Service Interruption

I am pretty much out of commission for a few days when it comes to blogging, as I was robbed at gunpoint by two men last night on the way home from a late night at the office, outside my Washington Park home and they took my wallet, phone, laptop, some earbuds, and a calculator.  I cooperated and was not harmed, and I was honestly not really even all that shaken up emotionally. I promptly called the police and they've done what they can, trying to get a fingerprint from my car and taking statements, but, realistically, the prospects of finding the culprits (who face 16-48 years prison terms each if convicted) is dim.

I quickly cancelled credit cards and changed some passwords. Aside from the cash in my wallet, there was little of value that they took that could be of much value to them.  My phone is primitive, my laptop was hardly top of the line hardware even though the information on it was very valuable, and I lost nothing irreplaceable.  A few things that were stolen (but not the laptop or phone) were recovered in an alley, about a mile away, the next day.

So, I'm borrowing computers until I can replace that one that was stolen and then get it up and running. Fortunately, the laptop was password protected and almost all of the important files (except for even a couple of years of browser bookmarks that I use as research notes!) live in the cloud, so while it is a great pain in the butt to replace some of the things that were stolen, it is really just a bump in the road for me.  In a few days, I'll be a few hundred dollars poorer, some of which may be recoverable through insurance if I'm bothered to pursue a claim, and back to normal.

Those guys, in contrast, sooner or later, will either get shot or arrested.  Crime literally doesn't pay well. They need to make multiple robberies of this class every week just to make the equivalent of minimum wage. Even if the odds of being caught per robbery are just 0.5% in any given incident (in reality the clearance rate for robberies is much higher, at almost 30%, so the odds are that they'll eventually be caught, if they aren't shot first, is very high).  Or, they could OD on drugs.  One of my recovered items was in a dumpster with a hypodermic needle on top of it, which is probably not a coincidence.

Bottom line:

As much as it sucks to be a crime victim, this time around, I still almost surely have the better side the deal in the big picture of life.

Now, do these guys still belong in prison?

Absolutely.

Somebody needs to lock them up before someone who handles the situation less calmly is shot and killed, or raped, or whatever, and real harm is done.  And, I won't mourn them if their actions result in them getting shot and killed by somebody.

But, I won't lose any sleep craving revenge over my petty property loss and mild inconvenience in  this particular incident, even if it does interrupt my blogging a bit.