We have had two huge electrical storms where I live over the past week or so.

The latest was on Wednesday night, and when I turned my computer on yesterday – I had no internet connection.  Oh no!  Running a virtual business without being connected to the internet is a bit like trying to bake scones in an oven with no electricity.

I rang my service provider, who is always very helpful (thanks Westnet), and it seemed my modem was malfunctioning.  We tried turning it off and on again.  Then we tried plugging it into a different phone jack in the house.  Still no joy.  The technician suggested I take it to a friend’s place to see if it would work on their phone line (otherwise to call Telstra out would cost $105 if it was found that the modem was faulty, not the phone line).

I left it for a while, then decided to try the modem again in its second location later in the day.  It worked perfectly?!  So I plugged everything back in, rang my provider and got it all reconfigured and up and running again.  Phew!

However, this morning my modem was fine, but I had no internet access again.  I went back to the service provider and we did a few things differently, and hopefully we have fixed the problem for good now.

It brought up a few issues for me though.  I don’t know if it was a coincidence that my modem went out the night after some very big lightning strikes nearby?  I was speaking to a computer friend and he said it’s generally busy for him after an electrical storm with people’s computers being fried because they’ve been left plugged in and turned on.

I have a heavy-duty surge protector board which I plug my computer in to, and I turn everything off at the wall whenever I’m not using my computer.  However, my friend pointed out that I should really unplug the board from the wall as if you get a massive lightning strike on your house and all that voltage surging through your electrics – one small switch turned off might not be enough to stop the damage.

So I’m now unplugging the surge protector from the wall each time I turn the computer off.

How about you?  Do you have systems in place for protecting your computer and electrical goods?  It’s definitely worth thinking about… better to be safe than sorry!

Fiona