Near death experience

Well ok slightly exaggerated there, but close... I'm composing this on my Dell 17" monitor which "used" to have the annoying habit of it's raster (screen) collapsing to a rather funky )  ( sort of shape... I knew what was causing it because a well aimed thump on the top of the monitor cured it for either a few hours or a few minutes.... but it was getting progressively worse as the months have been dragging on .....Sometimes it was like playing the Dell monitor bongo's at times trying to keep the screen from what was rapidly becoming it's natural state of  )  (  

So eventually I had my "Right that's it" Basil Fawlty moment and decided to take it apart and resolder the offending bad/dry joint....

All well and good I thought until I removed the several hundred self tapping screws that kept the back of the monitor on and I opened up the monitor to reveal a monitor made by the now defunct Russian Lada factory.... the whole circuit board was encased in a metal shroud made from second hand razor wire from the Inner German Border fence... so after slashing my finger within the first two minutes I wasn't holding much hope out of being able to take this Philips made monitor apart.... 

Eventually I figured out what I needed to pull apart and did so disconnecting about 15 or 20 leads... Eventually I had the back of the board in front of me and I started inspecting it for the tell tale ring of solder around the larger joints... I've got to be honest I couldn't see any.... switching it on was a no no because I had disconnected so much of it to get to the back of the board... so the only thing I could do was solder everything that looked a "bit" dodgy....

Now I'm a trained electronics bench engineer and I have repaired so many of these old CRT's that I could at a push do it blindfolded and that's where complacency creeps in... You are "meant" to discharge the anode of the CRT (it's the big rubber sucker device you see on the back of the tube) by taking a hefty screwdriver and attaching a equally hefty piece of wire to the metal of the screwdriver then you attach the wire to the chassis and slip the tip of the screwdriver under the anode cap.... as soon as the screwdriver tip comes to within arcing distance there is this big flash and bang and the CRT tube is discharged and safe to work with... 

I skipped this step thinking "well I won't touch anything I shouldn't so I'll be fine" ..... mistake number one !!!

I moved around the board with the soldering iron making sure the iron touched the board first in case of any latent electricity then I would touch the solder to the part I wanted to re-solder .... I got quicker and quicker until eventually I got it the wrong way around solder first then the iron... unfortunately for me it happened to be one of the only ones that was carrying the full 35,000 volts off the anode cap... The flash was quite spectacular for the instant my brain had to compute what had happened the next instant can only be described as being hit by a freight train at 50 mph and finding myself half way across the floor....35,000 volts through the arm is quite probably the most refreshing experience anybody can have..... it certainly wakes you up...

Luckily for me I don't have a defective heart.... as I found out in 2002 when I was submitted to the hospital with a suspected heart attack...(yes I drove myself there whilst my ex stayed at home....caring individual as she was) it turned out my heart was fine and the only thing defective was my ex wife...which was solved later that year..... I had just suffered a panic attack....

Anyway I digress I pulled myself together and carried on re-soldering cursing myself for not discharging the CRT... and eventually I got the monitor back to together and it has stopped doing it's funky )  ( dance and I no longer have to play the bongo's on the top of it.... So result.....

The moral of the story is :- No matter how good you are at doing something never take any short cuts because it will come back and bite you on the arse