Skip to main content

Tlaloc strikes down apon us... or maybe is was Zeus.

So, it was a fairly normal Friday afternoon.  Seemed a little windy outside, but all in all, a fairly normal work day. Wind in Wellington is as normal as sand in the Sahara.

We finished up at a normalish time, sometime after 4 and went home.

As we approached the house,  I clicked the button so that the handy electric garage door would open and we could drive in and park, as normal.

Nothing happened.

Very strange, but we've had power cuts before so I thought it was probably just something like that.  I parked outside, and we went in to investigate. 

Sure enough, there was no power.  I went to the switch board : two of the trips had been.... er... tripped? Anyway, I clicked them back, and the lights came back on.  Nice one!

But our joy was short lived.

As we made our way into the house we noticed a few things.
  • The security system's little control panel was blank.  It's got a battery backup, so this was surprising.  In previous power cuts, it usually flashed "problem" or something.  Not this time.
  • The hot water system's control panel was also blank.  Well, sometimes it turns off after a power cut, but the "on" button didn't seem to do anything.
  • The HRV's little control screen was also blank.  On button also useless.
As we made out way through the house, we discovered lots of things that no longer worked:
  1. The cordless phone was dead. In fact it was producing smoke (quickly unplugged)
  2. Our little Netgear wireless router smelled funny. Didn't work.
  3. Little flatscreen TV/monitor combo also quite dead.
  4. Big TV in our bedroom : giant paperweight.
  5. USB hub: not hubbing.
  6. Sony Home Theatre thing : useless.
  7. Little sony hi-fi (lives in the spare bedroom) - forever silent.
  8. iPod stereo thingy.  Very handy when it worked. No longer handy.
  9. All the Telstra stuff (cable tv & internet) mostly dead.  Also, most of the house's phone lines were dead (only one remained).
  10. My Macbook Pro works, but doesn't work from the battery at all.  I don't know if it simply can't charge it, or if the actually battery is munted.  At least we can use it plugged in.
  11. My friends old laptop which I was wiping & reinstalling for her to resell now just shows a useless white screen.  No idea if it's booting properly.  Sorry guys :(
  12. Our main living room TV seems to work OK, except for one of the HDMI ports.  Which is a bit of a pain.
At first we were quite surprised because Jacqui's little netbook laptop seemed to have survived nicely.  It wasn't until a few days later when we were going to use it for something that we realised it wasn't able to charge its battery either.  So, it's dead now too . Unfortunately it isn't even able to run from main power.

So what the hell happened?  Did a gremlin break into the house and wreak havoc?  Was it a plague of imps?

Well no, nothing like that.

Our house (along with 4 or 5 of our neighbours) suffered a lightening strike.

Have to say, our landlords T&P were excellent : we had hot water within 24 hours and the security & HRV systems will be back online soon.

As for all our busted stuff, we had to arrange a electrician's report for the insurance.  We had a guy out on Friday, but so far he hasn't done his bit.   Once he sends his report to the insurance folks I guess we'll either get the stuff repaired or replaced. Which will be nice :)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Arráncame la vida

Last night we attended the first night of the Hola Mexico Film Festival in Wellington.  The first movie of the season was Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out) , the story of a woman who marries a Mexican General in the years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910 .   I found it to be a real genre breaker as far as Mexican cinema goes.  Over the years, we've seen several Mexican movies, and the general theme seems to be heart breaking tragedy, and rarely a happy ending.  This one was different however.  Although tragedy played a huge part in the story (I don't want to give anything away, but don't get too attached to the Carlos character.  He doesn't last long..), the ending seems quite uplifting.  Well, comparatively at least. The story starts when the protagonist is 15 years old, and being whirlwinded into a marriage with a famous (or infamous) general, twice her age.  It tracks her sexual awakening as a teenager, through to her...

Auckland is off the menu (for now)

Jeese, but it was close. I was offered a very good perm role in Auckland and the agent was telling me that they needed a decision pretty damn quick!  Apparently they were going to meet with the company that very day, and wanted a yea or nay before COB the following day ("Close Of Business", just in case that's a stupid TLA - "Three Letter Acronym"). So, I was very pleased when I got word that a local company here in Wellington were interested in talking to me about a 6 month contract. The interview was arranged for the following morning. The interview went well: brief but covered most of the things you'd expect.  Nothing too technical but enough to weed out the stoopids. I think I did well enough, because they told me I was the "preferred candidate".  After some panic regarding getting by references sorted, the offer was made. I called the agent in Auckland, and she was very gracious. I started a few weeks back (hence the lack of updates ...

Gardening Rocks

Since we moved into our house here in the windy suburb of Newlands, we have been endeavouring to grow our own fresh produce. Early this summer, I planted Peas, Potatoes, Onions, Tomatoes and Silver beat. So far, the peas and potatoes have been the most successful, but I hold good hopes for the onions and tomatoes later in the summer. The silver beat, well, I don't really like it anyway... Peas... ...and spuds For dinner yesterday we bought some decent quality filet steak and some prawns.  If that doesn't scream Surf N Turf, I don't know what does! We picked some peas and dug up some potatoes. Oh boy: excellent! There's nothing quite like having diner that is mostly made up your own garden produce.