Hi folks,

Just thought I'd share something that happened this weekend. As you know, PHP attended TS Performance's event in KY -- very cool, BTW. Anyway, Bill's laptop was stolen. I kid you not. It was "found" by someone responding to our reward. I won't even get into that part. So, in any event, it is being overnighted back to us today.

In the past two months, we have:
- had the flu
- had a death in the family and had to go to MO for the funeral
- had the adenovirus (still do, in fact -- it's hanging on like Mono)
- had a computer die
- actually ran out of programmers to sell and had to have them shipped overnight to us (this is not a bad thing, mind you)
- had a laptop computer stolen

After Billy's computer died and we purchased a new one, we joked around on the phone and told many customers that it can't get much worse. Then his laptop was stolen. The lesson here? NEVER say that it can't get much worse because it can.

(And after much praying for someone to find his computer and get it back to us, we were SO relieved to get that call. As you can imagine, as soon as we hung up the phone, we held hands and prayed again, to thank God for taking care of us.

Lesson number two: Prayer changes things, and God listens! -- before we left for KY, I had a large car magnet made and "installed" on the back of my Caravan that says just that. No joke. Ironic? Maybe.)

I don't mean to preach. My heart is just feeling really happy right now, and I wanted to share.

 

Yikes, someone stole your laptop ...

 

Glad it is being returned and everything is working out. Hopefully they didn't damage it or format the hard drives.

 

I agree, Groovy, enough!

More to the point than destroying programs/data on the drive, were there things there you'd rather keep private, such as bank account numbers, passwords, etc. Or, "install" programs for some of the work that Bill does? You can always reinstall programs and restore data from backups, but personal information....? Please spend a bit of time checking on the kind of "sensitive" data that was out of your hands.

I'm probably saying things you already know, but it doesn't hurt to remind everyone else of the dangers associated with stolen laptops.

And, I suspect it really put a crimp in your ability to do custom tunes on the spot during the event. Hopefully, it happened close to the end of everything.

For a couple trying to start a new business, you two have sure had to overcome some obstacles!

I know there are many on this forum that wish you nothing but happiness and success from now on. I'm one of those!

- Jack

 

That really bites. Having to pay for what is already yours really sucks. Hope you all at least had some fun while you were there!

 

Oh, Jack, you've no idea what was in that laptop case... had it fallen into the "wrong hands," we -- and others -- would have been up a creek, to put it mildly. EVERYTHING Billy does is on his laptop (backed up to another computer, of course), but it would have been BAD. On top of all that, he does have all of his passwords to EVERYTHING on there, too! Duh. That's going to change -- executive decision on my part.

He also keeps other peripheral hardware in there, too, that he uses daily. Can't say what that is, but it was irreplaceable!

Well, we are happy to say that his laptop and EVERYTHING (including a $100 bill!) arrived a few minutes ago. (Kind of restores my faith in people!) It may have cost us $1,000 in reward money, but that's what an EMPTY new laptop would have cost us. <sigh>

Billy's got quite the busy day ahead of him.

 

Ugh! It DOES sound serious! I know when I was teaching, I had what I felt like my entire life's work on my laptop. Backed up, just like yours, but still....

I'm so glad you've gotten it back though. But $1000 must really hurt!

- Jack

 

$1,000 right now is EXTREMELY painful. Ironically, though, the laptop didn't appear until after the reward was posted. Someone from the hotel had "found" it. When I received the phone call, the person on the other end didn't say, "I found your laptop, and you must be going crazy, blah, blah, blah." Her words were, "I'm responding to your notice..." Whatever. The New Yorker in my wants to focus on the cynical side, but I've been trying very hard to focus on the the positive. I've got the proverbial angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other . I've got to believe that there's more to the story than I know. Maybe they really needed the money (heck, they're living in a hotel). Maybe THEY had prayed to God and asked for money, and here comes a laptop and a reward. Maybe God answered both of our prayers at the same time -- we receive the laptop and they receive the money. I don't know.

I believe it was Thursday night before we went to sleep that Billy and I talked about the fact that if the business continues to grow, we really need to do something for the people in this country who need help. We were even talking about setting up a scholarship or something. Maybe this is God's way of telling us we're on the right track -- with helping people, that is? Not sure. Have to pray on it some more.

 

Okay, on the way back from traffic court (that's another story...), Bill's Toyota threw a rod, and is sitting in a parking lot about 10 miles from our house. (I know... serves him right for driving a Toyota, but it was given to us by his mom for free. LOL)

The way things have been going lately, I seriously suggest no one come near us, and we are waiting for a tree to fall on our house. God forbid! ACK! Maybe I should have said that!

 

Okay, on the way back from traffic court (that's another story...), Bill's Toyota threw a rod, and is sitting in a parking lot about 10 miles from our house. (I know... serves him right for driving a Toyota, but it was given to us by his mom for free. LOL)

The way things have been going lately, I seriously suggest no one come near us, and we are waiting for a tree to fall on our house. God forbid! ACK! Maybe I shouldn't have written that!

 

Don't worry Groovey. God will never give you more than you can handle
Just Keep having faith and he WILL bless ya'll

 

Oh, absolutely! I told Bill that he was looking at it the wrong way. His vehicle didn't break down on the highway or anything. He was able to park it in a lovely grocery store parking lot where we could leave it overnight. It would've been a heckuva lot worse if we'd driven the Toyota to KY last weekend, and it died somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

And although his laptop was stolen and cost us $1,000 in reward money, at least we got it back!

It just seems lately that it's one thing after another. But doesn't it ALWAYS happen that way?