A shocking occurrence

I had received my new (used) computer a few days ago, purchased on eBay. It didn't come with nearly the RAM it was supposed to have, and today the right RAM arrived, so I eagerly plopped it in and started up, eager to see how fast this new machine would be. Wow! With a cable internet connection, pages really zing. As I am surfing, trying out pages I know are rather slow to load on my old computer, there is a HUGE explosion, I receive a shock to my hand from the mouse, and the electricity goes out.<br><br>We check out the house and nothing seems to be smoking, so I grab a flashlight (it's about 5pm) and head out into the hail. Nothing burning or smoking outside, and although one next door neighbor does not have power, the other does (and most of the neighborhood does). I walk across the back yard to look at the nearest power pole, and notice some large strips of bark lying underneath our beloved 100' tall cedar tree. Looking around, I find more bark, and then chunks of heartwood. When I shine my flashlight up the trunk, I can see two vertically running raw scars, each several inches wide, with jagged bits of bark and wood sticking out at strange angles. I walk up the hill a bit to get a better view of the top of the tree, and it looks like the top 20' of the trunk has split.<br><br>As I am talking to the tree man on the phone, trying to determine if this qualifies as a "24-hour emergency", the family yells that, "something just fell out of the cedar tree". When I return to the back yard I now find that the top 15' of the tree is lying on the lawn. Well, hopefully that stabilized the tree because the tree man doesn't sound like he wants to work in the rain and dark, and the four other "24-hour emergency" tree service numbers I call just have answering machines with messages saying they will return the call the next day.<br><br>The rest of the family goes to stay the night with friends, and I stay home to listen to the power people do their thing outside, dreading the return of the power because that will mean finding out just how fried not only my new computer is, but also my old computer (which was on, with all of my local web site files and photos), the printer (which was on), and all of the various other electronic devices which are required in this modern techno-wonder world.<br><br>The power is restored about 9pm, the house starts to warm up, the 'fridge starts to cool down, and the old computer starts up fine. The new computer starts up fine too (!). On the old computer, however, I can't get connected to the internet, and the router is not showing its normal pattern of lights. Oh well, routers are pretty cheap these days. I plug back in the old ethernet hub and I'm back on the internet. Checking out the new computer, I click the mouse button to get my browser started, and the computer seems to think I am still holding down the button even though I released it. I can't do anything to get the computer to think I have released that button, so I restart and try again, with the same results. Oh well, mice are cheap these days too - at least my mousing hand still seems to work. Tomorrow we will find out if we will have lots of firewood or just a shorter cedar tree (we are guessing the former).

Whoa, Charles. That's a trip report alright. Glad you, your family and all those little electronic ones and zeros survived intact. <br><br>Sometimes the world comes temporarily unglued, and what had always seemed safe and straightforward becomes suddenly full of threat...and then, almost before we have a chance to figure out what's going on, it snaps right back again. You get a good story to tell, and I sit here facing my own computer screen, all bleary-eyed in the middle of the night, wondering whether I've been taking things too much for granted. In fact, I think I'll back up my files, right now. Then I'm going to sleep.<br><br>Ski season is upon us for real this time. See you in the backcountry. <br><br>Mark <br>

Sometimes I'm glad I have only a laptop. <br><br>Glad you and the rest of your family are OK.

Perhaps a laptop would have been safer (assuming it was running off the battery and wirelessly connected to the internet), but yesterday a neighbor was recounting how he received a shock to the ear from his in-use cordless phone due to a close lightning strike (also fried his computer's modem). For backups, I'm kind of compulsive about those, but just having to go through the restore process would be a real pain and take a lot of time, so I am very glad I don't have to do that.<br><br>We now have a lot of firewood! Or rather, we will when I split all of the slabs which are lying around the back yard. It was a very good thing we had the tree cut down. Counting the top 15' which fell off soon after the strike, the top 25' of trunk (100' tree) was visibly split. Out of the remaining 75', about 65' was internally cracked straight through the middle, so when the chunks were cut and fell to the ground many split themselves into two pieces. The tree guy said that the next windstorm or significant snow could have easily peeled the tree (85' remaining) in half, with one section most likely falling on the neighbor's house. He also said that the tree had been exceptionally healthy, in fact probably the healthiest tree of its size he had ever seen - bummer. We had them leave a 6' stump so that we can build some kind of tree house; it is a very beautiful stump, if that is possible, 3'+ in diameter with characteristic cedar buttresses. One positive: our fruit trees and vegi garden will be much happier now because the loss of the cedar has completely transformed the micro-environment of our backyard.<br><br>Inside the house, it looks like we lost a mouse, a router, and a telephone. Out of four telephones in the house, the only one damaged was the one sitting about one 1' away from the shocking mouse. Is it possible that somehow my having my hand on the mouse (providing a route to ground?) attracted more current flow to that area? Very strange.<br><br>