In article , Tomsic wrote:

It's not uncommon. From your description, it sounds like a capacitor
failure on the ballast circuit board. It's scary because you can see the
damage and sometimes smell a bit of smoke and see the flash. All electronic
fluorescent lamp ballasts have capacitors. Now, with the circuitry almost
exposed on CFL lamps, failures are noticed. When the ballast is inside a
metal can inside an enclosed fixture, there isn't as much of a "show" when
something fails.

Wasn't there an epidemic of bad caps going around a few years ago?
Anyway, none of the things I think look like capacitors look blown.

I think that bulb dates back to the Enron blackouts of 2001.
It was getting ready to die. The last few weeks it would spontaneously
go out until I jostled the lamp (or just walked over to it).

m