Spero's comp is broke!!

went around to fix it this arvo, and it looks like either a spike or a massive failure in the PSU has taken out her psu and motherboard.......

so thats why she hasnt been around lately making fun of everyone.

WTF is it with the power in darwin?

i hear so many ppl with failed PSU's, this is crap.
I would suggest EVERYONE go get a UPS/power conditioner.

mine was the best 200 dollars i had ever spent.

yeah with one of these babies u can play u'r computer for 20 min or so while the rest of DGA is down :P
but last time rains machine made it go down lol
and there was a bit of arguing about his UPS was using to much power

Don't have false confidence in a UPS
It won't necessarily stop lightning

and that isn't exactly a rare occurance in darwin.

poor spero :P

eh i know it wont stop lightning, if its going to jump 1 km from a cloud to the ground, a little bit of plastic wont stop it.

btw, they argument with my UPS using power was BS...
it only uses power when its fucking charging its battery!!!

if the battery is FULL it doesnt need any power!!!
god damn i hate ignorant ppl.

Yeah i just went out and bought a PSU with surge protection but im thinking it might be a good idea to get some more stuff, then again lightning only happens every so often with the big storms here

that explains the self hatred :D

Quote from Harbinger:
that explains the self hatred :D

yea!!! i never thought of it like that!!!
i am going to go slash my wrists now.... *grin*

i have had to fix a lot of blown power supplies which are caused more by dust+humidity causing shortouts than by poor quality power

i think investing in a can of compressed air and a quick spray out every couple months is quite effective

pain in the ass though

Couple of dust covers would be good too :)

Quote from Rainwulf A'Kahnon:
if the battery is FULL it doesnt need any power!!!
Exactly.

A surge protector would be a worthwhile investment, I should look at getting one.

Quote from General Martok:
then again lightning only happens every so often with the big storms here
I know everybody says that Melbourne is cold and wet, but it never rains here. Even when it's cold it's usually quite dry, especially this year. We are on water restrictions now :(

you know, i read somewhere that the higher end UPS will actually power everything off the batteries and continuosly charge the batteries, the cheaper ones will just charge the batteries and use power that goes straight from your mains thru the UPS and into what ever it is your powering, they only switch to battery when the power fails..

i just thought i might mention that =P

Quote from Orexi:

i think investing in a can of compressed air and a quick spray out every couple months is quite effective

pain in the ass though

hmm...I think you need to read the instructions on the can about where to put the nozzle :wink:

Quote from Xaine:
[quote:cb04da209a="Orexi"]
i think investing in a can of compressed air and a quick spray out every couple months is quite effective

pain in the ass though

hmm...I think you need to read the instructions on the can about where to put the nozzle :wink:[/quote:cb04da209a]

ownage from the xainemaster!! hahahaha

and yea thanks a good point Sardok, my ups is a pass through......

so its technically NOT a UPS its more a backup power generator.

Quote from Odyssey:

[quote:dcb3e57883="General Martok"]then again lightning only happens every so often with the big storms here
I know everybody says that Melbourne is cold and wet, but it never rains here. Even when it's cold it's usually quite dry, especially this year. We are on water restrictions now :([/quote:dcb3e57883]

Very true, every time I'm out in the city going home from RMIT I see all these wussy Melbourne people all huddled under a corner of a building at street crossings waiting for the rain to go down. I just walk straight and through it, guess it's the growing up in Darwin. I think they're affraid of their makeup running or the guys having their hair messed up.

Although Melbourne doesn't get many storms many of the areas here have absolutely horrible power grids. The power here fluctuates more than I've seen in Darwin, even over small winds and rain. When I move place next year after coming back to Melbourne I'm gonna spend $500 at least on power equipment.

Ahhhh actually lightning travels up from the ground too.

Comes down from cloud .... and ....

Up from ground ... meets about 10 to 100 m from ground ....

Just for the sake of intellectual completeness....

Quote from TopGun:
Ahhhh actually lightning travels up from the ground too.

Comes down from cloud .... and ....

Up from ground ... meets about 10 to 100 m from ground ....

Just for the sake of intellectual completeness....
we are now all better of cos of that ;)

thank you hehe

My pleasure ... I am full of useless trivia .... and other things

Seen a slow mo video of a lightning strike and you could see the one coming down then the one from the ground shoot up and meet the downward one ... looked hell good ...

they hav only ever managed to catch lightning tracers (the ones that come up from the ground) once or twice on film....

it looks real cool... the one i saw was the one with the the guy near his car... filming lightning.. and a bolt of lightnign strucj just near his car.... was lucky because the camera was facing the bolt almost directly

Thats the one ....

Actually they have caught a lot of video of lightning ... guys in the US study it like full time .... have cameras set up in the most likely strike areas and they actually build big towers etc to attract strikes ....

Yeah ive seen a few tracers on film bloody awesome :)

All I know it toke out my ADSL modem & blew off a surface mount capacitor & also killed my network card.

Lighting you bitch I hate you. :evil:

I think should hook up my 1000AP UPS, down side I have to get new
batteries for it (2 truck batteries will do). But hay once fixed I can run on batteries for several hours woot, while the whole town is in the dark I will still be playing CS thats if the phone line don't go down also.

But the best protection here in Darwin is to unplug everything & wait till the storm is far away, hell I even unplug the TV antenna. Ohwell Anyone for cards while the storm passes.?

can you get some sort of lightning insurance for your comp i mean my car is insured and it cost less then my comp (its a shit car).

but yea.. comp is fuxored and I aint fixing it till i get back from holidays.

So anyone who wants me add me to msn, cause i use that at my mums or at work.

[email]chocs98@hotmail.com[/email]

Quote from DoWhatUWant:
can you get some sort of lightning insurance for your comp i mean my car is insured and it cost less then my comp (its a shit car).

yes you can dowhat from TIO i know you can.

I might bring my UPS to the next dga.
It can power around 8 comp's so some people will be able to plug into it, but weighs around 60kg :shock:

Quote from TopGun:
Thats the one ....

Actually they have caught a lot of video of lightning ... guys in the US study it like full time .... have cameras set up in the most likely strike areas and they actually build big towers etc to attract strikes ....

they should set up some cameras in Darwin, they'd get hours of lightning strikes that way :P

I love the lightning that covers the whole sky - traveling acrost the clowd lighting up the entire surroundings makeing it look like day for a few seconds. :)

Since everyone seems to have such deep interest in her computer, it is indeed NOT broken. A simple replacement power supply was all it needed.

It's time for Wolfspirit's informative but lengthy and annoying interjections.

For the impatient: Darwin gets the highest number of lightning strikes per year in the world, as opposed to any other city. Lightning tracers exist, and they are hella slow. Lightning strikes upwards. If you are hit by lightning, you are screwed.

For the interested: Darwin gets the highest number of lightning strikes per year in the world, as opposed to any other city. Although this dubious claim to fame is also forged through ignorance; no-one measures the amount of lightning in most regions of Papa New Guinea, for instance, and the climate is very similiar. There's no reason why there would produce any less, or any more, lightning strikes then here; but we'll never know. As I said, I tend to view this with some slight skeptisism; it may, indeed, be true, but there are vast amounts of the Northern Territory, Indonesia, northern Queensland and Western Australia in which lightning studies do not occur, so it would stand to reason that there could be places with more strikes existing in the world; but, as for recorded scientific fact, this city has the most lightning strikes in the world.

Lightning tracers, as they are known, exist. TopGun is correct. However, there is one thing that is worth noting; they move MUCH slower then lightning. No-one knows why, at least, I don't think anyone knows why. When one is about to to be struck by lightning, your hair stands on end, and your vision goes red. You have about a second to lay flat on the ground, drop and move (jump) far away from any metal you are holding or to get low enough so that the lightning finds a shorter target, as lightning travels through the shortest, most conductive path from the cloud to the earth. This is due to the constant presence of positive ions on or near the surface of the earth, corresponding to a build up of negative ions which are generated by static eletricity in the clouds; all those water molocules rubbing together and whatnot, all generating negative charges. When the negative charges become close to 'cridical mass', ie enough charge to generate the lightning strike, the lightning tracer forms. The positive ions in the earth are attracted to the surface, and to the highest point; you.

Now, this is not entirely correct. The lightning tends to favor the tallest object, but this is not exclusive; if the tallest object in a field is a rubber pole, and there is a statue one or two metre's shorter but made out of metal standing at the other side of the field, then the statue will be struck and not the pole. However, if there was a small disk of metal laying on the ground, and beside that was a tree, the tree would get struck; there's a formula for it, based upon the conductivity of the object and it's height, but it excapes me at the moment. But, I digress.

This build up of ions causes your blood to thicken slightly, and for some reason, to become attracted to the top of your body; possibly because your blood carries a slight negative charge due to the constant movement inside your body. The blood vessels in your eyes are extremely sensitive, and the thickening of the blood causes them to become visible; resulting in a red blur forming over one's vision. The effect is similar to a 'red out' suffered by fighter pilets enduring large amounts of negative gravity forces, or negative G's. The hairs on the legs, arms, and back of the neck often stand on end as well; the same principle can be observed when rubbing an inflated ballon against the skin or touching a Vann generator when wearing rubber soled shoes.

It is at this point that the 'tracer' forms. This tracer often originates from the top of the head, or the back of the neck or forehead if one has very thick hair, extending about ten to one hundred metres up into the air. And then, after a second or two, assuming that you are still the sexist thing available to a potential lightning strike, the current passes up through your legs, up your body, through the path taken by the streamer and then up to the sky. There is a 'blowback' up above the clouds; anyone who has flown above a thunderstorm in an aeroplane will vouch for this, and I have seen it with my very eyes. There is a 'flash' of conial light up from the contact point of the lightning strike on the cloud, which extends about one-half the length of the strike, but that is just my observation, I could be wrong as my perspective was skewed at the time.

This is why many lightning strike victems loose their toes or have severe burns on the feet. The current hits there first, and that is the part of the body that takes the most damage; in addition, there is a lot of liquid in the feet (blood, sinovial fluid, etc) and this all adds to the water content of the medium, which naturally improves it's conductivity as water is a prime conductor of electricity. This is not to say that burns do not occur elsewhere; they most certainly do. But, the main danger is not the burns, but rather the current's effect on the nervous system and the muscles. Most deaths from lightning strikes are actually strokes, which occur because the extremely strong current disrupts the muscles of the heart; as myself know, when one is severely electrocuted, the muscles squeeze and tighten; the heart is a muscle, just like those in your arms, and the shock can cause it to squeeze and not unsqueeze (total cardiac arrest), or cause it to beat irregularly for a time (a less dangerous, but still serious, condition as apart from any immediate consequences it could cause a cardiac arrest at a later time).

As I'm finishing this, I should probably point out that I am now no longer sure if it is the buildup of positive ions in the air or in the ground; it is one or the other, and of little consequence. The principle remains unchanced. If I find out at a later stage, I'll post here.

please... don't :D

Translated for Harbringer:

hey doods lightnig fukcs you up realy bad its like BOOM then woha man im all fkcued up darwin has heeps of lightnin all the time man like BOOM BOOM BOOM yeah like really anyway yeah fukcing lightnin tracers are so real god u a noob if you didnt know that you sux anyway yeah like thye come from your hed or sum shit and thn like you get struck BOOM man ow fuck my feet or sum shit its freaky shti man it fukcs yr heart up sum big time man hey like it just stops hye or something man anyway everythn gos red and BOOM man u all fuked up theres lik sum formula for what the lgightning hit but i got like a d in physics so like dude i forget anyway

its freaky how thta shit happeds man like lighnting just saps you for no reason lik u just walkng down the street then like BOOM

fuksc your fete too hey man like burns the shit outta you or something anyway yeah so like man cs and ns rules im bored time to go play game

Ok
Translated for shit for brains:

its Har Bin Ger, ok, i know reading is terribly complex, but seriously, give it a go.

cosidering that you don't know anything about the subject apparently except for hearsay, which is worth about four fifths of fuck all.

there is no reason to write an entire fuckin essay about it.

i can almost guarantee that noone read all of that.

and if they did, they're stupider for the experience

lol yeah harb i only read the first paragraph and a bit

btw her comp is ok and working, i obviously can not fix computers, or that day it didnt want to boot for me, cos that psu i used is working ATM in my server. i fucked up somehow!
*cringes in the corner*

Well, since I know nothing about the topic, educate me in a private message.

Hmmm - Wolf you star !

Well done ( seriously ) - I read the whole thing and it jogged the old memory cells.... that is how I understand the inner workings of lightning

Now Harb - build a bridge ....

Knight - spelling and grammar and punctuation

Quote from Harbinger:
Ok
Translated for shit for brains:

its Har Bin Ger, ok, i know reading is terribly complex, but seriously, give it a go.

cosidering that you don't know anything about the subject apparently except for hearsay, which is worth about four fifths of fuck all.

there is no reason to write an entire fuckin essay about it.

i can almost guarantee that noone read all of that.

and if they did, they're stupider for the experience

funnily enough Harb, he got it pretty much right :P

As far as the NT getting the highest number of strikes, this is due both to the climate, as well as the amount of ironstone and other metallic based rocks in the earth. Anyone who has ever tried to dig deeper than about 2 or 3 feet in the top end knows the type of rock I'm talking about.

As far as SperO's comp being broke? when I saw her at the lan playing Warcraft 3 I assumed that it had been pretty much fixed.

I think that everything that needs to be said here has been, so a moderator can probably close this whenever they're ready.

Prolly doesnt need locking.

The facts..

SperOs boxen wasnt working.. Now it is.

End of discussion really..

lol.....that was funni shit Wolfspirit.

I was cracking up at work.

Translated for Everyone Else: Just relax guys. There are a LOT of things worse than people who write long posts and people who think you stupid for writing long posts.

BTW, I'm glad Spero's computer was fixed and I'm never listening to Rainwulf's Advice again!!!! :D

I know this is way of topic but i had to say it.

Quote:
I'm never listening to Rainwulf's Advice again!!!!

you accutlly toke advice from him :P

I never actually took advice from him, just listened to him and belived he knew what he was talking about....

hehe....rain, your allright mate. :)

Quote from gobbles:
lol.....that was funni shit Wolfspirit.

I was cracking up at work.

Translated for Everyone Else: Just relax guys. There are a LOT of things worse than people who write long posts and people who think you stupid for writing long posts.

BTW, I'm glad Spero's computer was fixed and I'm never listening to Rainwulf's Advice again!!!! :D

well i was half right.. the psu was dead!

it just didnt power up with my psu.. so i assumed the motherboard was dead.
I did offer to take the comp home and test each component individually, but that offer wasnt taken. All in all, everyone is ok now. We all make mistakes, and you gotta think that now spero doesnt have to buy new stuff.

now leave me alone and let me play with my new digicam!

Can I sum up the whole forum?

Computer works, Lightining hurts.

Thank you.