Today I was robbed for the first time in my life.
I was waiting on a street corner in San Francisco at noon, sitting at the base of a statue, and pulled out my Macbook Air. I had just gotten online when a motorcyclist roared from behind the statue, passed close by, ripped the computer from my lap, and sped off. I was momentarily stunned, but then raced after him trying to remember identifying features (the license plate was obscured).
The police came on the scene about 4 minutes later, but by then it was too late. The officer called it a “snatch and grab.”
Because the computer was relatively new, I had little personal data on it. Still, it really fried me.
I may not be blogging as frequently in the next week or two.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Wow, that sucks.
Dang, that sucks!
Guess you’ll be paying closer attention to the new Apple macbooks eh?
Crazy news – the karma gods will sort them out (although doesn’t help you atm)… hope you fell better soon…
Holy crap, JD. That is teh suck! I’m just glad you weren’t hurt. I think this might be a sign of the economic times (i.e. crime is up). Did you have “Back to my Mac” enabled on this machine? You could login and photograph the thief with your iSight and send it in to the authorities.
Is there a way to trace it with your login data? These things should come with a built-in homing device, so that when user logs on, it traces back to a data center.
Ok, that outright blows chunks. I’m sorry to hear about it, but maybe it’ll help make people think about investing in laptop security. It can be kinda pricy, but laptop lojack and stuff like it are damn near vital sometimes.
Sorry to hear that, JD. Hang in there (and hope your insurance covers a new mac!)
That sucks bigtime, JD. We were homejacked some weeks ago. It’s strange to know that people came uninvited into your house at night, grabbed the purse of my wife and the car keys. While my house was my safe haven, we are now checking what alarm we’re going to add to our renovation project in the year that follows.
Perhaps laptops should come with a GPS or self destruction tool that you can activate on distance ;)
That’ll learn the bastards…
JD, so sorry to hear this. – steve