Thursday, May 31, 2012

The Thunder Rolls

Yes folks, just like Garth sang, the lightning did strike.  We had a bit of a storm last week and lightning either hit our house or very, very close to it.  The sound was an amazingly loud crack accompanied by a bright, white flash of light.
It seemed all was well; no smoldering shingles or power outages or the like.  That is until I tried to use the Blu-ray player.  No connection to the home network.  So, after further investigation, Thor decided that I didn’t need two of the four LAN cables that were connected to our router.  Better to fry cabling than the Blu-ray player itself.
I thought we made out pretty well and decided to reward our situation with a router upgrade, since I was going to be in working on the system anyway.  I bought a Netgear N900 Dual Band Gigabit Router to replace the Linksys WRT54G.  What a difference in speed and connectivity.  I highly recommend this router for all your home network needs.  It even has USB ports so you can connect an external hard drive and printer.
The Netgear N900 also broadcasts a separate and secure access point for your guests, besides a 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz connection.  All in all, a very good unit.
imgresUpon further investigation of the household, I discovered that the lightning took out our Wii console.  It was plugged directly into a household outlet and not through any surge protection.  My bad!!!
I have always enjoyed watching lightning during storms and will continue to be awed by its unique beauty and unharnessed power.  It is truly amazing at the amount of energy it contains and the amount of damage it can do, even in an indirect strike.

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