My Powerbook G4 came home!

This has to be one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me.

Last year I spent two months travelling around Europe in my VW Camper, I had actually planned to be away for four months, but while visiting Pisa in Italy my camper van was broken into and everything was stolen – cloths, food, books, dirty washing and my trusty PowerBook G4, all gone to some thieving ….

Anger eventual turned to frustration as all the things stolen where mealy materialistic and could be replaced, but one thing that frustrated me the most was that my laptop had all my holiday photos on, and although I could revisit the places and take more pictures, the mood and atmosphere would never be recaptured.

So I set about asking for it back, not necessarily my laptop, but the pictures that were on it. I tried a kind of laws of attraction thing, but without all the fuss of the secret (I personally don’t like that film/book). I imagined myself looking at the pictures and even showing them to my family and friends. Then…

…about a month after I returned to the UK, I received an email from a guy in Italy who claimed to have bought my laptop. I attempted to do the right thing and informed the Police, but that resulted in five months messing around and eventually a big fat nothing. So six months after receiving the original email I opened up a dialogue with the guy, and after a lot of talking he eventually agreed to sell it back to me – a kind of reward if you like!

Then on 23rd January, after almost seven months in limbo, my laptop was back on my desk. Amazingly it had found its way home, but even more amazing, after 24 hours of running some data recovery software, I managed to restore about 90% of my my holiday photos as well.

I still can’t actually believe it – I look at my laptop on my desk and just smile. I really thought I had lost it for good, but it just goes to show, weird and wonderful things can and do happen if you only put your mind to it – even if it does seem a bit mumbo jumbo!