...and I don't know what happened.
I had the last 30 nodes or so of a string not light all of a sudden. I suspected a node went bad. I removed the first node that didn't light.
Then I had this idea - what if the node just before (last lit node) was really the bad node and wasn't passing to the next node.
So instead of patching in a new node right away I soldered the last lit node to the next node. I turned on lights and the last 29 nodes still didn't light.
I went and got my volt meter and placed it on the ground wire (green) and the 5V+ wire (red) and WHOA! - all the lights that didn't light suddenly turned on.
I then replaced the "bad" node I clipped out and the string still worked.
Any idea why when I applied the voltmeter the strand completely lit up?