hi roger,

my only thought on this is that if i were doing it i'd probably use a
PIC processor instead of the little circuit board. you can get a PIC
that would do the job for under 1$us and it would be very small with
just 6 pins, 2 of which are for power and ground, so it's very small.
of course you'd have to already have the programmer and things to do
it. using a PIC and programming it you could also control the speed
that the LED blinks at and you could put in a wait at the beginning of
the code so that it'll idle until the internal clock stabalizes on
power up, etc. would still operate off of 3 volts.

as for your board's problem, i don't know. i'd try a ferrite bead near
the circuit board on the wires you inserted between the LED and the
board and see what that does, maybe those long wires are feeding
something weird into the controller chip. could test that too by
insuring that the board works the way you want it to on power-up
without the wires attached, with just the LED touching the leads. just
a thought.