Strepsils, I've counted to ten!
This situation has happened to me, twice. I'm not being flippant when I say it wasn't a drama, twice!
I agree with you however, that it wasn't a "non-event", it was, because something non-standard happened.
There is a big difference between a "drama" and an "event". And I'm just fed up with media portraying situations like this with over-dramatisations, as I'm sure you'll agree. I wasn't having a dig at you, or your opinion.
AdamB31, CI isn't a new airframe, it's been around for at least a year. To put your mind at ease: If the air intake was damaged, something which I doubt, the captain wouldn't have accepted it as fit for flight. If the damage occured while you were airborne the design of the engine is such that any FOD is diverted away from the first stage compressor via a bypass door in the bottom of the engine nacelle. The first stage compressor by the way is about 5 feet inside the nacelle.
To prove this point to you. A mate of mine in a Dash had a birdstrike last week, in MAN. The bird actually missed the prop altogether, what are the chances of that, and hit the lip of the intake. Half of it went outside the engine and bounced of the fuselage, the other half hit the inside of the engine below the compressor and went out of the bypass door. The engineering inspection showed that none of the bird had gone through the compressor and it was released for flight.
As far as your avionic problem. Yep the Dash can be a bit temperamental at times, it's just like a big computer, and all you need to do is effectively reboot/de-power it and 99.9% of the time it works fine!