One lightning bolt: $145

This afternoon lightning struck so close to our house that it shook the whole place.

When I got home, the internet wasn't working and neither was our phone. So after about 15 cycles of plugging and unplugging things in different orders, for different amounts of time, I finally decided that the modem was shot. So I drove down to Wal-Mart and bought a new modem. A quick phone call to Cox and the internet was back up.

Whew, fixed!

Oh, except our phone still didn't work. See, our phone service is through Vonage, meaning that it acts like a regular phone except that the call travels the distance over the internet instead of a traditional phone network. That all happens through a little $50 box. Apparently that was blown too. So I drove back down to Wal-Mart and picked up another Vonage/Linksys VoIP box. A quick call to Vonage and my phone was back up.

Note, I didn't mention that both ethernet cables were bad too, I had to replace them to get things working again.

So in summary, that one lightning bolt wiped out my cable modem, my VoIP box, and two ethernet cables. Net cost to me: $145. Ouch.

On the bright side, my Mac was fine. Thanks to my network devices for making the sacrifice.