On 7 Dec 2004 05:09:38 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

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.

A LONG time ago (as will be seen) I dropped a small,
irreplaceable part. As all fumble-fingers must do,
I had trained myself to freeze and listen carefully
at the first hint of dropping something: dead silence.
I looked everywhere that might have muffled the sound
of a small part landing and rolling away, but couldn't
find it. Later, I found the part in my pant cuff. (When
was the last time you wore trousers with permanent cuffs?
For me it must have been late '50s or early '60s.)

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.

Don't do that; you will never have the impetus of losing
something else down the hole to cause you to find the LED.

--
--Pete
"Peter W. Meek"
http://www.msen.com/~pwmeek/