Monday, April 16
Alright, let's take a moment to breathe a collective sigh of relief:
*Ahhhhh*
We have our laptop back! For those of you who didn't know or may have forgotten, our laptop computer was stolen last June, and with it all our video and nearly all our pictures from the first 3 months of Ariel's life. Needless to say, it was devastating.
Having all your pictures of your child stolen feels a lot like a kidnapping. During the first couple of days, there were times when I had to go in during the night and look at Ariel asleep in her crib, just to remind myself that I still had HER, that they hadn't actually taken my little girl. After desperate calls to the police and pawn shops and after giving all my neighbors blank CD's and begging them to leave my pictures under my doormat if they found out who had them, I finally let go.
Two months later, we got a call from our insurance company: our computer had been found at a pawn shop. But... even though it was at the pawn shop, it was now legally in police custody, which meant that, in order to get it back, we would have to get a policeman to get a prosecutor (if there WAS a prosecutor) to decide if it was evidence, and if so, could we have it in the meantime, and if not, they would have to fax paperwork to the pawn shop releasing the computer to us, but first we would have to pay for it, or perhaps sue for it in a court, or even both. The past many months have been a series of conflicting and confusing explanations of what had to happen, and unreturned phone calls to Portland Police.
But, on Friday, we finally were able to go down to the pawn shop with an insurance representative and buy back our laptop (which was fine, since our insurance had already bought us a new computer). Obviously, it's been hard to know what to hope for over the past 6 months, since we had no idea what might have been done to our hard drive after it was stolen. Would everything be gone? Would the thief have worked hard to remove any trace of us? Would even our most computer-techie friends be able to retrieve anything?
Well, let's just say this: the only program our thief had downloaded was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! Most of our pics were still in their folders, and the rest of the pics and all our videos were in the Recycling Bin, which this person apparently didn't know enough to empty! Dan was able to restore all the pictures and video, enabling me to share with you some of the pictures that we have waited and hoped so long for:
*Ahhhhh*
We have our laptop back! For those of you who didn't know or may have forgotten, our laptop computer was stolen last June, and with it all our video and nearly all our pictures from the first 3 months of Ariel's life. Needless to say, it was devastating.
Having all your pictures of your child stolen feels a lot like a kidnapping. During the first couple of days, there were times when I had to go in during the night and look at Ariel asleep in her crib, just to remind myself that I still had HER, that they hadn't actually taken my little girl. After desperate calls to the police and pawn shops and after giving all my neighbors blank CD's and begging them to leave my pictures under my doormat if they found out who had them, I finally let go.
Two months later, we got a call from our insurance company: our computer had been found at a pawn shop. But... even though it was at the pawn shop, it was now legally in police custody, which meant that, in order to get it back, we would have to get a policeman to get a prosecutor (if there WAS a prosecutor) to decide if it was evidence, and if so, could we have it in the meantime, and if not, they would have to fax paperwork to the pawn shop releasing the computer to us, but first we would have to pay for it, or perhaps sue for it in a court, or even both. The past many months have been a series of conflicting and confusing explanations of what had to happen, and unreturned phone calls to Portland Police.
But, on Friday, we finally were able to go down to the pawn shop with an insurance representative and buy back our laptop (which was fine, since our insurance had already bought us a new computer). Obviously, it's been hard to know what to hope for over the past 6 months, since we had no idea what might have been done to our hard drive after it was stolen. Would everything be gone? Would the thief have worked hard to remove any trace of us? Would even our most computer-techie friends be able to retrieve anything?
Well, let's just say this: the only program our thief had downloaded was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! Most of our pics were still in their folders, and the rest of the pics and all our videos were in the Recycling Bin, which this person apparently didn't know enough to empty! Dan was able to restore all the pictures and video, enabling me to share with you some of the pictures that we have waited and hoped so long for:
// posted by Jenni @ 8:41 PM 
Comments:
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oh jen! i'm so happy to hear this! when you told me what happened, i was devistated for you. what an awful thing to happen and at the worst possible time (just after ariel was born). i'm so excited that you've got your laptop back, but mostly i'm excited that you have your documentation of ariel's first days. what a freakin' awesome blessing!
Oh my word. What a story. Thank God you got them back!
I HIGHLY recommend you guys get a SmugMug account. You can upload all your photos there, and you can purchase CDs of the archives (as well as prints, etc.). We use it and just love it and the security of knowing that if anything DID happen to our computers, we'd have backup somewhere else.
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I HIGHLY recommend you guys get a SmugMug account. You can upload all your photos there, and you can purchase CDs of the archives (as well as prints, etc.). We use it and just love it and the security of knowing that if anything DID happen to our computers, we'd have backup somewhere else.
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