pow-BOOM Now, put both of those together, and crank it up to about 160-180 decibels for a split second… this is what is sounds like when lightning hits the end of your cove… and I don’t live on a big cove… It’s an odd experience, losing your hearing… and also, when lightning hits what most people would consider “close” you have just enough time brace and you’re normally shaken up… well, there was no time to do anything… the light and the sound hit at the same time… after that, oddly enough, I wasn’t shaken up… it was like the addrenaline rush of a roller coaster, and I wanted to ride again, after someone gave me a pair of earplugs… I started trying to herd siblings back into the house and was met by my mother coming outside… seems she wasnt’ wearing shoes, and both of her feet were numb because electricity had run through the floor…. that had to be odd, also…
once inside, we started hearing strange noises from around the house, and we tried to track them all down… I can not explain the freakiness of hearing the phone’s dialtone AFTER you hang it up… we had two phones do that… just isn’t right… and it gets better… the pulse of electricty that ran through the floor turned on some of my sister’s electronic games that were in her floor… they just came on… also not right… and it gets better, still… it seems that if something was on, it wouldn’t turn off, and if it was off, it wouldn’t come on… the satellite was fried, but wouldn’t turn off, the vcr wouldn’t turn on, thank God that He spared the PS2… yes, my God is a benevolent God, but He is not without wrath, and it befell our computers… (no, I don’t really think God singled out my computers, but it really adds to the story, no?) So the two computers that were setting on the desk were fried… After several hours, I tracked the problem on my computer down to the modem… it’s fubar… I don’t know if it fried anything on the motherboard, but it will not POST if the modem is in… take it out and it seems to start to boot ok… haven’t got a chance to spend more time on it… I’m not terribly concerned since my new board will be in on thursday/friday… problem is my parents’ board… it’s toast… it’s the board, too… everything is onboard… I tried swapping PS and a few other things, but it’s dead… no, it’s worse than that… it’s dead, Jim… I guess the good news is that when my new board comes in, I can pop my old board into their computer… problem is my mb has nothing onboard… let’s see… from the upgrade I’ll have a mb, PII 400, 256 meg ram, video card… still need a sound card, modem… I guess that’s not too bad…