Topic: We've been broken into!

[Francois]

Last night we had the visit of thieves. They forced their way into the garden shed and ran away with some tools.
A pressure washer, weed wacker and a circular saw.
But they did leave an old Argus C3 and a lunchbox pinhole camera... I have the feeling this whole thing means something... but what? 

[Bryan]

I'm sure they just didn't recognize the quality craftsmanship of your lunchbox pinhole camera.

[Faintandfuzzy]

Damn...I hate that.  I recall the feeling of walking to my car one morning only to see the sun visors down...when I hadn’t left them that way.

Now...the stars must have aligned on that pinhole camera.

[Bryan]

I had my 1972 Plymouth Duster broken in to.  They started pulling the knobs off the stereo like they were going to steal it.  Must have realized it was a worthless pice of crap and left it.  Since that was the most valuable thing in the car nothing was stolen. 

I’ve had other things stolen. Even though it was mostly worthless junk it’s still very upsetting.  Had they asked me for it I would have given it to them but since they stole it I want to bonk them over the head with it. 

[irv_b]

Oh wow that's crap luck Francois. I have also had my van broken into and all my tools cleared out  of it, as well as the copper tube and fitting. Although I got the tools back through the insurance, it's the purpose made tools for certain one off, or occasional taskS that I found most irritating to lose

[Francois]

What annoys me the most with these things is that for some odd reason thieves don't seem to know a single thing about non-destructive entry.
They ripped out the door handles and the padlock to get in. Had they known anything, they would have quickly figured out that my old high school combination padlock can be opened without any skills and without the combination...

But somehow I'm happy that they didn't feel like going around with a Hello Kitty lunchbox 

We talked with the neighbors at the corner of the street and they told us that a guy on the other street had people break into his pickup last night...

[Blaxton]

Did they at least trim the garden edges with the weed-wacker and clean the driveway with the pressure washer before they made off with your tools?

[Francois]

Sadly not. That would have been too nice of them
These definitely weren't the smartest of thieves. They took the pressure washer but not the sprayer that goes with it.
And on the weed wacker they took, my dad had for some reason removed the spool (I think it needed new wire and he wanted to hack something together).

So in the end, 2 out of the 3 tools they took are unusable...

[Sandeha Lynch]

Last night we had the visit of thieves. They forced their way into the garden shed and ran away with some tools.
A pressure washer, weed wacker and a circular saw.
But they did leave an old Argus C3 and a lunchbox pinhole camera... I have the feeling this whole thing means something... but what? 

So you now have an Argus C3? That's a novel thing for a thief to bring along!

(That's on my first reading of your post. I should maybe read it again.)

[Francois]

Yeah, it had a very moldy smell when I got it so it's been sitting on a shelf in the garden shed for ages...
I probably will eventually strip, clean and lube it as it's in need of a LOT of work.
Everything is stiff on on, but it works (though the door locking mechanism doesn't give me too much confidence).

[zapsnaps]

Hi Francois

So sorry to hear about this - it's a real downer.
Get your own back by taking some lovely photos with the pin hole.

[Francois]

I guess confinement has got to our local thieves' head. I was talking to the back door neighbor and when I told him we had the visit of some thieves he told me that the city blue collars at the park were swearing their heads off the other day. They had just laid some fresh sod (rolled grass) when somebody at night came, rolled it back up and replaced it with yellowed and almost dead sod! They even did that twice!

[Bryan]

I guess confinement has got to our local thieves' head. I was talking to the back door neighbor and when I told him we had the visit of some thieves he told me that the city blue collars at the park were swearing their heads off the other day. They had just laid some fresh sod (rolled grass) when somebody at night came, rolled it back up and replaced it with yellowed and almost dead sod! They even did that twice!

Sod can be expensive, I bet a landscaper screwed up and left it on the pallet too long or didn't water it properly after they installed it.  I've seen a lot of shrubs stolen from freshly landscaped areas.  It's really easy to dig up a shrub or tree that was just planted.  That happened several years ago on a road project in my town.  Had to have been done very late at night, it was on a busy street in plain view. 

Theft in the contracting business is quite common.  I hear about trailers full of tools going missing all the time.  We hire security guards and lock all our tools in big steel shipping containers, even if there's a security guard standing next to it.  I've even had security guards steal stuff.  Contractors will even steal heavy equipment, use it for a job and then abandon it somewhere.