"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Martin H.
Eastburn says...

Jim -
know the direction of hit - then look at the massive object - how the
gravity
does stuff. Might be a break in the pcb due to a pull...
Mechanical fit that isn't mated directly...

Martin

Ah, it's a moot point now.

Last night I mentioned to my wife that I had fixed the flashlight.

"Oh, what went wrong with it?"

"Some of the parts had come off the circuit board, and I
was eminently clever and managed to fix it. Damn I'm smart."

Or some other kind of preening to that effect.

I proceeded to unscrew the lens to show her what a great
microelectronics handyman I really am.

The lens flipped out of my fingers as it screwed off the
barrel of the light, and flipped across the room. Because
I tracked it closely as it spun across the floor, I found
it right away under the kitchen table.

The circuit board, with LED attached, had come loose and
flew off in some other direction.

Correction: some other *dimension*. It's gone now, I can
say that for sure after seaching for an hour. After looking
high and low, I finally decided that it must have dropped down
into the hole in the kitchen floor where there had been an
old heating pipe at one time.

So I went down the basement and peered up onto the top of the
beam that was right under the hole. Yep, there was something
there. With the aid of an inspection mirror and a (different)
flashlight I extracted the object.

Dumbfounded, I held an adapter that I had made years ago, to
fit PR-style flashlight bulbs into antique navy battle lanterns,
which take DC bayonette lamps. I'm sure I must have looked
for *that* thing for a few hours, ten years ago.

Maybe in ten years I'll be looking for something else and
find that LED on its board. In the meantime I think
I'll plug that damn hole up.

Jim


I was told to expect days like that, but no one warned me that they'd all be
that way!

Harold