Dagmar wrote:
So, during the recent floods I found out that on my side of town, yes people will in fact steal from flood victims while the floodwaters are still running high and had my brand new netbook bag (the netbook inside was used when I got it last week, so no big deal there) and full-face motorcycle helmet stolen from right outside my door.

Replacing the stuff is turning out to be a big mess. I'm just plain screwed on the helmet, which was an HJC CL-15 "Crypt" in XXXL (if you suspected I had a large cranium before, I think this serves as proof) which had to be special-ordered to begin with. It was a 2008 style and basically, I'm f**ked for ever seeing one of those again. There's a marginal chance that I'll be able to stuff my head into a mere XXL, but I'll have to find one in that size to try on first, and that's a long drive across town.

The netbook is not a big deal since it wasn't very expensive to begin with, and it's not like they're going to get top-dollar from anyone for it since it has "only" 20Gb of SSD storage. Last night I ordered an EEE PC 1000 with 40Gb total SSD storage in it, and should anyone be getting any ideas about intercepting it upon delivery by using the work badge that was stolen... Make sure your life insurance policy is paid up and your worldly affairs are in order.

No, it turns out the real bitch was the three thumb drives which contained just about every little fiddly bit of art I've done over the last several years, as well as archived bookmarks, notes, code, software installers, malware removers, pictures of friends, a few pieces of operating systems here and there, but most importantly... The goddamn lanyards.

Lanyards are cheap to make, and it used to be that every thumbdrive you bought came with one. Nowadays, not so much! Let me say this to thumbdrive manufacturers right now: You might be wanting to save every penny you can, but I guarantee you that if your drive is the fifty cents or so more expensive than the next guys because it has a lanyard in it, most people aren't going to even blink at spending that piddling extra money.

After quite a bit of poking around, I finally found someone online that sells the damn things with the proper silk cord and breakaway bit on the end like what used to come with the Sandisk Cruzers. It actually took more searching to find replacement lanyards of the proper type than it did to finally locate another ASUS EEE PC with SSDs in it (which are damn few and far between now). I'm linking this here because I can't be the only person I know who is trying to find a decent string lanyard without going to the cell phone store to paying fifteen bucks for 38cm of shoestring and some plastic bits.

try a camping outdoors store
in the UK they sell 2mm diameter cord by the meter for only 30p of the type which you can heat seal the ends. Its a similar weave to climbing rope so very tough and comes in various colours/patterns.