Life without the Internet: Zapped off the grid

Posted by Ed Burnette @ 3:56 pm In my last article I described what it feels like to have your house struck by lightning. Luckily there were no injuries or structural damage (thanks for your kind words in the comments), but our gadgets and other electronics inside the house weren’t so lucky. This is their tale. The first thing I noticed was that my computer wouldn’t come on. I thought that was odd, since it’s a laptop that works on battery power. A catalog of all the files I had neglected to back up flashed before my eyes. Materials for a book, family photographs, personal documents. Some of it I could recover, some I couldn’t. Lesson learned. I glanced over at the wireless router. It was completely dead. Cycling the power didn’t help. What else? I was about to find out… The kids and I walked around, trying everything else,... [read full story]