Weird camera issue

My A710 got damp last spring, and it made it start complaining about low batteries quickly. Previously, a charged set of NiMH AAs would go a month before complaining, after this event, it was only 2 or 3 days. I never bothered to figure out the exact nature of the drain, but I suspect it was draining the batteries while off.

Then it was OK for a while.

Starting about a week ago, I can drop in freshly-charged NiMH AAs and turn it on, and it immediately is complaining about low battery, and about 2 shots later it shuts off.

It does seem to work OK on alkaline AAs, though I've only taken a dozen shots or so with the set I put in there. Even though alkalines are generally pretty sub-optimal for digital cameras, I have an absolute RAFT of alkaline AA cells that I've rescued from the recycling bin and are actually still almost full, so I could probably use the camera for a year just on the alkalines I have piled up already.

If it comes down to it, I suspect I can take the camera apart a bit and I bet there will be an obvious place where there are water-placed deposits of some kind of mineral on the boards. A blast of MAP cleaner would probably take care of that. But I'll just keep using the dumb thing with alkalines for now.

New derailler cable

My rear derailler has been shifting pretty sluggishly for a while. I went to grease the cable today to try to both make it glide more smoothly and to repel water, but the thing is obviously fairly rusty, and more than half the strands are snapped near the attachment point on the derailler.

I had a teflon-coated replacement der cable and a bunch of cable casing sitting around, so I went ahead and installed it. It turns a lot easier now, I'll see how well it shifts tomorrow.

The cable I replaced is original, so I guess I got pretty respectable endurance out of it. The front derailler still has the original on it and is shifting fine, but of course it doesn't go through a casing down near the ground where it gets sprayed with salt water like the rear does, and it turns fewer corners, and gets used less, so it should last longer.

Odometer: 16223