On Wednesday lightning struck near my house and my main computer broke down, along with my network connection. I repaired the former a few days later (it was only the power supply), and an NTL engineer has just come round and repaired the latter for me too.

The lightning strike occurred just as I'd finished sorting out the software upgrades I needed in order to do a long-overdue backup of my main computer, which made it a particularly annoying moment for it to blow up! Fortunately, the data wasn't lost and now I have backed it up.

And today I booked an emergency afternoon off work so I could be at home between 12 and 6 for NTL, and of course the NTL engineer has now been and gone, so if I'd known that I could just as well have called it a long lunch break.

Finally … the computer which blew up, and the cable modem which also blew up, and the router which lost one of its network ports presumably by means of the surge going right through the cable modem, were all behind a surge protector which I had thoughtfully installed after my last annoying lightning experience. The power surge laughed at my surge protector, went straight through it without slowing down, blew up several bits of kit beyond it, and left it intact and unaware that anything had happened. Clearly I need a better surge protector; but without a reliable means of producing lightning on demand, it's probably difficult to test them!

Murphy has definitely been having too much fun with me this week.