When you send an e-mail to yourself the raw header data usually shows two IP addresses, is one the provider and one the machine??

Careful Incy, some viruses/worms/trojans might get in through that hole - oh, of course, you're not on Windows

Ahem... and the biggest, baddest worm of all time, so big that it was called The Internet Worm, worked by exploiting vulnerabilities in Unix systems 

I'm posting this on behalf of Morticia.

Whilst she was at work yesterday half of her street was hit by lightening causing the phones to go out.  When she got home she found not only her phone but her computer and modem were dead.

BT have been there today and replaced her phone socket (at a cost of £250!!) so she now has her landline back.  BT are replacing her hub free of charge but what is to be done about the computer?  Insurance does not cover Acts of God.

Her question is:  Can a computer which has been damaged by lightening be repaired or if not repaired can any components be salvaged to lessen the cost of a replacement computer?  Would the lightening have also damaged the monitor?

Obviously she won't be able to read any replies but I will relay them.

Highly unlikely.  Surges generally fry the most important parts of a computer first.  If she has valuable stuff stored on her computer it might be worth asking somebody to see if the HD was effected.  It's quite likely that in the case of a surge that the monitor, also being directly connected to the power socket, might be affected.  But I dunno.  That should be easy to check anyway  

Anyway, we must be thankful for small blessings: at least she wasn't tonging her hair at the time or anything like that.

Re: Mort's catasterous disastrophe

I recommend getting the box down to someone who fixes such things. There used be a fairly good place in Cambridge (Cambridge Micro Surgery) and finding out how serious the damage is. I made the mistake of staying online during a thunderstorm once and fried my BB modem, but everything else was OK.

After my kid bro. helped me out by miscounting a modem from the stores at his workplace it wasn't very difficult to replace.

On the other paw, a few years ago, we had a laptop here which got a bit too much coffee. We found out later that if we had

• removed the battery pack
• dried the computer thoroughly

The whole machine might have been salvageable with little more than a disk check and compaction. As it was, the only salvageable part was the hard disk which was (more or less) transferred to the computer I am using now.

When the kids burned the house down at the beginning of '04 I was astonished to find that my daughter's PC that had been in her basement room booted up with no trouble when it was finally returned indoors.

Ta, kitty