Now you see it

This is how the display on my microwave oven currently looks. That last digit should be a 2, and the colon isn't even a semicolon, so as you can see, there're a few missing LED segments. But that doesn't bother me, and there's nothing unusual about it; what's unusual is that there is anything to see at all.

Let me back up a little. OK, let me back up six years. That's when I moved from an apartment to my newly purchased house, and the microwave is one of the things that made the move. Prior to the move, the display worked perfectly: all segments bright and complete in all digits, plus the full colon. After the move, when I plugged it in, there was a segment or two missing. I figured something got discombobulated from being jarred during the move, but I could still figure out the numbers 95% of the time, so I didn't worry about it.

Well, over the ensuing years, LED segments would randomly wink out or come back to life, leaning toward the "winking out" so it became increasingly difficult to read. Then, a few months ago, the display started to get progressively dimmer, until it finally became virtually invisible. If you looked at it really close, without too much ambient light to wash it out, you could barely make out the (incomplete) last digit. So for the last couple of months I've been operating my microwave "blind", punching in times and power settings without ever really being sure I hadn't made a typo (so to speak), and never knowing how much time was left on the timer. Using the special programmed settings was impossible. And you just know that trying to get it repaired would undoubtedly cost three quarters of a new microwave, assuming you could even find someone to repair something like that in our throwaway society. I was beginning to seriously consider buying a new microwave, but that seemed terribly wasteful since it cooks just fine.

And then, yesterday, when I went to put my breakfast bowl of oatmeal in the microwave, the display was inexplicably back to full brightness and almost complete numbers, like you see in the picture. I have no idea what prompted this sudden display of vigor, or how long it will last. It might be a last, dying gasp. So I guess I'd better sieze this opportunity to use the popcorn or baked potato or CompuDefrost settings while I can actually read them, before they disappear forever.