Expensive Lesson

When I was in college at JMU, my senior year, I learned an expensive lesson. We had a bad thunderstorm and I turned my computer off, but I didn't unplug the ethernet wire or power source from the wall. I figured, it's off, that's good enough. Well, a power surge came through the ethernet wire and blew out my ethernet card. Of course, I had to call the "Geek Squad" or whatever it was called and within five minutes and $50 or so, they had me back up and running. The geek informed me that to be 100% safe, you actually should unplug everything from the wall (cable, etc.) to avoid this happening in the future. $50 was a lot of money to a college kid, but I would have paid $150 to get my precious internet back (IM, e-mail, etc.).
Apparently, the lesson was short lived. Recently, we've been having TONS of thunderstorms. We have most of our computer stuff on a surge protector, but I know that isn't even 100% safe. I kept thinking, gosh, I really should unplug everything during these bad storms, I'd hate to fry something on the computer. About 3 months ago (not even thunderstorm season), we got a random thunderstorm. A surge of electricity decided to go into the back of our computer and kill the power source. YUP. Had to take that to a geek to get it fixed. The internet, etc. was fine, just the power source to the computer. $80. Bam. Well, less than two weeks ago, I learned my lesson ONCE AND FOR ALL! We've had rain, rain, rain and thunderstorm after thunderstorm! As I lay in bed one night with Maddy because the thunder was SO loud, she was scared to death, I thought, "hhmm, is the computer plugged in still???". The next morning, I found out it indeed was! This time, no geek was needed. Our computer itself was fine, but the power surge came from the cable wire, frying several, EXPENSIVE things at once. Our wireless router - DONE, our cable modem - DONE, and last but not least, our Vonage router thingy - DONE! Three things, just over a year old - FRIED. Completely. A couple hundred dollars later & we are wishing we had DIAL-UP instead of all this fancy stuff. Obviously our internet is working just fine now. Never were able to get vonage back up and running so we cancelled our service with them and are awaiting our most wonderful cable provider, Cox Communications to figure out when they are going to come push a button or whatever they have to do to "install" our new phone line with them. Which means...a new phone number. AND, I currently have no way of making a phone call from my house. Our cell phones don't work here. Hope Cox comes through soon!
I think I hear thunder rolling in the distance. Just one last e-mail and I'm powering down....:-)