As I arrived to work via bicycle on another abnormally cool August day in Boston, I looked at my car and noticed something odd. Where there was once a red fin, there was now what appeared, from a distance, to be a smaller white fin.

As I walked closer to the car I saw that this is what the receiver looks like without it’s painted cover.

This close up shows you where the thieves pried off the cover, and possibly tried to pry out the receiver.

At this point, I was asking myself why was the receiver still here? My first instinct was that maybe the receiver is attached in such a way that made it impossible for these amateur thieves to remove it. So, I tried to pick it up myself, and, to my surprise, it lifted right out of the hole no problem:

Still giving the thieves some credit, I thought to myself: maybe the wires are attached permanently. Then, my technical knowledge kicked in and told me that wouldn’t make sense. So, I proceeded to remove the wires, taking me less than a minute to do so. All it took was an easy push and pull.

I removed the wires and then tucked them into the beautiful new mini sun-roof on my car and called it a day. They won’t get a second chance to take this satellite receiver, which would be de-activated and useless to them. I’m assuming this was the work of young teenagers, not very versed in electronics yet.

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