To those who have shown off their un-interuptable Power supply projects on Fieldlines, thanks! I caught a 900VA unit for $35USD back in Novemeber, piggybacked it to 32AH worth of batteries, connected everything in my den then completly forgot it untill 9am this morning.
Two weeks ago I posted this comment on fieldlines:
"Thunder from a near miss lightning strike will sound more like a mega-sized pop-top can being opened, a thunderous pop and hissing with alot of the sustained sound being echos reflected back since the sound is heading away from the observer/strike point". I got it wrong, it's hissing THEN thunderous pop!
----------------------------
We were having a gentle grey and drizzly morning here in Minnesota and I was scanning fieldlines.com as always when out of nowhere I heard soft new-age music atmospheric sound - like perfect silence, utterly masking all other sounds!
I looked past my desktop to the window toward the humming (1920's window glass) when I saw blue-white braids of static wiffling about on my desktop swingarm CFL lamp's coil springs. By that time the soft hissing had grown into a frenzied buzz, there was a soft click and a much louder snap out on the porch and everything in sight went brillant white.
When I could see again, the "getting very cranky" tower post was still displayed on my monitor and the UPS was making that nasty beeping sound - my PC, cat and myself survived a lightning strike.
Looking closer at the lamp showed the modems phone line was about 3 inches from the lamp base & swingarm coil springs.... Why did it had the neon glow?
I'd run a twisted-pair of mil-spec braid shielded line for my den - from the basement telephone companies' junction box to the modular non-wall-plate jack just under the modem, then used the el-cheapo modular patch cord to the EXTERNAL modem. Telco's box I grounded to city water where the 1" copper enters house w/ 12awg solid - and telco's drop line to the house is well shielded and underground since I trenched it in back in 2001.
Why did it had the neon glow? The lamp has a heavy cast-iron weight in the base, the lamp was sitting on two stacked Infinity bookshelf speakers, the speakers were sitting just behind the central air duct outlet, and all this is inside a house that is clad in heavy aluminum siding. So only three feet of unshielded phone line to the modem, which squirted static chrge over the lamp springs then out the window to the aluminum siding which led the charge 18' to the electric meter - pole drop lines.
The US Robotics 56k Modem won't recognize a dial tone anymore (and I hope the serial port is still alive) but that's not the only casualty from this incident - I added a $30 'Intermatic" whole house surge protector back in 1998 that puts MOV's across primary breaker box inputs - It had two LED's showing and now has one glowing bright & one glowing dim
So I'm posting this off the missus's PC - learn what you want from this post, I'm off to lectric store to get a new whole house protector