Guys
You will not be hearing from Jim Hiball3985 for a while.
This is the email that I received from him today. I will be calling him tomorrow morning 04/06/14 at about 10:00-11:00 AM and will relay any messages to him. The good thing is that he and his family are well. He seems to be having his share of crazy weather like no rain, earthquakes and now lightning.
Jay,
Sorry for the late reply. On Wednesday we had a freak storm cloud go over and we got hit by lightning. I actually heard it go through the house wiring and it blew up my TV cable box and my computer. Many people in the neighborhood had worst happen. I'm sending this from the wife's laptop which I'm having a major problem trying to operate, I hate this thing. You may not hear from me again for a long time as I don't know how long it will take my son to build me a new computer. Hope all goes well fixing the speedometer problem and I hope to talk to you sometime in the future. I thought about calling you on the phone but I had your number on the computer so I couldn't get it. Jim
That sucks! Hope you get things going soon Jim, at some point I'm sure you will see this. HRD
Donnie
I'll relay your message to Jim when I talk to him on the phone tomorrow. Jay
Quote from: Ecode70D on 2014-04-04 23:02
Donnie
I'll relay your message to Jim when I talk to him on the phone tomorrow. Jay
Thanks Jay, just hate to loose a good team player and a damn good front runner.....makes ya wonder who's next. HRD
Jim is one of those guys that always keeps in touch with our site. I know for a fact that when I don't post something for a few days, he always checks up to make sure that I'm OK. There are two things that Jim really likes very much and those are driving and working on his 57 Ford and communication with 57 Fords Forever. So I hope that his son gets him quickly squared away with a new computer. Jay
Good to hear it wasn't any worse.....kinda a bad news good news thing...had me worried at first. Lightning hitting a house while you and family are in it could have been alot worse....kinda like my hail storm damage over the '57 last year...as close to being a major disaster without being one as you can get.
Sorry to hear of the damage, Jim, but very happy you and family are ok. What's the extent of the damage to the house? Hopefully you won't get caught up in one of those insurance "act of God" clauses.
Thats terrible Jay.I hope all gets back in order super quick.Jim is a great guy.
wow. that is horrible. But it sounds like everyone is ok, which is most important.
Lightning does strange damage when it hits a house, mostly electrical but it can blow up walls and all kinds of crazy things. Glad everyone is ok
Weird stuff happens! Really glad the damage was limited, could have been injury or a fire.
Our house was hit in the 60s. Blew every fixture out the the ceilings in every room, blew the electric fencer into a hundred pieces, didn't hurt a single light bulb in the barn or the granary, the radios we had were unhurt (I grew up without TV, bought the first one for Mom and Dad after returning from Nam) and the lamps plugged into wall outlets were all good. Every fuse in the panel was blown (all four of them) and both fuses in the barn.
Just shows how nature can be unpredictable. Damn shame about the damage, glad it wasn't any worse.
I called Jim today and had a nice long chat with him. I also read him all of the posts that you have submitted. He liked that and was happy that you are concerned. He stated to me that his wife was at work when the cloud came over the house. When the lightning struck , he could hear the sizzling as it went through the house. Shortly after the damage was done, he heard the thunder. (Man what a creepy feeling that must have been.) The computer was on, but he could not get to it in time to disable it. His television is OK but the server box blew along with all of his circuit breakers, two of those plug in strips and his computer. His computer is fried big time. He said that he just can't go to the store and get a store bought unit because of all of the art work that he does. The tv. box has already been replaced. His son is a computer technician and he is going to build him another one with all of the bells and whistles. All his son needs is the time to do it.
And yes he did have one of those things that save information and files.
I told him that I'll call him again during the week. Calif. is about three hours behind me in Mass. Jay
That is really great news!
Thank you for all your well wishes and concerns guys. I'm back up and running for now. I had been planning to have my son build me a new computer in the very near future as most of the components in this one are 7-8 years old so loosing this one wasn't really a loss just an inconvenience. When I talked to my son yesterday he said if I was lucky it may have only blown the power supply so I took a chance this morning and I went to Fry's electronics and bought a small 500 watt Antec power supply for $49.95 and 30 minutes later I had everything fired up and running. This should keep me going until he gets the new one built. I'm glad to be back.
Thank you Jay for calling and passing the messages on.
That's good Jim, glad that didn't take long. HRD
I think that qualifies as a lucky dog pass.
Quote from: Frankenstein57 on 2014-04-05 08:09
Lightning does strange damage when it hits a house, mostly electrical but it can blow up walls and all kinds of crazy things. Glad everyone is ok
I'm an electrician. Be sure to have a thorough check on your electrical system. Saw romex cables split apart by a lightning strike. Destroyed the main panel in the house and traveled to a barn about 100 feet away and split the romex cables. Looked like the ground wire became so hot it burned its way out of the plastic jacket.
Quote from: Jerrys Kars on 2014-04-06 15:12
I'm an electrician. Be sure to have a thorough check on your electrical system. Saw romex cables split apart by a lightning strike. Destroyed the main panel in the house and traveled to a barn about 100 feet away and split the romex cables. Looked like the ground wire became so hot it burned its way out of the plastic jacket.
How would you possibly check the wiring without removing the walls and I'm not going to do that. The wiring at the panel looks good. Strange it only blew two power strips and only one device on each one. It didn't even blow a light bulb.
A good eletrician will have a "MEGGER", a device that measures resistance in the Megaohms range. If the wireing has an issue it will read a much lower number then a good cable.