Hi all.

Well disaster has once again struck.  On Thursday night last some delightful creep broke into my car and stole everything of any value to me.

Laptop, harddrive, software, camera, lenses... all of it.

Little creep even took my college rucksac with all my storyboards inide - the only copy of it all!!!

So, in a vain attempt to rebuild things, if anyone anywhere has absolutely anything of mine, any wings models, any bryce scenes, or any zip files of any kind - anything at all, etc, please, please, can we find some way for me to re-aquire them?  Download of some kind?

Please?

I will be replacing the laptop sometime in a week's time or so - hopefully, and then I can start to re-build.

Holy Crap!  I hope they catch the little bastard and string him up by his privates.

I don't know your product line out there so I don't know if I have anything of yourse off the top of my head (organization?  What organization?)  Is there an online list I can double check?

mdb

It's terrible when your stuff is stolen.  I know, my son just had his $1000 guitar taken from his truck.  He went in the house to go to the bathroom, comes back out, his guitar was gone.  Always lock up and don't leave anything in site in your car!!!

Anyway, it's kinda sick, but check all the dumpsters near where your stuff was taken - most theiefs will dump whatever can identify the owner (backpacks, etc.) - they only want what they can sell.  My husbands briefcase was stolen once with software he was working on as a contractor - we found his case a block away with only his calculator missing.

My heart goes out to you - and I hope who did this has justice served to them.

There's been a rash of hold ups on my wife's campus for laptops.  Check local pawn and computer stores too.  You may get lucky.

Even try E-bay and such. A moped was stolen from a guy living in my street only to find just an hour later for auction on www.markplaats.nl (Dutch auction-site).

As for leaving valuables in your car, sadly you can't do that anymore, and even when you take them out your car its still not safe, a empty holder for your navigation system is enough for a break a window, i might that you just hid it under your seat or something like that.

hmm..I had a model of one of your spaceships, that I redid for a question you had, but I think it was the 3rd thing you'd ever done, and it's yours if you want it (and I can find it..;)

You can probably download your gallery ( I do, but I wear tinfoil beanies too..;) and get some of it back that way.

Sad to say; backup, burn, or write your work on a regular basis. I've been burned (but not stolen from) too.

Don't know if this helps, but your network card has something called a MAC address. It's a long hex string (well, about 12 characters or so, I haven't counted), but it's unique to  your computer, over the entire internet. If you know that number (hopefully), it could likely be found if the git ever logs on. Just a thought.

Thanks everyone, 

I'm not sure what bits of my models or mats etc may be circulating around, I did have a package I was making for possible sale to daz or whatever, but that I had on a secure page on my website - which is no longer there, so unless one of the 3 or 4 people whom I asked to look at it actually still have a copy of that on their computers, I'll never get that back.

Pakled, if you're around, I've also lost all those loverly mats you sent me, so if you could... possibly... send me them again???

I had a load of free stuff from Daz, which will never be available again, so that's gone for good... sob!

Ah pakled, there you are.  Unfortunately they stole all my software and CD back ups as well as the back ups on the external hard drive too.  Dunno what a MAC address might be - never heard of it before so no chance I'd have a record of it anywhere.

Quote - hmm..I had a model of one of your spaceships, that I redid for a question you had, but I think it was the 3rd thing you'd ever done, and it's yours if you want it (and I can find it..;)

You can probably download your gallery ( I do, but I wear tinfoil beanies too..;) and get some of it back that way.

Yes please, anything at all would help. No idea which ship that might be, but one is better than none.

That sucks. You have my condolences. I have a friend on the other side of the country - we often send each other DVDs of our latest stuff in case of just such an event, or some other form of catastrophy. Hearing this I think I'll go and make one right now. Hope you get your stuff back.

Do you know what freebies you had from Daz. Surely as they were free then any one else who D/Led the same ones could pass them on? I have backup cd's of most of my downloaded stuff back some years, and quite a bit of that is from Daz. Would only mean going through about 25 or so discs.

Fran: I remember sending you some stuff by mail a while ago. If you can remember what it was or if you can think of anything I might have let me know. 
Also, e-mail me with your phone number and I will give you a ring and see if there is anything you need.
Bryster3D@aol.com

Fran, I know the feeling personally. I had a laptop stolen out of my car a few years back. You come upon the scene and feel violated. In my case, not only was the laptop missing, but I had a broken window as well to get repaired. What Peggy said is true. At that time, I search the local trash bin and found the carry case. They had extracted the charging unit and left everything else. Since that point in time, I password protect the BIOS of my laptop. That way, should lowlife steal the laptop, they will be locked out and changing the hard drive will not fix the situation for them. Basically, without the password, the laptop is a hunk of junk. Good luck recovering your efforts!

My heart goes out for you also.  I have watched your progression for a long time now.  I is truly sad someone can take it all away so easily.  I don't think I have anything of yours but I can and did say a prayer you will recover the stuff.  I also pray the assailant will stump his toe and repent for the evil and pain he has caused.

If it's any consolation, the person who committed this crime most likely did so out of desperation, either as a street living kid or a drug addict of some sort seeking money for the next fix.  No doubt in a few years you will hardly remember what happened, will be living a fullfilly and happy life and they will still be existing in misery or more likely be dead...

Just a thought.

My heart goes out to you Fran or anyone thats had anything stolen. 

Its a terrible feeling when it happens to you. The wife and i both know that feeling. While living in Adelaide we had the house broke into and we had $1400 worth of radio equipment stolen along with VCR, stereo, cameras and other things of value. Only thing we could not replace was a wedding ring that belonged to the wifes grandmother which ment more to her than anything else in the house.

We found out 2 years after leaving Adelaide that it was a friend of ours that broke in and took everything so he could get some money for his drugs. God knows how much he sold it all for.

They smashed the passenger side window, and crowbarred out the CDplayer/radio, breaking the disc storage section underneath it in the process;

they took:
My cannon EOS20D camera plus all 3 lenses, the laptop - not a cheap one,
the 400 gig harddrive with all my family photos, all my bryce work, wings work, Cinema4D work, basically all my work of any kind,

including 1 completed novel, about 5 or 6 partially completed ones, plus various short stories.  All my 3 d art work.
Not satisfied with that they also took my 2 cases of software, which included all the back up discs, of software and photos and work,...

so basically they cleaned me out completely.

They took every single bag in the car, one had my gold ring Ian bought for me in Oman, my rucksac which had my pencilcase, with all my pens, pencils, rubbers, nail files, nail clippers(3 of them) my stapler and staples, my good watch that my daughter bought for me 2 Xmases ago was in one of the pockets - she doesn't know about that yet, and I'm not telling her, as I went down there to see her - hoping to meet my new grandchild, which was due on the 29th of Nov, but still isn't here yet!

200 odd storyboards were also in there, totally irreplaceable work which I need right now for college.... 

and loads more...

anything anyone can think of to have happen to these/this creep/s isn't anything like what I have in mind for them.  If curses worked, they're be permanentley writhing in agony for the rest of a very, very long and miserable life, Dante's Hell is too good for them.

We've had to take the savings we had (- meant to augment Ian's government pension) out in order to replace stuff, as of all our various insurances, none of them covered us for this.

Ian wants to buy a ferrari laptop - Lol!  

With racing stripe!  rofl!

I had that happen to me back in '01..just kids or something. Got the police to look, got fingerprinted, they said that about 11 cars had been hit that night, getting Christmas presents, etc. They just got my stereo. I moved out of there as soon as I could. And that's where the adventure began.

Fran, IM your email addy, and I'll try to remember what I sent. I'll also send you a list of sites with Mats, so you can flesh out what's missing. I'll look tonight to see if I still have the spaceship.

This was a Wings thread about a year ago, you were asking about constructing one, and I just copied what I saw. How far you've come since then..;) talk at ya later.

Thanks pakled.  IMing you now

Fran, 

Really sorry to hear that. Possibly it might not be much help but the internet archive grabs copies of websites from all over and stores them. Go to:
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Type your old website address in the wayback machine. If they took a snapshot a page will come up with all the different dates they saved your webpage. Check every date because they save things sometimes then skip them on the next snapshot.

Not that it helps much but I heard a story that might get you a little revenge. During one of the New York garbage strikes a fellow got this bright idea. He took some old Christmas wrapping paper and boxed up his garbage in it. He left the boxes in his unlocked car and every morning someone had stolen them. I understand leaving cow-chips ahoy cookies are also a good deterrent against future thefts.

Fran, sorry to hear this, makes my stomach turn just reading about it. They sure hit you hard.

check your  email, Fran..;)

I have the copy of your daz package that I reviewed. Drop me a line to figure out how to get it back to you.

Yikes, that's gotta be even worse feeling then losing a hard drive and having no backup!  Man, do I feel for you! I wish I had some of your content to give back... :(

Quote - Fran, 

Really sorry to hear that. Possibly it might not be much help but the internet archive grabs copies of websites from all over and stores them. Go to:
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Type your old website address in the wayback machine. If they took a snapshot a page will come up with all the different dates they saved your webpage. Check every date because they save things sometimes then skip them on the next snapshot.

Thanks for the suggestion.  Unfortunately although the main page is there, the one I needed isn't.