To Catch a Thief
Disclaimer: Not a post about running or diabetes.
So this week some jerk made off with 4 of the 8 solar footlamps around our fishpond. Not a huge deal, mind you. If memory serves, we paid $35 for all of them and I'd much rather lose a few lights than have the fish messed with.
But here's the thing: my 11 year old son was pretty pissed about it.
To be certain, it's been an interesting summer for the kiddo. Heading into it, this sort of became one of those years that we wanted him to do more with his time than stare at screens and he's responded very well. We've sealed the deck, weeded the yard, pressure washed the house and built the fish pond together. While each of these activities were accompanied by the usual adolescent whining, they all culminated in what I could tell was a sense of accomplishment for him. So when he realized that some moron had made off with some of the lights, his response wasn't "Let's go buy more." Instead, it was, "We worked so hard on it."
And interesting response, as anyone who's built a fishpond with solar footlamps will tell you that 98% of the labor ain't in the footlamps. But still, to him they represented a project we'd put a lot into.
My response? We installed a motion sensor floodlamp and hooked up a webcam that captures all motion around the pond. I customized the motion sensor on the webcam so that it won't alert us when cars drive by, but will alert us when someone ventures near the pond. Yes, to be clear, I spent $60 to prevent the theft of $35 of lights.
But it's cool. In fact, you can view the streaming of webcam of pond Grimm here (we still need to put the remaining footlamps back outside). And hopefully, it will make my son feel good to preserve the work he did. And if I catch the twit, well that would be alright, too.
So this week some jerk made off with 4 of the 8 solar footlamps around our fishpond. Not a huge deal, mind you. If memory serves, we paid $35 for all of them and I'd much rather lose a few lights than have the fish messed with.
But here's the thing: my 11 year old son was pretty pissed about it.
To be certain, it's been an interesting summer for the kiddo. Heading into it, this sort of became one of those years that we wanted him to do more with his time than stare at screens and he's responded very well. We've sealed the deck, weeded the yard, pressure washed the house and built the fish pond together. While each of these activities were accompanied by the usual adolescent whining, they all culminated in what I could tell was a sense of accomplishment for him. So when he realized that some moron had made off with some of the lights, his response wasn't "Let's go buy more." Instead, it was, "We worked so hard on it."
And interesting response, as anyone who's built a fishpond with solar footlamps will tell you that 98% of the labor ain't in the footlamps. But still, to him they represented a project we'd put a lot into.
My response? We installed a motion sensor floodlamp and hooked up a webcam that captures all motion around the pond. I customized the motion sensor on the webcam so that it won't alert us when cars drive by, but will alert us when someone ventures near the pond. Yes, to be clear, I spent $60 to prevent the theft of $35 of lights.
But it's cool. In fact, you can view the streaming of webcam of pond Grimm here (we still need to put the remaining footlamps back outside). And hopefully, it will make my son feel good to preserve the work he did. And if I catch the twit, well that would be alright, too.
