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For the second time in 18 months I was the victim of burglary but this time it was my workshop and not my house that was pillaged.

The total value of the stuff I had stolen or broken comes to more than $3K or so and (of course) it was not insured.

As far as Aardvark readers are concerned, the most important aspect of the break in was the fact that my *best* PC (ie: the only one capable of running Windows XP and which had my video capture card, firewire card, DVD drive and lots of the new website code) was thrown down a 3m bank and left out in the rain over Saturday night. Maybe it'll be recoverable, I won't know until the cops have done their fingerprinting and I can try to fire it up again.

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At worst, I'll have to go back to the last set of backups and spend another week or so bringing it up to scratch before I upload it to the website.

Of course the loss of very useful tools (socket sets, spanners, calipers, etc, etc) will also have an impact on the other work I'm doing too but that's more likely to see me spending *more* time on this site in order to try and earn money to pay for those losses.

Over the weekend I pretty much decided that, although 99.9% of the people here in Tokoroa are wonderful folks and salt of the earth, the remaining 0.1% are utter bastards with no respect for the property or rights of others. Sure, this may be true in most places around the country -- but I'd never lost a single thing to theft before I moved down here and now, when I tally things up, the replacement cost of the stuff stolen over the past 18 months actually exceeds the amount I've earned during that same period.

So, while the loss of a few grand's worth of gear may mean little to someone who's earning the $40K-$60K that most people earn (and it would probably be covered by insurance anyway) -- imagine if someone stole your brand new uninsured $50K car, or cleaned that much out of your savings account -- that's about the magnitude of it for my family.

So, although I'll be staying in Tokoroa until the UAV project I'm working on is completed, I'm almost certainly going to be looking for somewhere else to live once that's done.

The workshop is now reinforced like a fortress and my home has an alarm -- but I despise the fact that one has to develop a siege mentality just to protect their few meagre possessions. What's more, no amount of alarming or reinforcing will actually stop the determined thief, whether they're driven simply by laziness and a lack of morals or perhaps a P addiction.

So, if some enterprising town is looking for their own (admittedly eccentric) entrepreneur who makes a lot of noise (literally and metaphorically) then let me know. The key criterion is that you have relatively low levels of crime.

I've brought quite a bit of positive publicity to Tokoroa and done my best to contribute to the community -- talking at schools, fostering local hobby groups, organising national/international events, etc., but looking at the balance sheet it becomes clear that I can no longer afford the Tokoroa lifestyle.

I'm not looking for sympathy or handouts in the wake of this latest robbery, just some good ideas as to where the best place might be for someone like myself to live, innovate and create a bit of noise, once my work is done here.

Here's today's question: Is this type of crime a result of bad parenting, a failing education system, or a justice system that seems to think it's better to molly-coddle and counsel offenders using ridiculous levels of psychobable and age-related immunity (like this) rather than giving them and their parents a good swift kick up the arse?

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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