Thank you, thank you, THANK you!

My Vivitar 8018 camera just didn't want to flash and I thought it was either defective from the factory or perhaps broken in packaging, hard use, etc.

It never occurred to me that the flash is not made to be used in the macro mode, which is the topmost comment in your troubleshooting guide.

Strange thing is; my camera's flash doesn't want to go off in the MICRO mode, only in the MACRO mode! Either way, I got the damned flash to go off, so I'm able to use it now.