I got my hand stuck in a pringle can. Here's what happened during the span of the next 5 days.

Friday

I took the laptop and headed for the garage to leave it for a few hours. I could have left it in the garage, but I thought I'd be more able to find it if I left it in a place I might miss it. (Good thing I didn't listen to that earlier warning I got....)

Later that evening, my wife mentioned the laptop and I told her we'd left it in the garage. She didn't realize that it was there.

Saturday

I was outside grilling and she went to the garage and checked. It was gone. The laptop was gone, and someone had come in the garage and done something to it.

Sunday

I told her what had happened and she said she wanted to go to the police. She called the police (twice) on Sunday, asking if it could be recovered, if we should call someone in and get someone out there. They said they'd call someone. They said they didn't think the laptop had been stolen.

Monday

The laptop had been at the police station all day, while we waited to hear something. The police said that they'd do whatever they could, but they'd be closed on Tuesday. They also mentioned that, if they did recover the laptop, they'd give it to us.

Tuesday

My wife called the police department again. They said they still didn't have anything to give us. The computer was still there, though. We had a lawyer in the family, and he said we could talk to a lawyer in Kansas City, and take the case there. They also said that they'd reimburse us for the hotel and food.

Wednesday

The lawyer took a look and told us that we had a good case, and that the police were probably being overly cautious about things. He was also trying to get the police to pay for a hotel and dinner. They were refusing to do that. I'm sure they were worried that it was stolen, but they wanted to cover their own backs, so I'm glad they didn't do that.

Yesterday

We went to the police department and they finally handed us the laptop. It was in a small box, locked up in plastic bags. Someone had completely wrapped the computer in plastic bags, probably to keep anyone else from getting it, and to keep it out of the elements. I'm pretty sure the police have no idea how long it took someone to go through that, but they kept it there for days.

I'll have to say that, so far, we've had some excellent customer service from the police department. I hope the PC Police will recognize their over-reactions to things and move on.

This event certainly reminds me of a case I had a few years ago, when I worked at Sprint in the customer support center. The system we used to do diagnostics on our wireless phones was a PC. Someone had sent a customer's laptop to the PC technician. That PC technician told me that he couldn't get into the PC, and he couldn't even get the laptop out of the PC. He said that it was completely sealed in plastic and that he couldn't even get his hands in it. That's when I