Giggity

Day three of the new gig, and I haven't really got my feet wet quite yet. I'm mostly reviewing documentation, looking at database schemas (basically diagrams of how a particular database is laid out), and looking through computer code. Basically I'm in "look but don't touch" mode right now. I was hoping today that I'd get assigned some tasks, but it sounds like that's not going to happen until Monday. So the best I can do is make good use of my time continuing to read and familiarize myself with their systems.

So last night I finally finished mowing my overgrown yard. This is the first I've cut it this spring. It was already in need before I left for California on the 4th, but a bad sequence of days filled with rain and/or laziness prevented me from mowing before I left, and the same held true until this week. By that time, it was out of control. It had long since headed out and gone to seed. Unfortunately, I have a cordless electric mower long overdue for a new battery pack, and could only get about 30 minutes of mowing in over the course of three nights. The heavy, somewhat damp grass sapped the weakened battery of its juice before I could finish. My yard looks like a freshly swathed field ready for harvest right now, so I'll probably go over it again this weekend after the clippings dry out to mulch it up better.

In other news, you may recall that earlier this year my neighbor that lives just behind me had his house burglarized. He had left a note for me warning me what had happened, and I finally got a chance to talk with him about it last night. He was gone for maybe 4 hours and came back to find they'd relieved him of his laptop, hunting equipment, $200 cash, dvd player, and other electronics. There were multiple people involved. They peeked in window in the garage to see if the car was gone, then one kicked in the basement window, slithered through an amazingly narrow opening, hopped down onto a washing machine, and went upstairs to let the other person in. Search dogs followed their trail to a spot on the street around the corner, which indicates that's probably where they parked their vehicle. This really freaked me out because they brazenly did it on a Thursday night before 9 pm and were wandering from yard to yard, including mine. Thankfully I was home that night, and the lights probably deterred them.

It turns out that the Eagan police caught them just 3 weeks later thanks to a tip (I wish I'd known this sooner since the whole thing made me paranoid for the rest of the winter). Turns out it was several teenagers who attended Burnsville High School and that they had burglarized a dozen or so houses. The dumbasses left fingerprints and DNA everywhere (they often ate and drank items from fridges at houses they burglarized). Once confronted with the irrefutable evidence, they confessed to everything. This was only the third burglary in our general area in 10 years.

I'm relieved they were caught and am now glad that I have a relatively constant level of moderate paranoia about these things. After I moved into my house, I immediately installed bright motion floods in the front and back yard and after the burglary, installed another small motion flood on a once dark side of my house by the bedroom windows. I also installed a shade on a window of the door into my garage so no one can peek in to check if my car is gone. My computer also monitors motion from video cameras in my front and back yard, as well as the webcam on my computer when I'm away from the house. If motion is detected in the frame, it captures multiple frames and emails them to me so the images are available even if my computer is stolen. And having heard how these burglars broke in, I'm also going to do what my neighbor did and reinforce my basement windows. The question is how to do this without creating a safety issue for those inside if a fire were to trap people in the basement. I also want to keep the cost down. Any ideas out there?