I still shut down. But then, I live in Florida, which appears to be the thunderstorm capital of the USA.

Many years ago, I worked for the phone company, back when they were all attached to wires and utility poles. I was trying out what it means to be normal. Normal was over-rated, I went back to music in a few years.

I saw a North America lightning map, and the most strikes were in an oval from Palm Beach to Tampa. I live in the first oval surrounding that one.

Sent out to evaluate a repair, I also saw what lightning can do. The line from the pole to the house was empty, with a few beads of copper outside the neoprene, where the rest of the copper leaked out. At the house, the metal flashing of the roof melted, making a connection from the power lines to the hook that anchored the phone wire. The phone's lightning protector was missing, a piece of it was found on the back fence. The ground wire was gone, just a black line on the house where it used to be. The wire to the phone was fused together and stiff. It was a wall phone, which looked good until I snapped the cover off. The insides were melted.

In addition to that, there were two holes almost above the bed (the owners were awakened by the bolt), the TV was fried along with light bulbs and a few small appliances. They also had an electrician there, with house wiring problems.

When I leave the house, or when I go to bed, the computer is not only off, but it's unplugged. My data is too precious to leave it to chance. The odds for this happening are slim, but the penalty is too costly to ignore.

I've been in storms where there was no time lag (latency?) between the flash of light and the thunder. That tells me it hit really, really close.

I've read that rebooting the computer gets rid of useless data, but that was decades ago. I don't know if that's still appropriate.

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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