notebook that comes with Windows Vista Business installed. At my insistence, she also bought a security cable that fits into the lock slot on her new notebook. There’s no sense putting a new horse in the barn after the old one bolts unless you’re going to start closing the barn doors.

I haven’t asked what her backup situation was when the laptop was stolen, because I don’t want to make things worse. I’ve been nagging her for years to make regular backups; she may well have decided I was right last year when her old laptop started to have intermittent problems booting. In any case, what’s gone is most likely gone.

Sic transit gloria mundi.