Broken into while preparing for Pecha Kucha night

Yesterday afternoon while working on Pecha Kucha slides with Fabiana my car got broken into. I had made the mistake of leaving the GPS on its stand attached to the windscreen and some nasty person passing by decided to smash the window and grab the GPS. Pecha Kucha is on Tuesday 28 September at Juice Bar, 144 Parnell Road. Entry is $9 and it starts at 8:15pm. We are talking on one laptop per child. Read about it here or here.

From Drop Box

Anyway, back to the point of my blog post. The theft happened in Parnell between 4pm and 6pm. I have a car alarm but we didn’t hear it from the apartment. The thief did not look for anything else in the car so luckily they didn’t take my wallet (it was not in plain sight but in the centre console).

We had an olpc XO with us but we had taken that into the apartment (again, XOs don’t get left in plain sight, if it is left in the car it is in the boot and hidden by the parcel tray).

The whole event freaked out my ten year old niece who was hanging out with us.

From Drop Box

It is also quite annoying to have the job of cleaning up after a break-in and all that time lost when you have other things to do with your time. The car insurance company said the replacement of the glass is covered by my insurance with no charges but you then have to take time out of work to get the glass replaced (thanks Elaine for lending us a car for a couple of days). If we want to claim insurance on the GPS then we have to pay the insurance excess, which is not much less than what the GPS is worth so doesn’t seem worth the headache with the insurance company. Our alternative navigation method is already being discussed and we are likely to just use the Android phone instead of getting another GPS.

Lesson learned – don’t leave the GPS in plain sight, even in the day time, no matter where you park.