by cosmicB » Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:02 am
Quoting: "Turned out to be a power dip caused by a factory down the road. We never did find out why that one office was affected and no others...."
In that topic: My computer repair-ad was answered by a tax computing business... Their computers would suddenly crash for no obvious reason.. and usually just as they were finishing up a client's hours of data work...
...Turned out to be a combo of things... They were using cheapy plastic client chairs.. When a client got off a chair, a large static-spark would zap into the carpet, and to the towers, on the floor.. thus crashing them... but I figured it had to be more than that... Turns out that their building power AC ground-wire, which is commonly attached to water meter pipes, was so wet, corroded, and green, that it wasn't making a ground anymore...
...So I sprayed their desk areas with antistatic spray, changed their client chairs to wooden chairs, and relocated the ground wire to an area that didn't have any moisture nor corrosion...
It's a super good plan for everyone to go into the basement, and check that ground wire at least once every couple years... In some rare cases it could mean the difference between life and death... and if that ground wire is bad, and lightning strikes near, that could be the end of your computer... Everyone should have a spark arrester between the computer's AC plug and the wall socket... When big electrical storms pass overhead I always unplug all my electronics... I worked at electronics repair shops for seven years... After huge electrical storms a lot of equipment would come in for repair.. and if it was lightning damaged, usually it was garbage.. because now all the transistors are weakened.. and the darn things fail every month after that.. and cost ten times more than a new one to keep fixing...
I almost got hit by lightning a couple times... In one instance a bolt flashed six feet from me, going horizontal between two metal storage buildings... I saw the main trunk beam.. it was about 10-inches in diameter.. and I saw, heard, and felt, the surrounding crackly electrical fuzz around the main beam, from six feet away.. nearly knocked me off my feet.. and stung my arm so bad I couldn't move it for half an hour.. and made me feel sort of like being "turned inside-out" momentarily...
means that the lightning bolt's actual diameter must be at least twelve feet... When it hits your house and your electronics, it sort of works like an explosive from inside the transistors...
..And when it sliced through the air, in front of me, it made a weird high pitched whistle... like imagine a jet traveling at the speed of electricity...
Bottom line: Be safe.. Check the AC-grounds in your building... and I really hope we get that mouse problem solved.. it must be extremely frustrating...