When I was a lot younger someone brought me a broken fax machine once to see if I could fix it. Needless to say, I couldn't... What did I know about fax machines?

Well the other day our friendly Town Crier brought me his digital camera to fix. It had dropped, and now was making a really friendly grinding noise before giving an error and shutting off. Grinding noises are good -- they signify it's something mechanical, and that gives me a lot better chance to fix it. Don also brought a really good guide to fixing a couple problems with the Nikon Coolpix 950. Yesterday after work I took the camera apart. That's easy enough... I'm good at taking things apart. The symptoms matched the second repair on that page, the lens coupling issue. Long story short, don't ignore the warnings on that page that say things like "High Voltage" -- there may not be the amps to do any damage, but the cap on that flash unit will give you a real good zapping.

I gave myself two.

Today, though, I finished, put everything back together, and -- wonder above wonders -- it's working. I consider myself more lucky than skilled.