Laptop stolen in Sosua - reward will be paid if laptop returns

[Steve Costa Azul]

Laptop Stolen

If you're sitting inside an enclosed restaurant like la Roca, Eddy's or Rocky's with your laptop, you're as safe there as at home.

This is untrue. Eddy's & Rocky's are NOT enclosed and anyone can simply walk right in from the street. I have never been to La Roca but I assume it is the same. How can you compare the accessibility, to that of inside ones home, where there is no doubt, a locked door to deal with?

A very bold in your face theft, that could happen pretty much anywhere and is probably quite rare.

 

[Chris]

Chris--sounds like you might have done some work grading reading comp101 in your previous life.
john

Just many years of technical consulting and too much reading .. so, one has to get it quickly at any level!
And I've just closed the quote markup around your quote - and around Steve Costa Azul's quote

If you quote, don't delete the square brackets OK. They look like this [ and ]

I give up with this thread! Too many personalities to keep track of!

 

[Rocky]

Kindly accept my apology.

My choice of words was poor.
I even realized it after posting and was going to edit, but something came up and i missed the time limit.

 

[apostropheman]

i think the main point here is that at this time of year, especially, thieves tend to get more desperate and daring so extra precautions should be taken.

while this kind of snatch and grab can happen anywhere it is much more likely to occur in an open and easily accessible area such as an open terrace or patio. so if you are going to sit on a patio you'd be well advised to be extra vigilant and/or think much harder about what you're showing the world, such as cellphones, cameras, wads of cash, laptops, etc...

sitting inside an enclosed restaurant is no guarantee of safety but you should be a lot more secure since it has limited entry and exit points and doors that can quickly be secured to trap the thief inside where he can be dealt with.

sitting out in the open also exposes one to many sets of "prying eyes"; beggars, vendors, shoe shine kids, etc... that could potentially be thieves or the scouts for thieves. that's much less likely in an enclosed restaurant like those mentioned.

This is untrue. Eddy's & Rocky's are NOT enclosed and anyone can simply walk right in from the street. I have never been to La Roca but I assume it is the same. How can you compare the accessibility, to that of inside ones home, where there is no doubt, a locked door to deal with?

A very bold in your face theft, that could happen pretty much anywhere and is probably quite rare.

 

[Rocky]

This is untrue. Eddy's & Rocky's are NOT enclosed and anyone can simply walk right in from the street.

You might want to choose your words a bit better.
You could say that you thought that Rocky's and Eddy's were open environments, rather than say it's untrue.
Both places, just like a house, have doorways and a single entrance.
Terraces offer an open view to someone driving by to scout out their theft.
So the point that I made that you seem to have missed is that if you are sitting on a terrace on a busy street, it would be wise to not leave valuables exposed for all to see.

 

[realfortin]

1. OP's friend was certainly not asking for it. It's not like he went to the bathroom and left the laptop on the table, he was using it.

2. Even if I don't need my laptop to make money once I "retire" I can certainly see myself spending an hour or two on the net chatting to friends back home that are stuck in the rat race while I drink a Presidente and keeping current reading the world news and the DR1 posts. It's a lot more fun to do this while people watching on a patio than it is locked up in your house. We want to live in the DR for the nice weather don't we?

3. It's truly a shame that the DR is getting "that way" but we should also give the place the benefit of the doubt and say that it is a truly isolated incident.

4. Get a laptop lock, string the cable to the table, it will buy you some time as the thief gets a crazy surprise that it wasn't as easy as he thought. Odds are he will leave it there rather than risk getting bashed in the side of the head. Having the cable will give you peace of mind.

5. I hate to see bad happen to anyone, and I most certainly hate to hear anyone say "good for him, he deserved it" when in fact they did not. That's almost as bad as wishing bad to happen to someone, it's just post-fact.

6. Take precautions but relax, there is no use stressing too much about stuff you don't control. The odds are slim that you will be a victim of such things if you take the basic precautions. Why let it put a damper on your "lifelong vacation". Go have a coffee, bring your laptop, lock it up and smile

 

[apostropheman]

thank you!

very well put!

1. OP's friend was certainly not asking for it. It's not like he went to the bathroom and left the laptop on the table, he was using it.

2. Even if I don't need my laptop to make money once I "retire" I can certainly see myself spending an hour or two on the net chatting to friends back home that are stuck in the rat race while I drink a Presidente and keeping current reading the world news and the DR1 posts. It's a lot more fun to do this while people watching on a patio than it is locked up in your house. We want to live in the DR for the nice weather don't we?

3. It's truly a shame that the DR is getting "that way" but we should also give the place the benefit of the doubt and say that it is a truly isolated incident.

4. Get a laptop lock, string the cable to the table, it will buy you some time as the thief gets a crazy surprise that it wasn't as easy as he thought. Odds are he will leave it there rather than risk getting bashed in the side of the head. Having the cable will give you peace of mind.

5. I hate to see bad happen to anyone, and I most certainly hate to hear anyone say "good for him, he deserved it" when in fact they did not. That's almost as bad as wishing bad to happen to someone, it's just post-fact.

6. Take precautions but relax, there is no use stressing too much about stuff you don't control. The odds are slim that you will be a victim of such things if you take the basic precautions. Why let it put a damper on your "lifelong vacation". Go have a coffee, bring your laptop, lock it up and smile

:bunny::bunny:

 

[apostropheman]

i have a lock too...guess i'll have to smarten up and use it

Birdman:

Is that nice, someone needs a vacation to DR!

I spend weeks @ a time in Sosua and often work from my laptop, so it is helpful to know a laptop is a target at ANY hotspot.

I usually have a cable lock in my 'puter bag, so if I do not wanna stay glued to my machine, I cable it to the table and chairs.

I hope the OP finds their machine.

tambo'

 

[DOMINCAN BOY]

Not a lap top a friend of mine worked in a shop a boy came in for a play station and some games and just run out of the shop :bunny:with out payingirate:

 

[PICHARDO]

Just put an ad in the local newspaper requesting a computer with the same qualities as the one you got stolen. Name a few other models along with it and offer top dollar for it.
Just say you need it for work and blah,blah,blah.

Chances are some neanderthal will call your number with your own computer for sale...

Never use your home phone and real name, use a Dominican name like Tony or Victor... Something you can pronounce without an accent.

Try it! What do you have to lose?

 

[Tamborista]

i have a lock too...guess i'll have to smarten up and use it

I did saw a lock on BUY.com today that prevents people from posting "dribble" on internet forums. I was contemplating buying several as gifts.

tambo'

 

[bigbird]

My choice of words was poor.
I even realized it after posting and was going to edit, but something came up and i missed the time limit.

Hey Rocky, we all do it. My choice of words with my original post was sarcastic and mean. At the time it was how I felt and still do. The MOD used his/her powerful finger of delete to wipe out part of my original post.

I do have sympathy for someone getting robbed, heck it happens to me just about everytime I go to the DR. In my case it is simple stupidity on my part. I have grown to the point of factoring in a certain percentage of the cost of a trip for lost or stolen items. Does it make it right? I think not, but that is the way it is. Deal with it or don't visit the DR. For me I just deal with it.

 

[tsg]

Thank you MPe for helping me here! I was too busy catching up on all the work I lost with the laptop to even think about posting here.
Seems a lot of people knows about my stolen laptop by now!
It will proably never show up again so I ordered a new

But maybe some of us can learn a little here. Especially the people sitting at the Britannia Bar before it happens there too, which I really hope won't happen.

I have been here for almost three years now and maybe I started relaxing a little too much, when I was working in my bar at Pedro Clisante. I never imagined that a guy from the street would walk into the middle of the bar and snatch my working tool. I was not sitting in the front, and I was not alone here. And to some of you wise guys - I am not here spending my holidays and just have to be online anyway. I live here and I try to work here too.

 

[Rocky]

Thank you MPe for helping me here! I was too busy catching up on all the work I lost with the laptop to even think about posting here.
Seems a lot of people knows about my stolen laptop by now!
It will proably never show up again so I ordered a new

But maybe some of us can learn a little here. Especially the people sitting at the Britannia Bar before it happens there too, which I really hope won't happen.

I have been here for almost three years now and maybe I started relaxing a little too much, when I was working in my bar at Pedro Clisante. I never imagined that a guy from the street would walk into the middle of the bar and snatch my working tool. I was not sitting in the front, and I was not alone here. And to some of you wise guys - I am not here spending my holidays and just have to be online anyway. I live here and I try to work here too.

Sorry to hear about your loss, and you're right to buy another, as there is generally little chance of recovery and you clearly need your puter to work with.
At least there was no violence involved.

 

[tflea]

The Price

Talked to a few folks to find out what is actually the black market price for a laptop, in general. About RD$15K I'm told. Sympathies for the loss. Brazen 'lil fu$%^&* he was.

 

[tsg]

Oh yes, thank you Rocky for reminding me to tell that no one was hurt
All I lost was a piece of hardware and a couple of days work. Guess I learned the hard way about backup... But darn, it made me angry!
Right now I am not even sure if I want it back. It has probably alredy been used as a paddle in the river and for cutting down platanos.

 

[J D Sauser]

Talked to a few folks to find out what is actually the black market price for a laptop, in general. About RD$15K I'm told. Sympathies for the loss. Brazen 'lil fu$%^&* he was.

15'000,oo Pesos would be part B of the rip off chain! One can get a basic laptop brand new in the low 20'000.oo right here in the DR (yes WITH WiFi).

For travelers who don't like to carry and hide an external back HD there is the alternative to rent online storage (ciber vault), so to make scheduled Sync-backups. Portable stuff gets lost, stolen or trashed often... don't loose your data.

... J-D.

 

[alicious]

I have had many laptop problems here in Canada, and I've saved all my files to an external hard drive.

At least it's nothing for business (except for resume copies, which can be rewritten), but I have 1000's of pictures, and 1000's of music files...etc...

My external hard drive crashed, I can get a new one it's sill within warranty period (only had it a few months!!) but to recover the files stored on there...I will get charged over $2000 cdn!!!

So this idea of renting online storage...sounds great to me! I have never heard of it before! If not too expensive, it would probably be the most handy too...That way you could access your files anywhere in the world without having to carry anything around!!

Is Ciber Vault the only one? Have you actually used it and have any feedback on it?

 

[tsg]

It only has a wireless card and it has a funny keyboard with ?, ? and ? on it.

 

[johnsantodomingo]

I also had a laptop stolen. About three months ago. They also left with my car. And they fired two gun shots. An unpleasent experience. I got my car back. The police found it two months afterwards. No damage but without numberplates ready to be sold. No laptop though. And I doubt I will ever see it again. A sony vaio. I have a desktop now in my office. Not going to buy a laptop for a long time.