Month: June 2009

Up and running again

Four weeks after the theft in our office, I now have the replacement MacBook set up to my liking. Almost.

The delay wasn’t due to any problems with insurance claims or police reports. Most of the time, I’ve simply been too busy to pull it out of the box and begin working on it. During the past three weeks, much of my efforts have been focused on interviewing and hiring two people to help us with our email migration project.

Together with a volunteer from Wycliffe Associates, they will make up a team to work on as many of the smaller accounts as they can handle in the next two months. We spent the last week walking through the process and covering the key terms and concepts within the world of email. I stop when I see that their eyes are glazed over. And I start doing what Jesus did — speaking in parables to help get my point across.

And the fallout from the theft? Well, all the other victims of the robbery are also working on new computers now, and I was able to use our backup system to restore their work quickly. There wasn’t much data that was lost, and I don’t think that anyone has seen evidence of identity theft attempts. I know that the police are still working the case, but there’s no information that I can pass along here.

There will certainly be changes that we make on the campus and on the computers that our members are using — particularly the laptops. Presently, I’m trying to make sure that I’m comfortable with our standard for data encryption, TrueCrypt, and applying it to the email on my computers. Keep those bad guys out!

You can’t take it with you anyway

Last night, our office was robbed — as well as several others across the International Linguistics Center. The thieves broke a window near my desk, and they stole all of the laptops that they could, including the MacBook that I use. Argh. Two other buildings were broken into in a similar fashion, and we don’t know yet how many laptops, monitors, and projectors were taken. As I write this, we’re working from a conference room while waiting for the fingerprint team to show up. Ugh.

The “positive” thing is that the thieves may have made some mistakes in leaving evidence such as fingerprints and footprints. As you work and go through your own day, please pray for the capture and arrest of these criminals — as well as for the recovery of the stolen equipment.

In the end, though, I remember that none of this stuff is that important: “Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” (Luke 12:33, NIV)

The people on this campus are working hard to give people around the world the opportunity to gain that treasure. If you don’t have that treasure for yourself — if all you have are the things of this world — then look to the man who made the statement above, because he’s the only one with the key to that treasure.

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