On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 20:40:18 GMT, Bob Harrington
wrote:

"Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote in
oups.com:

Ditch That Cell Phone in a Thunderstorm

http://www.healthday.com/view.cfm?id=533442

The devices may prove deadly in a lightning strike, some doctors
suggest


~Another~ reason Seattle needs more lightning storms...

There was a guy on a mailing list I'm on who didn't write all that
well and one day someone chided him for it - as often happens on the
net.

He proceeded to tell us of a story (with a cite and link to the
newspaper article documenting what happened to him) of how he got
"hit" by lightning on a cordless phone.

That's correct. A cordless phone.

The newspaper article documented several other cases of others who
took hits on cordless phones. Some of them didn't fair as well as
this guy did - and as I mentioned earlier - he didn't come out of it
all that well. Parts of his brain were fried. The poor ******* at
least lived. Others haven't been as lucky.

After reading that and hearing this guys story, I make it a point to
stay off the phone when a thunderstorm rolls in - which is frequent
this time of year in South Florida.

I also stay off the computer. Even though it's protected by a fairly
descent APC surge protector and battery backup, a direct hit on the
lines coming into our home would no doubt arc its way through this
device.

Being in the computer industry, over the years it's been interesting
to see what electricity does to computer equipment. I've seen
motherboards where the chips were blown apart and off the board.
Mostly I recall this happening to RS232 multi-port boards - which
makes sense. Back in "those days", they were typically connected to
small banks of modems for dial in connections to Xenix systems.