Thanks Stu & Mark for the help with the ethernet chip. Right now, the empeg isn't installed in my car yet, so it functions as a networked music server. Without ethernet, it wouldn't be of much use in that capacity. So, I'd be looking to either repair or replace depending on what the insurance company tells me.

Now, on to the lightning story. Here's the short version (which in itself is kind of long):

I live in Tucson, Arizona, which is bone dry 48 weeks of the year, and subject to torrential monsoon rains the other four. I had just gone to bed about 2 AM Monday morning when I heard the rain start and really come down hard. There's a couple of spots in my roof that are prone to leaking in the really heavy rains, so I decided to get up and make sure nothing valuable was directly under those spots. While I was up, I though I'd take a look out the window at the storm. I had just dug a bigger ditch for the runoff on the side of my house the day before, so I wanted to see how that was working.

Turns out there was about 20 times more water flowing than that ditch could ever hope to carry. It was just more water than I'd ever even seen outside of a river. I just stood there marveling at how much of my driveway it was carrying away for several minutes. Every time the lightning flashed, I though "Oh good, I can get a better look". None of the lightning seemed particularly close, so it never would have occurred to me that I was in any danger.

All of a sudden, there was a blinding flash and a very loud crash. I felt a ton of electricity going through me. My very first thought was "Oh, I've heard that you can kind of feel a nearby lightning strike and I could feel that a little, so that's probably a good warning to maybe take cover". It was a couple of seconds before I realized that I was on the floor and it was a lot more than just feeling it a little. It definitely had hit me.

My wife had heard the crash of lightning and heard my initial moans, but thought I was just expressing frustration that the power was out. When I started calling out "Help", though, she came running. I told her I had been struck by lightning, and that I felt like I was hurt but would probably be okay but she should call an ambulance anyway. My initial assessment was that even though I couldn't walk, I would be able to move okay within a couple of hours and just be sore for a few days. However, I didn't want to be the judge of whether or not I needed medical attention, since it seemed like it was possible I was in shock and actually had a hole in my chest or something.

The ambulance took five minutes before they got near my house, then I heard sirens for another five minutes while they figured out where to turn. Up until the paramedics got there, I hadn't seen myself, so at that point I wouldn't have been surprised if they had found a charred smoking hole in my leg or something. When they got upstairs and shone their flashlights on me however, there was no charring or smoking or anything. Just some 1st degree burns on my left leg and right foot.

They insisted on taking me to the hospital, which is literally a block and a half away. At the hospital, they wanted to do bloodwork to make sure my internal organs hadn't shut down, and do a chest x-ray and EKG to check out my heart. Everything checked out fine, so they sent me home after a few hours, at which point I was walking okay (albeit a bit stiff).

The rest of this week I've been stiff and sore. I've got the burns which possibly correlate with entry and exit points, plus wherever I'm burned on the inside from the jolt going through me. Also, pretty much every muscle in my body is sore from the clenching when the electricity actually went through me. I've got really deep bruises on both my biceps for some reason, as well.

The actual lightning hit a 10-foot antenna mast on my house (that we weren't even using; it just came with the house). The mast was mounted about five feet away from where I was standing. The mast was grounded, but not very well, and the ground wire either broke or melted in the strike. The lightning blew out a 1 ft x 1.5 ft chunk of drywall where it hit, and a couple of smaller holes. It fried all of the electronics in that room (HDTV, TiVo, dvd player, A/V receiver, etc.), even though they were plugged into an APC UPS. The only thing in that room to survive was the linksys router, oddly enough. In our bedroom, everything survived but the TiVo. In my office, the aforementioned computer/modem/router/empeg damage happened through the ethernet connections between them all. One fuse box in the house started smoking after the power was turned back on and will evidently need to be replaced with a breaker box (finally using 20th century tech).

Other than that, no major damage, and no lasting damage to me other than the soreness and my brand new irrational fear of being inside the house after dark. That should go away in a few days, I reckon. It's clear that most of the lightning either went through the antenna's ground or elsewhere through the house, and I just got enough to shake me up a little. However, I'm still very thankful to be alive, and have reordered my priorities a little to make sure I get signed up for good life insurance ASAP.