h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Friday night was *interesting*...


My housemate and I got home from work to find that the garage door remote was not functioning. This was in the middle of a fairly intense rainstorm, so a power outage was not unexpected. The interesting thing was that the light on our porch was still on. We park in the driveway and go inside. The power seems to be out in half of the house. We turn the breakers back on for that side of the house, and test the garage opener in the garage. Still not working...

We investigate the intense odour of ozone in the house. It seem concentrated in my housemate's bedroom and the living room.

Long story short, we've lost the following things to a power spike:

Garage door opener
Home entertainment system (DD and surround sound (completely fried as we found out upon taking it apart))
Cable modem
Cable box
Television
Speaker system
Networking switch
Firewall


This is what we know of *so far*...

I've a new home entertainment system how, I can't live without movies.

That's a lot to lose at once. Please tell me you have insurance for at least part of it?

Lightning is really strange. You would think it would take out the whole house, but no, it selectively ranges along the circuits as if it were sampling from a sushi menu.

Path of least resistance, Lil. It's a little known scientific fact that the more expensive something is the lower its electrical resistance.

Hyp, nope. My housemate has homeowners, but since I moved I have not been able to set that up : (

Lil, it certainly is strange. I know for certaint that the shock made it through all of the circuitry to the speakers of my home theatre. One of the speaker outputs was toasted.

Baggers, I am sure you are right.

Ouch! That sucks dude!.

Marv you might be covered by your roommates homeowner's policy, at least partly. If you're renting from him it might depend on whether what you're renting is considered a separate unit, but it's worth looking into.

I need a new home entertainment system too, at least the receiver. Mine is so old it doesn't properly understand surround sound though it does make an effort, using whatever the surround sound standard was in 1991.

I got a pretty good deal on a Yamaha home theatre in a box kit from Best Buy. I don't realy like Best Buy, but it's the only game in town other than specialty shops.

Good surround sound is a must for watching dvds. I love the sound of a movie with good sound when put through a good reciever.

Oh, d'E, I will check with him when he gets back from Vegas... Not sure if it will be worth it in the long run as he will definately need to get the garage door replaced. I am unsure as to how they deal with items from renting room mates.

I bought myself a little Bose system after my dad died. He loathed anything post-Lawrence Welk and could hear (and complain about) it from 3 doors away. So it was a present to myself. It does the tv and dvds proud and often startles friends when a door slams behind them or something.

Oh Marv! At least your computer wasn't involved. You know how I love HiFi. If you have a Costco nearby you can get an excellent little Panasonic system for about $250.00. I thought about buying it myself but I won a stereo instead.

The system I lost was a Panasonic. I replaced it with a very nice Yamaha system.

Oh. Clarification. Gotcha.