As many may know, about 2 weeks ago, I took about the worst lightening strike ever. The hit was about 25 yards away from my house/studio, but the damage was really amazing. In the space of a couple of seconds, I lost 2 printers, 1 PC (all of with all of my itunes), 1 LCD, 1 hub, 1 set of Klipsch 5.1 speakers, 1/s of a 2nd PC, my wireless router, DSL modem, and 4 working terabytes of data on 5 hard drives and the logic boards on my main AC unit. Total cost over 3.5K.
Some of the problems showed up immediately, like I was not able to get to the internet or my printer no longer was able to get a single. But other things like the fact that I had lost 1/2 of the USB controllers on one PC, half the function of a sound blaster card, or the issue that came up when I tried to get my internet back up since I had given my router enough of a shock to cause it to work some times, but not all the times.
When you get into a situation like this, you also tend to reach out for help. I have one really good friend Marshall Singer, who has an electronic back ground. He was able to help me in three different areas.
- Marshall was able to tell me immediately just what had happened to AC unit, saving me thousands of dollars as most repair people would have tried to replace the entire unit, when all that was wrong was the logic card and main transistor.
- With Marshall’s help, I was able to get my flaky internet back online. I was not sure where the problem was, DSL line to the house, or modem or router, or a combination of them. Trying to call AT&T or INDIA was a total waste of time. One of sad states our county is in that we allow large companies to totally not have any local contacts to help out in a problem like this
- Lastly, after I received my Klipsch Amp and controller back (it turned out that only the controller had be hit), I was still not able to get my sound back like it used to be. Marshall had a duplicate Creative Lab’s card and he loaned that to me to test with. Once again this saved me a ton of time and as it turned out 1/2 of the output of card had been fried.
I can only hope I can return the favor to Marshall one of these days. I am now back up 100% and starting to recover files that were corrupted. Good friends they are an important part of life, Thanks Marshall!
One other thing, I finally learned how to spell Klipsch!
Marshall is a helpful sort (If this is the same Marshall Singer I knew), and he was a hoot to ride with. I rode with him on about half my Century rides, and he was always tossing in some challenge to spice up what would otherwise be a dull ride. I still have the computer we built in his basement about 15 years ago.