Man, that's a huge find. I totally get what @hollym82 means about the wallet getting lighter, but seeing the heat spot is proof you just can't argue with. A multimeter tells you part of the story, but that thermal image shows you the exact problem in a way numbers on a screen never could. It stops being a guessing game and becomes a sure thing. For tricky faults like that, it seems like the visual proof is worth the cost just to save the headache.

What's the end goal if they're not selling games to be played?

My sister had the same journey with that ending, took her three rewatches to get it.

My buddy at Delta had a phantom voltage drop on a 737. They spent three days checking connections before finding a single pinched wire behind the galley. Said it felt like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.

Ugh, those tiny failures are the absolute worst to track down. @anthonyp91 is right, it's crazy how one little thing can waste so much time. I had a similar fight with a coolant leak on my truck that was just a pinhole in a heater hose. You look at the big stuff forever before finding the real culprit. Makes you want to pull your hair out, doesn't it?