Complaining: August 2007 Archives

So we had this storm come through a few days ago and I stepped outside to see how bad it looked. It’s not so bad, I thought. Loud thunder, but a little off in the distance, it seemed. What I didn’t notice at first was that it was off in all distances. Thunder to the left, thunder to the right, then BAM. Through the arch of our covered walkway, all I saw was lightning. It sounded like my ears were ripped off. The fastest, loudest sound I’ve ever heard. Then car alarms.

Our car. Holy shit. Lightning struck our car. It had to have. Our car was parked right there!

I ran inside and Elise was jumping out of bed. At this point we’re sure lightning hit the car but we don’t want to go near the windows to look out. We went back outside under the covered walkway to see some crazy guy running up the stairs. He was saying, “Lightning struck your building! Lightning struck your building!” Okay, the car narrowly escaped and the building wasn’t on fire, so all was going to be okay.

Then I remembered the computers.

Now I want you to ask yourself a question. Is your computer plugged into a surge protector? Okay, so I’m sure it is. Or I’m sure you at least know it should be. But is the actual coaxial cable that is plugged into your cable modem running through a surge protector?

If it is not and your building takes a direct lightning strike, this is what happens.

A surge of electricity travels through your cable line, right into your cable modem, blowing it.

Then it continues on, through your Ethernet cable, into your wireless router, blowing it.

Then, finally, even though it is a wireless router, its wireless for the secondary computers on the network, your main computer that is actually hard-wired into the router with another Ethernet cable for the best performance, that computer’s Ethernet card blows.

That computer’s Ethernet card is not a stand-alone card, but like most computers, is built onto the motherboard, so the whole motherboard is blown.

Of course, in the other room, Elise’s computer is blowing as well. When you pull the power strip out of the wall, you notice that the grounding prong is just plain broken off.

Two computers, a router and a modem… dead.

Thankfully, we’d just purchased a laptop to replace my main computer and already transferred and backed up most of the important files. Today, we replaced Elise’s desktop. Then we bought a whole shit-lot of surge protecting devices.

Hello, this is in regards to what I now know was a bank error on my account. My account was in a terribly misleading state yesterday. I signed in to find that a check was deposited into my account in the sum of $2,500 and that a $2,500 "cash withdrawal" was pending. When I viewed the deposit slip for the transaction, there was my full name and partial address in someone else's handwriting on an "out of state" deposit slip. Someone was cashing checks using my name and account number. You can see how this would be distressing. Most of my bills are due this week and someone is forging my name, but the BOA phones are closed, so I run to an ATM and pull out the maximum amount. When I get home, I send the rest of my money to myself via Paypal for a fee of $31, but I can’t risk my bill money getting stolen or held due to fraudulent activity. Today, my local branch tells me that it was just a bank error. I go home and the “cash withdrawal” now says “bank adjustment” and here I am, out $31 in Paypal fees because a bank made the error of hand writing my name and address and account number on a deposit slip?

-Christian Stella