Last night was simply amazing. There was this spectacular (by my standards…) lightning storm that was simply unprecedented in my recollection (we don¹t get many here…). I have only seen fork lightning once before, but I must have seen 30-40 in the space of a few hours last night. I actually went out and drove in my car, following it. I sat in the parking lot of Coquitlam Center Mall (in my car) and saw lightning that rivaled the best fireworks show I have ever seen.
It also reminded me of a joke I once heard (completely rewritten…). Something like: If you are in a thunderstorm on a golf course hold your 1-iron in the air. Even God can’t hit a 1-iron.
Recently a friend’s apartment was broken into. All the usual stuff was taken, the only “interesting” thing about it was that security assumes that all the stuff is still in the same building. Personally, thinking that most of my stolen articles could be a floor or two below me would just make it worse.
Naturally, the conversation turned to what to do to prevent or capture further attempts at thievery in the future :
1. The glue trap. Put a couple of REALLY big glue traps inside of the door. Just imagine the satisfaction of coming home to see your door crow barred open, but with the culprits lying pretzel-like in the glue trap just inside the door. This was dismissed as impractical not only due to the resulting mess, accidents, and the potential for litigation.
2. The giant slingshot. If you don’t press in the new alarm code quick enough, you are ejected out the bedroom window to the parking lot below. 16 stories below. This was also dismissed as impractical, as well as potentially illegal.
3. Chemical tracking. If you had a welcome mat just inside the door that had a chemical that fluoresced under UV light or something, you could track the culprits back to their apartment. This was also dismissed as impractical because of the potential for “good” people stepping on it. Look, we have followed the criminals tracks right to….. our car. Damn.
4. The only wild idea that was actually implemented was a sign just inside the door that said : “Smile! Your on camera a-hole”!! Apparently this disturbed the guy who came to fix the door.
I think that they finally settled on a plain old alarm system. How boring.