$10.00 to break into your car, sir?
bz-LAAAAG
hoffman, bzflag and the much faster German updated
version definately support an AI mode. Look into the -solo when running the client app. It will bring in as many robots as you want. You definately want to use the German version of bzflag until the new UDP code is rolled back into HEAD on SourceForge
$10.00 to break into your car, sir?: A True Story
So there I was, driving in on Friday morning, all ready to go for a very long most-of-the-day meeting. I know I wasn’t going to get a parking space anywhere near 650 Townsend for free, so I planned on parking at the lot right outside the main doors and paying for it. At least it’s close, and attended.
As anyone who has had the pleasure (pfft!) of seeing my truck knows, my entire passenger seat is generally occupied by a large boom box and a cd case full of cd’s.
I love my music. Can’t drive a mile without it.
So the routine is that you normally pull in, pull towards the little shack in the middle of the lot, and the attendant takes $10.00 from you (used to be cheaper a few months ago) and you have your pick of whatever spots are left open. I typically pick a spot right near the entrance, facing the bus stop there.
And the day goes on, meetings go well, I get a lot of work done after the meetings, everybody leaves, and it’s nice and quiet.
Whew.
Time to hunker down and get some work done. I strap on the headphones and begin ranking away.
I managed to somehow blow up yet another Thinkpad hard drive, this time not even physically connected to any Thinkpad at all. So I’m reinstalling (yes, you guessed it, Windows) on the spare laptop drive to configure the Lucent wireless gateways (currently I had this particular wireless gateway locked in a ‘Closed Wireless Network’ configuration, so the only way to get to it was through a Windows-only configuration tool, and I had to have been broadcasting with my *REAL* Lucent MAC address to get to it, so VMWare was out of the question — it uses that PCNET32 interface, and a virtual MAC, so that fails.. anyway… where was I….)
So I get the laptop configured, all the drivers and goodies are loaded, and I pack up and begin to get ready to leave.
Standing back, looking at my desk as if I’m a shepard on a tall hill watching my flock, I survey the things on my desk, to see if I’m going to need any of them for the weekend.
“Ok, take this, no, leave that, and let’s not forget this…”
..you know the routine. The mental inventory comes around once a day or more sometimes.
Slowly I sling the backpack over one shoulder, grab some books and a legal pad, and walk out of 650 Townsend, up the escalators, over to the left, past the ATM, and straight into the parking lot for my truck.
“La la la lalaaaa….”
(thinking about what I’m going to do this weekend, so I can be ahead of whatever is about to bite into me on Monday). That Windows install went just too smoothly. Yes, 475 reboots, but it didn’t break.
“La la laaaa…”
(opens passenger side truck door to drop backpack and books onto the only space that can hold them, the passenger footwell area).
Hrm, this doesn’t look right. My entire bench seat is… empty. It looks like the same long, empty expanse you see when looking down a set of railroad tracks. I stand back and think..
“Hrm, did I bring my radio today? Or did I take it to my apartment to listen to some tunes?”
“No, I definately took the radio with me..”
(mentally plays back getting in the truck that morning)
My eyes slowly pan around the truck’s interior in the darkness.
“Hrm, every thing looks…”
(cold, icy feeling comes over me as I see the driver’s windows smashed, and all the glass in the darkness on the driver’s carpet, none on the seat.)
My radio is gone, because someone decided they needed it more than I did, and smashed my truck windows to get into the truck to get it.
They had to open the door (this radio is *VERY* large by the way, and always covered, it’s the one on the right in this picture) to get it out.
My glovebox wasn’t rifled through. My visors were not overturned. I even have a 120-volt to 12-volt invertor that plugs into the cigarette lighter to power the radio, and they UNPLUGGED THE RADIO from the invertor and took only the radio. I also have some pendants/necklaces and a “War Helmet” hanging from the rear-view mirror. Those were also left alone. I had a Jabra cell headset on the seat. They pulled the earcup off of it, and tossed them both on the seat. Gas tank wasn’t syphoned. Tires weren’t slashed. Nothing but a missing boom box.
They only took the radio.
Now I was left with a 12-mile drive home, in the dark, with absolutely nothing for sound but the whistling of the air going through the smashed remains of my driver’s side windows at 65 miles-per-hour.
“I love my music. Can’t drive a mile without it…”
I’ve lived my whole life in CT, growing up in Hartford, Willimantic, Norwich, and briefly in Brooklyn. I’ve never had any car that I’ve ever owned broken into (and some of them were quite worthy of it). Now that I live here, and drive a 13-year-old truck, my vehicle has been vandalized a total of 4 times in the past year alone.
I guess what bothers me the most, besides the inconvenience of being out of transportation for the next week or more, is that the truck was no more than 50′ from the front door of 650 Townsend, in an attended parking lot, and nobody saw this assailant smash my windows (3/8’s inch 4×4-package tempered glass, not easy to just smash with an elbow or even a rock), take out a nearly 3′ long, 14″ diameter radio, and walk away?
Not happy. Not happy at all.
“$10.00 to break into your car, sir?”