Gentlemen I am humbled by your statements. I fought the same gremlin when I was putting my door back together and the alarm system wouldn't arm any more. After 6 hours of fiddling with the door latch thinking I wasn't contacting something correctly I noticed that the dome lights weren't on when I had the door open.... Yep changed out that fuse and tada! Everything works.

 

After years (decades) of using test lights and voltmeters, I picked up a Power Probe III last year.

Awesome tools for fault-finding in these kind of situations. Among the zillion other things, you can check for bad fuses in place without pulling them as well as bridge the fuse with power to very quickly see if that is the issue.

 

...and while I'm sure most of you know this already, I was surprised recently that a friend who is a good mechanic had no idea that auto fuses these days had test points for finding bad fuses without removing them.

One side will be hot (voltage, not temp) from the bus it's plugged into (assuming always hot bus or ignition is switched on), and the other side will be hot if the fuse is good, not hot if if the fuse is bad. You can test an entire fuse panel in a few seconds this way.