Here’s a quick post that starts out rather awfully but, thankfully, ends on a positive note with lessons learned.

Monday morning I check out my hotel in Las Vegas and headed to the airport about 5:30 AM. I was on my way to Cabo where I was to meet Elana, spend a few days relaxing, and then join with our friends to celebrate their daughter’s wedding. I got in a cab and 12 minutes later was at the airport. I grabbed my backpack, my suitcase and the extra bag I had borrowed from Larry because, while he was truly the king of swag in Las Vegas, I hadn’t done too terribly myself.

I check my baggage in. It took only a matter of seconds. I went upstairs to go through security. I went to passport control and began taking off my shoes and my jacket etc. I went to pull my laptop out of my backpack… it wasn’t there.

I looked on the ground around me. It wasn’t there.

I looked in the other bag I was carrying. It wasn’t there.

I panicked.

I grabbed everything that I had with me, explained to the TSA representative who was checking baggage what had happened and ran down to the check-in counter to see if perhaps my notebook was there. It wasn’t.

Now I was really starting to freak out.

And it was even worse than it might appear.

I’m embarrassed to admit this but a few days before I had turned off the password protection on my computer in order to save a few seconds whenever I had a chance to post during CES. That meant that my MacBook, now in someone else’s hands, contained pretty much my entire life and it was there for the taking. I know! I know! Pretty darn stupid of me.

I called the hotel and ask them to check the room to see if perhaps it slipped out while I was packing. It hadn’t.

And then I realized what had occurred. Prior to leaving for my trip I had purchased a new backpack from Timbuk2. The Q is a smaller version of the H.A.L. I reviewed for the site a number of months ago. It has served me well. It’s well designed, sturdily built, and has a nifty feature whereby the notebook is inserted into the backpack through a side zippered pocket. This means you can pull out your notebook without having to put the backpack on the ground. It also means you need to be particularly careful that the zipper is closed when your backpack is inside lest it slip out when the bag is placed down. It hadn’t been.

It wasn’t the design of the bag that was at fault… it was me… and I was now paying the price.

In had put my backpack on the ground when I got into the cab and my bet was that the notebook had simply slipped out of it while it and was sitting on the floor of the cab. I figured there was no way I was ever going to see it again.

I pulled out the receipt I had gotten from the cab driver and called the number on the back. I explain the situation to the dispatcher who answered and asked, no actually I begged, for her to track down my notebook. She explained that she worked with five different companies but that she would do her best to put word out. She took my phone number and hung up.

I began making a list of what needed to be changed from the perspective of passwords since I wasn’t ever going to see my notebook again. Thankfully I was wrong.

Not three minutes later the phone rang. It was the dispatcher. She gave me the phone number of the cab I had been in. And she told me that the Driver was on his way back to the airport to bring it to me. Yes, I found a helpful taxicab dispatcher and an honest kind cabdriver in Las Vegas. 10 minutes later I had my notebook back and, although he didn’t ask for it, I gave him all the remaining cash I had available.

So what do I learn from this?

1. Never ever leave your notebook without password protection.

2. Investing in LoJack might not be a bad idea!

3. Anyone can make the mistake of leaving their notebook somewhere it shouldn’t be- especially during a multi-leg trip when you’re exhausted and get up early in the morning.

4. I got super lucky this time. I won’t be so lucky if I let it happen again.

And most importantly…

5. There are far more decent people in the world than the news would have us believe. Many of them are willing to go the extra mile — even for a stranger.