The Official HL Raffle/Donation Thread

[Quakindude]

I slept on and off all day. Did a couple of hours at the house, just needed to get some of the pots we could find over here to the new place.

[vent/rave]

When you experience something like this, you see the best and the very worst of the human condition exposed. I had a $300 Dewalt drill and snake light combo. Like a dummy, I left it out in the garage where I had been dismantling some shelves I had built myself. The garage has a tarp for a door. When I went back today, they were both gone. So now I have the charger and a third battery here, but no drill or light. As Heidi and I are taking things out of the house and throwing them into the debris pile, there's a guy in a Chevy dualie that pulls INTO my yard, hops out and starts rummaging through the trash out there looking for aluminum or electronics or whatever else he thinks he can sell. Now this stuff is out on the road for trash. I could care less if he digs through it and takes crap. But one, don't pull into what's left of MY property to rummage and two, have the friggin decency to not do so while I'm standing there in front of my broken home. I told him to get off my damned property immediately or I'd call the police. He said to go ahead, it was trash at the curb and as long as it wasn't in a trash can, he could take what he wanted.

This guy is a perfect example of a smart dumbazz. While he is right in that our local laws will not prevent him from taking trash from the curb, the laws DO dictate that once told to get off someones property, you are then trespassing. The police took care of him most ricky tick.

There have been every one from good, honest, hardworking folks out volunteering and passing out their cards to down right slimy, sleazy sorry excuses for humans trying to rip people off. The local police have been excellent at driving off the latter. The local government has also been highly supportive of the victims of this thing as well as the local disaster relief agencies. I've not eaten this many complete meals three times a day since i was in basic training in 1989! The Red Cross, various Church groups as well as FEMA, the SBA and all sorts of others have been extremely helpful in both their time and resources. So it's maddening to see some of these sleaze bags show up. The neighborhood has started a roster of folks that are honest and folks that are questionable. All you have to do is ask within a couple doors of your home and you'll get the skinny on anyone that has been down the road in the last week. The folks in this community, town and state are doing some good looking out for each other. [/vent/rave]

So there;s my exhaustive impressions and frustrations. I think I might follow this one particular guy home and go into his yard and start picking crap up. Wonder how he would like it.

[gvblake22]

Eeesh, sorry to hear about the scumbags taking advantage of a desperate situation. There's always gonna be those people that ruin it for everyone and think they are somehow better than you (as if god gave them some divine right to be an @$$ hole).

Keep your head up Tom!!!

[JazzyJake]

ahahha
maybe you'll get a bit more than that dewalt drill back
btw that sucks, those drills are nice...
last christmas my dad got me a new dewalt drill, and makita *sp* skillsaw.
i haven't seen them since i grabbed my stocking and started eating the pistachio's out of it...

[Quakindude]

Good morning HL!

Today it's back to the grind of setting things up here in the new place. I'm going to get a large out-door kennel for our two dogs, do some more cleaning at the house, we still have the kitchen to finish packing, and start the long list of things destroyed.

I've got my main rig in the new place here. I pulled the ECS 650i mobo out of it since the PCB was cracked. The HDD's look ok, the opticals are trashed, the heat spreader is missing off one of my sticks of ram, the video card is gone (an EVGA 7950GT 512Mb!!!) the processor looks ok, the PSU is full of dirt, pine needles and insulation, the Audigy 2 ZS sound card is gone but my SIIG FW800 card was in there and looks to be OK. The Kids AMD rig is toast. The CNPS9500 has one of the mounts pulled through the mobo, so the mobo is toast. The opticals are trashed, the HDD has a dent in the top and the drive cage was rearranged. The 7800GS video card is trashed as is the PSU. I have an Antec 450w PSU that may be usable, but it's ATX 1.0/1.1 spec and has the 20 pin mobo connector. I may run out to CC today and buy a new one just to see if my main rig will fire up with my EVGA680i mobo in it. I've got the main rig put together with that mobo, which was in the yard, but looks OK, my E6600 CPU, a CNPS9500, my WD2500KS HDD and one optical I had new in the box, but not installed. My Lacie FW800 External NAS 1Tb drive looks OK, I took it apart and cleaned it out yesterday. I have an old PCI Video card I'm going to put in it just to see if it fires up and if one of my LCD's still work. I know that one of them is toasted, the other I'll see about today. It has a lot of scratches on the screen though, so once I get a video card, I'll be looking for another monitor. Probably go with a used CRT for now until we see what happens with the insurance company.

The 19" TV that was in the master bedroom has a cracked bezel, it was blown off the stand and on the floor when I found it, but that sucker still works. Now when we get cable out here Wednesday, we can have some TV. I haven't watched TV since the tornado hit.

I've found a large part of my receipts online for all the computer stuff. Since the large majority of it is less than 1 year old, I'll get full price for it. Of my 100 or so games, I've found 20. Of 8 different OS's, I've found 3 to include Vista Home Premium, Win2K and WinXP Pro. I don't think I'll miss the Win98, ME or 95 disks much. My original Win 3.1 and DOS 6.0 3.5" disks are water soaked and cracked though. They would still install until this happened. I had planned on copying all of those files to a single CD, but never did.

There have been some folks asking if we need help, they would come into town and lend a hand. All I can say at this point is that by the end of this month, we hope to have the house bulldozed in and a new foundation going in. My brother-in-law is a builder in Florida, so he has said he will oversee the work. That's a good thing as I have no clue about building homes! The family and I have one more day of packing things up and then that's it. We will have everything out of the house, the yard is cleared except for a debris pile by the road and there's pretty much nothing else to do out there except wait on the insurance company. So I do thank you for your offers of help, I just don;t know what you would do once you got here. If anyone wants to come in to town and just take a look at the place, let me know and I'll be more than happy to give you a tour. The amount of devastation around my neighborhood is simply amazing. At least our house is still standing and we were able to get about 40% of our belongings to the new place. There were plenty of others that had nothing to salvage.

Oh well, time to get moving. Just wanted to let you guys know where we are today and to once again thank you all for the efforts you've put into helping us!

Tom

[garetjax]

It's good to hear from you again, Tom. Looks like you and your family are in good spirits and ready to move on with life after with what's happened to you guys. No sense in dwelling on what has happened, you've got the future to look forwards to. Happy to see that things are finally progressing to the point that getting your lives back together is a reality. Your earlier updates about your insurance company dragging their feet (USAA, which I too go through) were downright depressing. Glad to see they are working with you to get things taken care of at last.

One question though. When you said that your neighbors made a list of questionable people, was that list for people that live in your neighborhood, or was that for 'visitors' that come by digging through trash? You did the right thing, Tom. If someone had given me lip after asking them politely but firmly to get off my property, I don't know if I would have the self control not to go after the guy.

Take care, Tom. Good to hear from you again. =)

[Pete]

I hate smart dumbazzez... I can see myself cocking my shotgun as I tell that guy to get off my yard. Just have a big sign that says "Trespassers will be shot on sight."

[screwballl]

with people like this at TT... I may have to spend that extra few bucks there

good to hear all is well there Tom, I will still have to come up someday and have a beer with ya... just kick back and relax one day.
Also if you want, I have some older game systems here like a Dreamcast and a 19" TV that I can bring up if that is any help... just say the word. Also have a working 15" CRT... just larger items that would be a pain to ship. Trying to think of what else.. I think I have an extra 350W Antec PSU if that would be any help...
just PM me if any of this sounds workable and we can arrange a time and place. Sundays are my best bet due to my workweek.

[simple_inhibition]

glad to hear things are looking up :)i figured out a way to donate :-P (trade secret lol) its all about family here!

[Quakindude]

Good Lord people! I got a $1000 money order from Rich today. We've also had another money order come in today from a person at MPC, who I will not name here out of respect for that person, in the amount of $500. Also, we received a personal check from one of Hitman's buddies, I'm ashamed to say I don't recall the dudes screen name, for $20. Heidi and I are simply in awe of the generosity and caring that you guys and the folks over at MPC and many other forums have shown for us. I've run out of words to express the deep appreciation I have for the computing community and how they step up to take care of their own. Of course, HardwareLogic holds a very special place in my heart, but everyone involved in this whole process has simply amazed us. Again, I'm really out of words to use to express myself here.

Thanks a lot guys and gals. I just don't know what else to say.

[Jokerswild]

Seeing you and your family get back to a somewhat normal life after this is all the thanks we need. We all just wish we could do more.