{"id":42000,"date":"2015-12-02T23:24:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T03:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=42000"},"modified":"2020-07-17T23:24:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-18T03:24:26","slug":"seasons-greetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=42000","title":{"rendered":"Season&#8217;s Greetings!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-42001 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/trash-e1449085474153.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"328\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/trash-e1449085474153.jpg 490w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/trash-e1449085474153-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Despite my tepid enthusiasm for Black Friday shopping season, I still did a little bit of shopping. \u00a0Such is somewhat of a tradition in my household, and nothing says the holidays have arrived than spending a bunch of money on things that we don&#8217;t actually need, but still cave into the general consensus that it&#8217;s shopping time, when Thanksgiving rolls around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">So for the better part of the last few days, it&#8217;s been that Christmas-y feeling of checking the myriad of emails that have shipping tracking codes, and checking statuses, to see just what we can expect to arrive, unbox, and be excited to receive, because getting packages in the mail is almost always a fun thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">A while back, a package was stolen from our front stoop; although never confirmed definitively, the fact that there was a delivery confirmation, but then no package, led to Jen and I determining that it had to have been stolen, given the fact that there are several hours of many of the work days in which someone might not be able to open the front door, combined with the fact that USPS, UPS and FedEx are all incapable of using common sense, and leave packages in plain sight in front of our front door, instead of the slightest of pivoting and placing them behind the shrubs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">This infraction made us reconsider our home security system, and we therefore upgraded our system to one that incorporated video cameras. \u00a0Our logic would simply be that\u00a0<em>video evidence<\/em>\u00a0would be fairly sufficient at deterring the vast majority of would-be thieves, burglars and other piece of shit criminals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Welp, that would be a flawed logic, after all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I came home from work the other day, and had that momentary disappointment when I didn&#8217;t see any packages at the front door, considering the fact that for the better part of the last week, there had been packages on a fairly regular basis. \u00a0I didn&#8217;t think anything of it; it was simply a day in which we received no packages in the mail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">This morning, I opened my inbox and decided to check the remaining shipping confirmations were still unaccounted for; one particular retailer&#8217;s latest updated stated that my package had been delivered to my home,\u00a0<em>yesterday.\u00a0<\/em>Confused, and suddenly alarmed, I logged into my security system, and brought up the camera log, which records clips every time movement triggers the motion sensor. \u00a0At 11:37 a.m, I see the mailman, dropping off two boxes and a package envelope; in front of the front door, and not behind the bushes, as is the norm. \u00a0At 1:16 p.m., a man on a segway whirs up to my front door, and hooks a giant pink donation bag and note to my door knob.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">And then at 2:02 p.m., a black male with a cap on, and skinny-fitted sweatpants moseys up to my front stoop, swiftly picks up both boxes, the package envelop, and\u00a0<em>hustles\u00a0<\/em>back to his car, which is parked in my driveway while he&#8217;s performing this heist, to add insult to injury. \u00a0The kicker is that I can see the make of the car as it backs out, and it&#8217;s unmistakably an Audi, likely an A3 or A6.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">A sack of shit driving a luxury\u00a0<em>Audi<\/em>\u00a0decided to steal packages of clothing right off of my front door.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Granted, given the nature of thugs like this, the car was likely stolen in the first place, like the two pieces of shit who kicked in my door like five years ago, but for the sake of established facts, someone driving a luxury vehicle saw boxes on my front door and decided to steal them, even though a vague likeness of him was captured on video.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Make no mistake, there&#8217;s a cauldron of upset emotions swirling around in my head, even now, a day later, and several hours after I&#8217;d discovered this crime against my household.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">When the day is over, I&#8217;d rather have some packages get stolen off of my door stoop as opposed to my house attempting to be invaded again, but the general sense of violation and destroyed trust in my community is all the same. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been way quieter on this top than Jen has, because I guess I&#8217;m frankly having a slower time processing all the information, and wondering what my options really are, not to mention I don&#8217;t really feel like how putting a spotlight on my house always turns into a bunch of backhanded critical remarks about where I live, and how I should move somewhere else, as if we were oblivious to this obvious assessment, and could magically erase an underwater mortgage and make it happen at the drop of a fucking hat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Naturally, the police had been notified, a report filed. \u00a0They&#8217;ve received the video recorded by my home&#8217;s security cameras. \u00a0Jen&#8217;s taken to the interwebs with the video, and supposedly it&#8217;s been shared a few times, and possibly might become newsworthy. \u00a0Although I&#8217;d love to hear that this piece of shit gets caught and spend some time behind bars, I&#8217;m simply not optimistic that such is actually going to happen. \u00a0My camera only records the front door, not to mention the car pulled into my driveway, so any possibility of getting the crucial, game-changing plate was impossible. \u00a0I can&#8217;t exactly see every single white Audi A3\/A6 being driven by a 20-something black guy getting stopped and examined just because the perpetrator stole some boxes of clothes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Honestly, I don&#8217;t even really care about the stolen goods. \u00a0The merchants have graciously replaced most of what could be stolen, and refunded what couldn&#8217;t, even though such isn&#8217;t necessarily their responsibility. \u00a0That&#8217;s good graces on them as companies, and wanting to make right to customers, which I can admire. \u00a0I want to be upset with all the incompetent delivery drivers for constantly leaving packages out in plain sight in spite of having easily obscuring bushes available to them, but it&#8217;s not their fault that thieving pieces of shit exist. \u00a0I see people discussing this on Jen&#8217;s Facebook wall, and some inserting a strawman argument incorporating the incompetence of the police; frankly it&#8217;s not their fault either, and perhaps if they had intel like a plate number, or recognized the perpetrator things would be different, but it&#8217;s not their job to make wine out of water, without the necessary means either.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Again, it&#8217;s simply the damaged faith in people, humanity and community that upsets me the most. \u00a0It&#8217;s absolutely absurd that I can&#8217;t have faith in my own residence, to send common mail to my own home, without having concern that pieces of shit thieves want to propagate stereotypes. \u00a0It&#8217;s absolutely absurd that no matter what, there&#8217;s always concern that my home is being cased or sized up, so that someone can again attempt to break in, and steal things from the inside.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">When we first installed the cameras and upgraded our security system, I remember how proactive I was in learning all the odds and ends of the platform. \u00a0Making sure that both Jen and my phones had the app installed on them, and could access the camera remotely if necessary. \u00a0I checked the video logs on almost a daily basis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Over the last few months, I acknowledge that I&#8217;d become lax on a lot of those little habits; sure, even if I hadn&#8217;t, it&#8217;s not like knowing a thug is stealing shit from my property, I&#8217;d be able to do anything about it, from my work office, but the fact of the matter is that I let my guard down, and something like this happens. \u00a0I actually let myself grow complacent that things like this weren&#8217;t going to happen, because of magic video taking capabilities that should deter people from doing rotten things. \u00a0How naive of me to think that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Pieces of shit are going to do piece of shit things; having a video camera on them only lets you see it going down, first hand. \u00a0I fucking hate the world, sometimes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite my tepid enthusiasm for Black Friday shopping season, I still did a little bit of shopping. \u00a0Such is somewhat of a tradition in my household, and nothing says the holidays have arrived than spending a bunch of money on things that we don&#8217;t actually need, but still cave into the general consensus that it&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=42000\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Season&#8217;s Greetings!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,112,45,121,15,46],"class_list":["post-42000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-bataria","tag-crime","tag-fail","tag-homeownership","tag-og","tag-zombieland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42002,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42000\/revisions\/42002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}