A message from Misty

[Carlos]

Misty just notified me that her house's antenna was struck by lightning, apparently frying some of the electronics. Her computers are down, so she may be offline for a while. She'll still be able to check her email from the public library, so go that route if you really need to get in touch with her.

[hana]

Ouch.. I hope she gets things up and running again soon.




hana

[galenwbritt]

I can kind of feel her pain.................the storm that killed 11 last night 200 miles southwest of here hit about 5 hours later at my place (1:00 a.m.) and had probably the best/worst lightning storm I have ever witnessed........and I grew up in the beginning of Tornado Alley. It seemed like it stayed "light as day" for a good 10-12 minutes solid while pouring rain and blowing like crazy. What was kind of weird was that there were no sounds (thunder) during the worst part of it........just lightning happening so fast in the sky I guess it had no time to add noise to it. LOL

I saw one flash that I could swear was less than 50' outside of my window and obviously was very loud. I was thinking that it had hit a transformer on a pole, but we don't have any in this back section of the subdivision. We lost lights and stuff for quite a bit, then about 15 minutes later when it subsided a bit it seemed to come back on as normal. Anyway, about 10 minutes later after that I heard a loud "POP" and could not figure out where it had come from. I could smell a bit of something that had been burnt and after looking around a bit noticed that my boys little TV wouldn't come on anymore. Weird, as all the other lights and electronics came on in the same room.

We woke up this morning to another TV totally shot, one TV that would come on but now has no sound and a cable modem that is shot. The modem was in the same surge protector strip that had the computer/monitor/speakers/etc. and all of those were fine. It is even the type of protector that has feeds for cables via phone and television to run into before outputting to the source. Still not sure what exactly happened as all I can tell was a late surge throughout our home wiring system and no matter whether an appliance was on or not, it was toasted. All this was upstairs as we haven't found anything wrong downstairs (yet).

Anyway, just thought I would share this little story on the power of storms even when you think either you are protected or that it has already passed.

Galen

[Taceas]

I'm here, kinda. =P

I went and puchased a Verizon Wireless Broadband Access PC card for the laptop, since it was disconnected at the time and suffered no damage (thankfully).

The wireless internet unit is on a 30' extension pole that's mounted on top of our 35' tv antenna, to get above the trees surrounding our property to get a clear shot of town where the main ISP unit is on our local radio station's tower.

I had just gotten in from gardening and called the dog to come in just as it hit, and went to turn on the tv to see about the weather since it was 6:30ish and thats when they have the weather on our local news. I no sooner got the tv turned on and an instantaneous flash-boom hit. The power stayed on, but the tv in the kitchen went dead. I tried to turn it back on, nada. So I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it turned on, but the tv antenna or coax is clearly shot as I didn't get any signal. The tv in the basement has this funky magenta & lime green flame design (ironic I know), even while watching VHS or DVD, so I'm pretty sure it's shot. Just bought it the day after Christmas.

I went downstairs and tried to turn my computer on, nothing. All of the peripherals work, but you push the power button and its dead in the water. Both mine and Matthew's relatively new custom built computer are dead. I can't see any burn marks on the ethernet card or the motherboard, so who knows what's wrong.

We called the insurance company today and they said they would have an adjuster call us and they would have to take the computers to determine what exactly is bad (cheap-butts) so goodness knows when we might get our computers back or what they might even replace. But as is typical with insurance companies, the adjuster never called back.

The internet company is supposed to come on Friday afternoon to determine what damage has been done and maybe replace the unit. It'll be $268 out of pocket for a new receiver-transmitter and replacement of the ethernet wire into the house. But they said homeowners would more than likely cover that when we filed our claim. They're also going to install a $25 surge protection unit for the ethernet cable, something I think they should have done when they put it up 2 years ago.

But where the coax for the tv signal came in the house under the soffett/eave the area surrounding the coax is blackened by smoke/fire, something not too terribly comforting. The contacts on the ethernet wire from the internet is blackened and charred as well, no clue if our router is still good or not.

The storm yesterday was pretty peculiar, it was dark as hell and it blew like a hurricane. There were some pretty strong down drafts and it was blowing straight from the west and the rain was pretty fine but a LOT of it, we got over an inch in about 20-30 mins. The lightning was like nothing I've never seen before, it was so intense and close. The left side of my truck was plastered with dead leaves and wild cherry blossoms that were blown from the west and it knocked a large maple tree over our road.

So that's my status. It sucks not having your own computer. =/

[Joanna]

WOW! Glad you are ok though. Paul says to see if there is a reset button in the computer to reset the motherboard. He has had to do it on one of our Apple computers and it worked after what we thought was a power surge.

Good luck,
Joanna

[Taceas]

I'll definitely look. I don't know if mine would have one, being as its a few years old, but Matthew's might. Thanks for the suggestion!

Lightning is fascinating and so utterly terrifying at the same time. I love going out in the country and parking and sitting in lawn chairs to watch the storms roll in, but when its on top of me, I'm uneasy. =P

[Taceas]

The adjuster called this morning and I dare say she's been the most helpful, courteous, efficient and understanding adjuster I've ever had to deal with.

They're going to do the replacement stuff in two parts, for simplicities' sake:

A) We buy a new TV, a new wireless router, someone fixes and/or replaces the tv and coax, and the ISP replaces the wireless equipment (tomorrow) and we send her the receipts.

B) Since both of our computers are custom built and we don't have a local computer shop anymore to bench test, it'd be too expensive to drive them to Evansville and use a shop down there (they don't look for any less than $100).

Matthew gets to basically rebuild both computers and send her receipts for the totals of what equipment was damaged. So they never leave the house, which I'm glad of. I hate strange people snooping through my stuff.

So hopefully soon I can get off of this Chiclet-keyboard (as Chuck would put it).

[nwheat]

Wow, Misty! Glad you're ok! Hopefully things will be back to normal soon!!