The main light fixture in our little kitchen broke recently. We assumed the bulb went, got a new one (difficult because it's a uncommon shape of a circle fluorescent, so this wasn't a fast thing), replaced the bulb and it still didn't look. Looked like the ballast went and we decided replacing the fixture was easier/cheaper/better than trying to get a new ballast.
So. We went and bought a new fixture. Got home and tried to put it up--which was hard because a colorblind drunk did our home's wiring. 1/2 an hour later, we have a fully installed fixture that doesn't work. I send the Mr. to meijer to grab new bulbs--in the off chance that the 2 that came with the new fixture were bad. We did everything imaginable including pulling switches and using the multimeter in myriad wasy. The Mr. called his dad, who is home recovering post his cancer-seeding thingy last week [BTW, it went *fairly* well. A small complication with the surgery, not related to cancer that resulted in things being harder and catheters being more challenginb--but the docs are confident that this will fix it], who rambles about 3 way switches, and I call my dad who says he has no idea what the problem could be. MOre fiddle-farting.
Returned fixture for an exchange.
Ballast was bad on the new one.
Now we have light.
bastard ballasts.