Not Nice To Fool With Mother Nature
 

Teen gets instant message from Mother Nature
By Eric Convey
Saturday, June 5, 2004

Calvin Legge's Internet conversation this week got about as hot as they come.

The 17-year-old was instant messaging with a friend Wednesday when a lightning bolt struck his family's Middleboro home.

"I only heard half of the boom,'' he said yesterday. "I saw this blue screen flash on the computer and this seering hot pain went through my hands . . . when I realized where I was, I was about 10 feet from the computer.

"My whole body felt really heavy and really hot,'' he said.

Mom Sheree Legge was lying on a living room couch reading when she saw the flash and heard the crack of thunder. When she looked up, she said, Calvin was standing "like Frankenstein - with his arms straight out.''

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i've heard of people getting zapped in the ear while on the phone and getting nailed while in the shower but through the keyboard - you'd have thought his surge protector would've cracked first - if he had one...

there's this guy south of here who got hit while out in his yard and lost his eye sight... a couple of years later he gets hit again and his sight returned...

got any lightning stories???

Yep I was sitting in the media room of our house during a heavy T-storm. It was directly overhead - booms that shook the house and lightning all around. A thunderous CLAP that surrounded my brain was followed instantly by a CRACK that felt like a train hit the roof. Everything went out. The homeowners' insurance payout to replace the equipment was over $20K in 15-years-ago dollars. That would be more like $40K of stuff today.

Lost a computer with a years worth of geneology research on it, that hadn't been backed up in .. a while. I even had a high end surge protector attached to the machine (not one of those cheapie 10 dollar ones, this was a good one.) Lightening hit, everything lost.

Insurance replaced the machine (at today's cost, but all my research -- gone)

D'oh! That why they invented off-site backup :D

We needed a new tv anyway....

You'd think after more than a decade's worth of experience working with systems, I'd have learned that.... :D But NOOOOOO.

omfg dude.. you have got to be the funniest person alive..

i laughed so fucking hard at that

I had lightning hit and come thru my cable modem. I was playing Mafia and sparks shot like 18 inches out of the back of my modem. My screen went black as well and I was like FUCK! I thought my PC was toast, but luckily just my cable modem was toast and I got it replaced free.

I'd be willing to bet she's female. So I don't think she wants to be called a dude.

And more on topic, I've never come close to anything lightning-wise, but yesterday, in a big storm here in Central Florida, the power went out at work, and the fire department showed up when the storm caused the alarm to set off. :D

Look out, Munky's on a rampage. :p

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Our last homes' wiring was fried in a few places during a lightning storm.
It was an old house with old wiring and an old fuse box, it gave us trouble with even little storms, and I don't know how close the strike was, but we needed to replace it all anyway.
Mother Nature just ended our procrastination. :)

It'd be better if the kid had just said something like "Man, I love littering SOOO much."

This is obviously not very exciting, but I lost a TV tuner card due to a lightning strike. The phone and power cables going to my computer were protected, but the TV cable going to the card was not. After the strike, my computer wouldn't boot. I replaced the power supply, but that was obviously ineffective. Then, I called a relative of mine who was pretty 1337, and he told me to start pulling the PCI cards one by one. That's how I found out that the tuner card was the culprit.

Are you sleeping yet?