Vagaries - August 9th, 2007

12:45 am - The Case of Missing Mails

Last month, most of the packets left at my door by fedex/ups/dhl went missing. I do most of my shopping online and have been receiving
packages at my door all the time. But for all of last month, I'd get a mail notification that  a package has been delivered and when I got
home there won't be anything. Someone surely was stealing our packets!

  As the list of missing things piled up, aj and I decided to put up a hidden cam on our door and monitor all activity when we are away.
  A trip to Fry's made it clear that buying an actual spy camera that could be used in that position wasn't worth it, considering the chance
  of our scheme succeeding being so thin. It would be an utter waste to lose all our packages and a nice extra sum on useless cameras.
  At home, we spent a weekend taking apart my roomie's webcam and making it fit into an unnoticed little corner of a window overlooking
 the main gate. After a night full of design and debates, we finally got the rig all set. We were expecting another packet on Tuesday, so we
 did a dry run of our setup on Monday. Apart from a few glitches that we could easily fix, our setup was ready for the show - recording 6 GB
 of video stream of our door and the way leading up to it.

 As expected, we didn't find any package on returning home. Quick scroll of the video showed the UPS guy tucking  a package under our
 doormat. The next five suspenseful minutes were spent binary searching the video: there/gone/there/gone. And there was the culprit - one
 we (or atleast I suspected all along) - our neighbor's kid who has been hovering around a lot during the summer vacation.  All through the
 plan, we never actually believed that it'll work. But here it  was - our master shot - and we were ecstatic.

 I'll leave out the what-next debate details and the awkward encounter with the parents, and just say that we manage to get all our
 stuff back and the little adventure had a happy ending.

Current Mood: calm