And an addition

One of my colleagues had forgotten he had a small lockbox containing his passport, some other documents, a decent amount of money, and some other things important to him in his office. He had moved it up here for a time when his neighborhood temporarily went to Heck

(Not QUITE to Hell, but to Heck. You know, the place ruled by the guy with a giant spoon)

Anyway, he is pretty sure the lockbox has been stolen. What a nightmare. He's now worried someone is going to try to pose as him somewhere. (Then again: they'd have to look like him to use the passport.) I can hear him calling various governmental offices to cancel things or to put holds on things.He's NOT happy.

And there's good evidence my office was broken into, or it was attempted to be broken in to. Nothing is missing from my office - my desk computer, several bits of hardware (a microscope camera and microscope), my ancient laptop that really no longer works - they are all still there. No books are missing, and I have one or two that could be valuable to the right seller. Even my spare house key, which is in a really super secret secret place, is still there.

But, what a pain. And how distressing - I used to come in about half the Saturdays to work in here a while. Guess I won't do that now, until they catch who did this or until it's clear they've moved on.

We're agitating for rekeying the building but so far the people in charge of that are refusing to. I think that would solve the problem of "there may be an unauthorized person who somehow got a key" - rekey, be really careful as to who gets keys. (Yes, keys can be copied, but at least among faculty, we have a strong incentive not to make copies of our keys and hand them out) I HOPE it doesn't take someone (someone like me, as I come in early) surprising the thief at work.

Once it gets late enough in DST that it's dark at 7 am, I may delay coming in a bit, just so I'm not walking through the lot in the dark. And if I have reason to come back at night, I am going to get someone to come with me.