Yes, I was pwned by a lightning strike.
Rewind back to exactly a month ago. There was a massive lightning storm on Thursday 12th Feb. Yes, it was exactly like the above pic, the electric arcs reaching out like roots. First time I've seen such a storm in Mauritius.
If you've been following me on Twitter, you'd have known that on that day I had the closest encounter with one of the most powerful natural phenomenon - lightning struck the electric/telephone post next to my house - any closer I would be either dead or suffer memory loss.
I was in my room when I was blinded & deafened at the same time. The explosion was so loud I had to cover my ears... & I did a most stupid thing at that time... Even though the thunder was warning me time and again, I did NOT switch off my PC (nor remove the phone cables)...
So when lightning struck, the circuit breaker was triggered off, I expected to see my PC dead, but instead it was still on, powered by the UPS. On that day, my luck held out.
Unfortunately, my neighbour wasn't so lucky... He contacted me after he couldn't connect to the Internet for a week. As I had suspected his modem was burnt. After replacing his modem, I advised him to always remove all cables during an electric storm....
Do as I say, not as I do.
Back to present day, i.e. yesterday, there was equally powerfully thunderstorm. & as you have guessed, I hadn't learnt my lesson with last time's close shave - my PC was still ON.
My lame excuse this time was that the storm was still out at sea, so I had a couple of minutes before it came inland. How wrong I was...
& unlucky as well. There was no warning cloud-to-cloud lightning - it just struck the ground somewhere very near.
As the bolt struck, all the lights blinked (circuit breaker didn't went off) & my PC hanged. The screen froze, & pressing the keys resulted into beeps. I hit the reset button, the PC restarted smoothly & I shut it down. Had I rode my luck once again?
This morning, as I turned on the UPS, the circuit breaker went off, killing the electricity. WTF?
Switched it on back again & turned on the UPS. Monitor turned on, but not the PC. Oops!
Connected the PC directly to mains, but it wouldn't turn on.
Suspected the PSU was damaged, confirmed it by connecting to my old PC. What I had feared had finally happened... I got PWNED by lightning. :(
Bought a new PSU, & I'm now back, blogging on this. Guess what day it is today?
A burnt child dreads the fire.
Moral of the story - Friday 13th is indeed a very unlucky day! :S
P.S. I'm now unofficially astraphobic.