The Big Bang

Last night at home I was working on my computer. Some storms were rolling through but any thunder I heard sounded like it was pretty far off. Then it happened. Out the window facing the back yard there was an intense white flash coinciding instantly with deafening sound. Two of my three computer screens went black. The one that remained on had a distorted version of my desktop background on it.

Elsa immediately freaked out and started to try to wedge herself past my legs/feet and behind the desk which I told her repeatedly NO. She ignored me and continued to try. I wound up having to grab her by the waist and pull her out, she refused to listen. The area behind my desk has a lot of wires for the various equipment I have there, it is not a dog safe environment. Her refusal to listen to me really got me angry, despite knowing she was just scared. She wound up going into the guest bathroom tub, another safe zone.

So I look at my cable modem and see it flashing amber, indicating it was not connected. I power cycled it but I did so knowing it would not help. It seemed clear that the strike got into the coax cable and either damaged the modem or something upstream of it. When I checked it appeared the outage was local to me so I have a tech scheduled to come out this afternoon to hopefully get me reconnected. I am hoping the surge did not damage components in my computer as it is hard wired to the cable modem.

Spending the rest of the night without internet was a reminder of just how integrated it has become into life although I was able to flip my phone to cellular data to stay in the loop somewhat. My home which is filled with various “smart” devices suddenly became very, very dumb. I did some 3D printing projects and read some 6 year old Make magazines I had in the nightstand until I fell asleep. It was fine. Just like with food, internet fasting now and then is probably not a bad thing.