Me and electricity......

mrvette

Phantom of the Opera
Joined
Mar 24, 2008
Messages
15,194
Location
NE Florida
:shocking:

I have had a pretty close relationship with elektrickery for all my life, even since what my mommy told me was about sticking the screwdriver in the 'lectrickery socket' when I was like age 6 or so.....

so some 60 years later, it seems it still reaches out and touches my ass....

when Linda gets her computer up and running again, you will see some pix I took of the damn TREE in the neighbors back yard, yup, you guess it right....

that lightening hit about 1130 monday morning, lit up the tree pretty good, flamed out Linda's computer, terminallly, along with my LAN, the router, and of course it takes comcast THREE modems to finally find a good one....no shit, two trips on their part, one to exchange the modem for me.....so including the flamed one, this is #4 in the house now....since Monday AM....

so on a lark, I call my old High school friend in Texas and tell him about it, was going to describe the mommy board and rest of the shit, so I going to send him the whole large tower mainframe, and in return, he is sending here by Friday...hopefully, a new computer for Linda....she dont know it yet...I will settle up with Ken when the smoke settles....

coping with all this shit is enough to drive me krazy...

SO I have taken the isolation transformer and put it along with it's surge protector in her computer room/office....and running the TV and other shit off the same isolation transformer I have under my desk....

this is the SECOND lightening strike on this house that has fucked up all my shit but good, first one was before Linda and I married, must be 11-12 years ago by now, that fried all the stuff but good....

NOW, you not going to believe it, BUT, that bolt hit this similar lightening rod/tree in Scott's back yard, some 150--200 feet from my garage....

starting about 25' off the ground for a distance of maybe 15' it completely garroted the bark and maybe outer wood off the tree, and split that 3' at the base tree trunk...about 2" wide all the way to the ground....

it shot tree bark/wood all over the hood, we are picking tree pieces outta our asses around here, everyone....

now get this shit, I had this dirty house fan without a stick of damnage on it, setting near the vette rear tire in driver's side....up against the wall, outta the way....a piece of that tree bark/wood shot into the garage so hard, hit that fan and busted out the housing edge....other pieces of tree in the garage too....missed both cars, but plenty of pieces under and all over the driveway....the stain on the pieces of plastic being same as the tree wood, told the tale, it was NOT me that made the initial observation on that one, but I gotta agree on the forensics at the crime...

when Linda gets back on the air, I going to stick some pix up on sites....

and you all need see Scott's camp trailer he had under the tree in the back yard there....

blew the cb? antenna off it, blew out all the plactic lenses from the side of it...all over the yard ....and somehow it arced over to a knob on the swing out sun canopy , and there is a silver dollar sized black welding mark where that vaporized knob was....the trailer is electrically toast at this point....

gotta admit the sky was SO black just before the strike, that I had to strike a match to see it.....

guy across the street spent about a grand already getting his shit fixed...

Scott and Mindy spent a easy grand so far on their shit, and we still not all back on the air again, Charlie and Bob are still walking wounded....I dunno about any other damage....

:gurney::ill::crap::drink:
 
And that, boys and girls, is why they invented "homeowners' insurance".
 
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Your oil well will need lightning rods as well. Conatct Nikola Tesla for more information.
 
And that, boys and girls, is why they invented "homeowners' insurance".

And surge protectors!

HAD them, don't do any good with 50 billion volts and 400 million amps with a rise time in nanoseconds goes off some 200' away....BUT the gear with the 1-1 ratio heavy large isolation transformers on it, all survived, except of course the comcast cable modem and associated LAN wiring like the router....blew out my LAN shit on the computer mommy board, so another card installed....


Laurie across the street was at her kitchen sink, starting to fix lunch....

she looks out her back window, and sees this ball of fire following her metal fense line going up hill toward Ernies, and then it obviously found Scott's tree....

she said it was like a streak of light along the fense, and a large ball of moving light following IT....

oops.....:harhar::sos:
 
U of Florida has a research center near Gainsville where they attract lightning and study it. They have found that lightning rods only dispell about 20% of the juice from a strike and almost anything else is futile. The best protection is being totally encased in a large 4 sided steel box. They have the papers online. I looked it up after being struck here. Interesting stuff that clears up a lot of myths.

Lightning hit the front yard, down a royal palm, across the driveway, blew out a chunck of concrete, blew all four tires on my truck (dozens of tiny pinholes in each tire where they met the ground), took out the alternator and electronic speedo and odometer, went from there down the side of the house, took out the ground rod clamp (didn't find that for 2 years), took out the garge door opener, low voltage lighting in the kitchen, then went to the neighbors yard and killed her tree which came down on my house later that year during Katrina. Didn't touch any computers.

Oh and the german shepherds, didn't like tstorms anyway, but only 1 was home, the other with me, but she must have gotten a good tingle, because after that when she heard thunder, she would hide in places that something half here size shouldn't fit.
 
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Well so it seems while up at the bank, transferring funds and trying to cope off their lobby computers....getting ready to buy a new computer for Linda, and not even being on the air yet with my POS.....I thought of calling my geek buddy from HS yet, known that man 1/2 a century....radio club all that shit....been a while, back to the vacuum tube daze yet....any of you all remember THEM?? thought not.....

well anyway as I was leaving the bank, I thought to call Ken in FW Tx.....he has a collection or computers and his house rivals any CIA/DIA watch station, the joint looks like a Mars probe on steroids....so I thought of him to maybe find a old identical mommy board/processor to fit Linda's mainframe.....

so typical Ken, damn old Navy guy....hardheaded geek....he calls Dell, and so this afternoon about a hour ago, it arrives....some new fancy wiz bang that does backflips off the moon and shit....

so anyway, it's on her desk as a surprise when she gets home later today....

I really didn't want much less ask for this, my mind was for a parts source for the old machine....

so now Linda has to get used to this new windows 7? OS, and 4 gigs of memory/etc....going to ditch the 50' of LAN wire to the router.....and go wireless off a USB plug in back for her, that keeps shit easy and less wires to go puff in the next go round....we have another 500 trees to go, easy...maybe more....

:gurney::gurney::ill::banghead:
 
Your oil well will need lightning rods as well. Conatct Nikola Tesla for more information.

And someone with more brains then BP operating it

AND someone with more brains than shit-for-brains in the WH, to manage a cleanup/get shit done in a TIMELY manner....I mean just for giggles and grins....

:banghead::banghead::club::tomato:
 

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