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2021-06-11

Lightning

#landlord

#hardware

Yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm went through. So far nothing to talk about. But apparently lightning hit the ground quite close. I came home shortly after the event. My wife said, her notebook/display went black for a few seconds, but the notebook was still alive and came back to work. The light on the powerbar turned red (from green, indicating the protection had triggered) and the internet router would not look healthy ...

So for the first time in my adult life I had an "overvoltage event" (or whatever the correct English term is. surge maybe?). Damage uncovered so far:

The internet router (Fritz!Box) was grilled. It startet booting, but never achieved a state, where it would allow access on the ethernet, and then made another reset.
My wifes notebook showed very low data transfer rates over the ethernet.

I'm sure glad I had a few things in stock and even configured. I had another Fritz!Box (same model) sitting on the shelf and it even was completely configured. I had to re-register the DECT handhelds, but was all. So internet and phone were working again after an hour or so. Not too bad!

And I found a usb-ethernet dongle which saved my wifes day! :)

So while I'm not always prepared for everything, it sure was nice to fix this stuff without leaving the house! I am well aware, how much our life depends on electricity and data connection. So off to hunt down another used Fritz!Box collecting dust somewhere.

Cheers,

~ew

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