It being the season for hacking down decorative grasses, our ancient Craftsman Hedge Trimmer woke up dead, a decade after I fixed its switch and predicted it’d be good for another decade.
After verifying the failure isn’t in the wall outlet or the extension cord, haul it to the Basement Laboratory Repair Wing, clamp the blade in the bench vise, remove a myriad screws, and pop the top:
I should have removed the screw in the extreme lower right corner and loosened the similar screw at the rear of the bottom plate; they’re two of the three machine screws engaging nuts embedded in the shell. Everything is greasy enough to let the nuts slide right out of the plastic and no harm was done, but that need not be so.
After poking around a bit and finding nothing obvious, I checked the resistance across the plug: open-circuit with the switch OFF and nearly shorted with the switch ON.
Huh.
Put the case back together with just enough screws to prevent heartache & confusion, unclamp the blade, plug into the bench outlet, discover it works fine again, reinstall the rest of the screws, and continue the mission:
We moved the Praying Mantis oothecae to nearby bushes for science!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
I had a similar experience with a long-stored nebulizer. Wouldn’t start, so I got the Torx drivers out and spun the motor.. It’s probably plain bearings, but a couple of turns (with attendent creaking) and it started. Was not feeling good enough to try to get lube to bearing sleeves
It’s been 21 years since it got used, and I kept it “just in case”. Not stupid enough to keep the solutions, but they’d be available Saturday or more likely Monday.
If it’s a cold, it’s an overachiever. We’re not a Kung Flu hotspot (yet), but I was west of the Cascades 3 weeks ago. [wince]
Run it ’til it drops, then fix it!
A few weeks ago, anything that felt like the usual cold / flu was overwhelmingly likely to be the usual cold / flu. I think that’s still true, but any tickle in the throat seems way worrisome nowadays.
Fortunately, being locked into the Basement Laboratory won’t materially affect my daily routine …
Test came out as negative for Flu A and B, but I don’t have the COVID-19 symptoms (103-104F fever, extreme shortness of breath–three steps and sit down Now, and weakness–hard to get out of a chair).
The clinic won’t take anybody with flu symptoms; have to go the the ER. The flu test setup gives me confidence that they know what they’re doing. The continuing shortage of test kits, arggh.
We don’t have much in the way of manufacturing surge capability these days, so I’m amazed there’s been as much testing as has been reported. A few orders of magnitude more would be better, but we can’t get there from here quickly enough.
Maybe we’ll pay more attention to such things in the years ahead?
Keep on keepin’ on …