Moar thunder

[altivo]

Another truncated entry. Tornado watch, thunderstorms passing frequently, power outage possible any minute. I don't trust these little UPSes. Well, I don't trust the big ones either, actually, as I've seen too many fail.

Kitty is eating when hand fed (spoiled) but doesn't seem to want to drink. This concerns us a bit, but it's been only 24 hours since he woke up from sedation. Mostly he's sleeping still.

Today was a bust at work, between the retirement celebrations and all the congratulatory excitement about the choice of the new director. Kept out of it as much as possible but still got little done.

We can actually use some rain, but I'm tired of the wind gusts. Gary's in Chicago until tomorrow. Still working on one final project, and he has one exam to take (online) and his term is over for a few weeks.

OK, enough. There's more thunder.

Comments

[hrrunka]

We've had a little rain the last couple of days, but we could also use some more, as it's been the first rain for a fortnight, and the ground is rather hard and dry.

[moonhare]

I still unplug the pc's and unclip the network cables during electrical storms. I don't trust my $25 surge protector.

We had a lightening strike at my folks' home a number of years back. The house is protected with rods, but this bolt hit a swamp maple next to their barn, shot through the roof, and caught a wire for a ride back into their basement: took out a spare refrigerator and some other appliances.

After I told you about my well pump replacement it occurred to me that we had had a lightening strike quite close by within a week or so of its demise. Transformer three poles down got hit in a shower of green and yellow sparks.

Last lightening story. My daughter had some battery-powered toys react to ionization that set up a channel through her room down through the kitchen and into the basement. It was like Poltergeist for her. We lost the kitchen phone directly in the path, and the mouse died on my elder pc which was in the basement... just the mouse for whatever reason.

[altivo]

It's been getting that way here as well. The actual rainfall last night only amounted to a quarter inch, but it certainly freshened things up. This morning was clear and blue. Clouded up midday like it was going to rain more, but at sunset it was clear again, and still. We actually got out the charcoal grill to make dinner.

[altivo]

We've only had one instance of actual lightning damage and that was back in the city. I'm not sure what got hit, exactly, but I suspect it was a telephone pole near the house. We certainly heard it, an order of magnitude louder than any thunderclap I ever remember. It was around 1 am, and I just stayed in bed. However, I had amateur radio equipment set up and running, linked to a computer in an upstairs room. The random path the surge took through that stuff was peculiar. The transceiver was fine but needed a reset and the memory reloaded. The computer (an Amiga) lost its serial port control chip. The radio modem survived, but the telephone modem was dead. And most bizarre, a couple of chips inside a MIDI interface connected to the Amiga actually exploded. The smell of burned semiconductors was strong when I entered the room the next morning.

[moonhare]

I don't know how the pc survived where the mouse didn't. I wonder, too, if this is why I can't get a 3.5 inch floppy drive to work properly on the machine anymore.

I consider ourselves lucky. That path through our house was a prelude to a strike and thankfully it never formed completely. Maybe the grounded tv aerial outside my daughter's room counteracted it, maybe it just 'unformed.'

We had a lightening strike at my folks' home a number of years back.

...but a quick 'gamma correction' fixed that.

I've grown complacent with spell checkers and I'm afraid I let it suggest the wrong word when I hacked the spelling on that one. I'll leave these sorry little misuses as reminders... Its and it's have been particularly troublesome lately, as has the there family. I don't usually print the wrong lightning though. *tisk* that second thing to go ;o)