Villainy!

The night before the Golden Greats played a party at Free Geek for the Sprockettes, they experienced their worst break in ever:

Biggest Break In Yet
Theives broke in to Free Geek very early on the morning of Saturday, November 18 and stole about $4,500 worth of hardware. The majority of the items stolen were laptops, laptop RAM, LCD screens, and high-end Apple computers. Additionally, many doors were forced open and sustained costly damage. The laptop program both provides us with valuable income and provides free laptops to local non-profits. This source of funding and hardware will be missing for a while as we build up our supply. Keep an eye out for laptops for sale in Portland loaded with Ubuntu Linux: if you see one of these, please call us!

To make matters worse, the IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) was hit the night before, mostly likely by the same hooligans. It appears that someone has been casing these non-profits, thanks to their accessibility to the public, and taking what little equipment they have. I’ve been to both facilities and I can tell you these folks are not high-paid geeks with the latest Alienware gaming laptops. They have outdated (but perfectly functional), donated equipment.

In a town like Portland, where forward thinking non-profits are taken to the bosom, this sort of villainy seems particularly low. I’m going to talk to the boys about playing a fundraiser for both organizations. Maybe we can get a little in Free Geek’s kitty when we play their Xmas party.

Correction and update:

I received some clarification and news from Shawn Granton at the IPRC:

1) It did not happen the night previous to the Free Geek break-in. It occurred sometime between 8pm Sunday Nov 12 and 10am Monday Nov 13. Same week, though.

2) What was stolen: the “nice” staff Mac …., two flatscreen monitors, and some petty cash of an unknown amount

And some good news:

3) An anonymous party donated the appropriate monitors/computers to replace what has been lost.

So it appears I am guilty of a bit of rumor mongering, at least on the timing. Nevertheless, these crimes are unacceptable, and I am hoping the perps are crushed under the bootheels of our proud police state.