lightning is not your friend.

we had to run to compusa last night because he needed some parts for work. they're currently having a "warehouse sale" which includes things like old non-hd plasma tvs and all of their remaining ppc macs.

one of the displays was of battery backups with a sign on it that said, "lightning is not your friend!" we laughed and thought it was a cute gimmick and said, wow, it must suck for everyone who lost power in those storms earlier this week.

so we get the stuff we need, which doesn't include a battery backup, and we go home. on the way home, it starts to rain heavily and there's thunder and lightning. it was pretty spectacular. but we get home safe and turn on the computers and start doing all of the time-wasting crap you do on computers, blissfully ignoring the storm outside. our power company seems to be a lot better, or at least, have a lot more redundancy built into its network than the one that services the philadelphia area, and we almost never lose power. at most, we have a few brownouts in storms like these, and everything is on surge protectors anyway.

well, we actually did lose power for a few seconds around 10:30pm or so, i guess. naturally, my computer shuts off. oh well, i think to myself, it was time i went to bed anyway. so i played a little brain training...er...brain age. i don't know why i always think of it with its japanese name o.O and i go to bed.

the computer doesn't turn on this morning.

i am currently typing this on my 7-year-old laptop left over from college and trying not to kick myself for not buying that UPS last night, or at least actually turning off and unplugging my machine when the lightning got close. it's just one of those things, i guess. whenever you play it safe, it turns out to have been totally unnecessary, but then the moment you get lulled into a sense of security, wham. hmf. we're hoping it's just the power supply, but to be honest, i wouldn't mind a new motherboard. the northbridge fan on mine is dying and either abit or paypal or both need to both suffer sever injuries with something preferably blunt and rusty for charging my credit card but not shipping the replacement fan. sigh.

so remember, kids: lightning is not your friend. and it's not you computer's friend either.