The saga of a digital camera that got wet, went off for repair, and didn't work when it came back. Daughter #3 took her pocket digital camera (a Kodak EasyShare that replaced the defective one she got for Christmas last year) with her on her class trip to Québec City last May. It worked well for her until she decided to take a picture in a waterfall. The picture came out fine; the camera didn’t.I’m fairly sure she knew that the camera was not especially water-resistant. Apparently that knowledge wasn’t deeply enough ingrained to overcome her temptation to catch a good shot.The symptom when she got the camera home was that it wouldn’t turn on and wouldn’t charge. Long telephone calls with Kodak support somewhere in India confirmed that it was damaged, and that the damage wasn’t covered by warranty. Kodak suggested either sending it to their service provider in Illinois, or buying a new one from them at a replacement discount. She chose to pay $60 for the repair plus shipping both ways to get this camera fixed. She sent the camera and battery off at the beginning of June. It finally came back yesterday. After 6 six weeks of letting it sit in the repair queue in Illinois, they replaced the MCU PCB and cleaned and tested the camera.Daughter #3 put it back together, and… nothing. It wouldn’t turn on and wouldn’t charge. Tears, yelling, screaming… and call Dad.I was on my way home anyway, but I had work to do there. Her problem was more important, at least according to her. She gave me the camera. I verified that it wouldn’t turn on. I took out the memory card and battery. The memory card could only go in one way, and did that with a satisfying click. I couldn’t tell how the battery went in. She impatiently told me to follow the arrows. It didn’t click when it went in, and we talked about that, but she insisted that the arrows meant it was correct. The camera still wouldn’t turn on. I asked for the USB cable, and verified that the LED wouldn’t light when I plugged it in.I asked my daughter to call Kodak or the repair facility for tech support, but she was too upset. Instead, she fired off an email to the repair outfit while I did my paying work. Then she disappeared to a friend’s house for a sleep-over.Everything is usually clearer for me in the morning. Yesterday I read Tim Bray’s tale of putting a replacement hard disk into his Mac upside down, and being laughed at by the “Genius” at the Apple store. Over my quiet solo breakfast, I mused that I’d never seen the actual directions for installing the battery in the EasyShare, and that the battery was more or less rectangular. Could the battery design allow it to go in the wrong way, like Tim’s disk? I found the camera, pulled out the battery, and looked down in the slot. There was no way that the contacts were lining up, so I turned the battery around and pushed it in again. This time, it went in with a satisfying click, and the camera turned on as soon as I pushed the button.Daughter #3 has an apologetic email to write when she gets home. Software Development