Eleven years ago, so pre 9/11, I was late for a flight at JKF and while I grabbed my carry-on out of the X-ray machine I forgot some prints I had purchased at a museum on that trip. I have always thought that if I had put some contact info on the print that I might have gotten them back.
Today my mom and dad were flying out of O’Hare back to Seattle where they had visited my sister. Going through security my dad picked up the wrong laptop out of the X-ray machine. I can totally see how with everything going on and you are trying to put your shoes back on along with gather every back up this could happen. At the gate he thought perhaps he had just packed my sister’s laptop by mistake so he just flew home. Once he got home he took a look and realized that it was not hers at all. The problem is that the laptop does not have any identification it. Perhaps because it is a Dell he would be able to track the serial number back to the owner or something like that. He tried to boot it but he could not get by the NT log-in screen. He did notice that the laptop was on a network domain in the log-on dialog. I just so happens that my dad had picked up the laptop of someone who works for the same company I do (more specifically they are an employee of a vendor who works at the company I do). Because we use our email address as our user name I was able to drop the guy an email and he and his laptop will soon be reunited. Luckily for my parents he has info about their laptop as he realized that their laptop was not his at security and they had him fill out some paperwork at that point.
The point is neither his nor my parent’s laptop has any contact info on it. I know my carry-on bag has my contact info, my laptop bag has my contact info as does my camera bag. On my laptop itself it has no contact info. As I blog this I am in the process of taping my business card to the bottom of my laptop. Right after 9/11 many people were leaving their laptops at the airport because of all of the stress of going through security. Even today this can still happen. Just remember to put something on your laptop itself or anything else that can go through the X-ray machine on its own. I might still have those prints today if I had done some many years ago.
A digital recording of my life 