Why I'm a Mathematician

I need to limit my home improvement to assembling Ikea furniture. I bought a new kitchen ceiling light to replace the boring and flat plastic fixture left by the previous tenant. I thought installing it would be easy, but it quickly became clear why I'm a mathematician and not an engineer.

The first task was to remove the old fixture. I couldn't find any screws along the base, so I figured there must be a base plate attached to the ceiling and the fixture just needed to be twisted to be removed. That must be it, I thought, since I read something about this on the internet just a few weeks ago. I twisted the fixture and off it came. What I didn't pay attention to was the crunching sound of the screws being ripped out of the ceiling. Oops... I guess there was no base plate.

The new fixture has a little plastic thing to attach a ground, L, and N wire. But what the heck is L and N? Do I attach the blue wire to L and the green to N, or vice-versa? I investigated further and learned that L and N stand for 'live' and 'neutral', but what difference does it make if we're using AC power? I called a friend to make sure that I wasn't being completely stupid, and surprisingly, I wasn't.

The screw holes of the new fixture didn't align with the existing holes, so I had to bore another. I used a little tool on the Swiss Army knife that nobody knows what to do with: You know, the pointy thing next to the cork screw. The ceiling is like a dry wall so it was easy to prepare for the plastic expansion screw. I put in the screws, attached the wires, and started to mount the fixture. I then noticed that the fixture didn't completely cover the hole in ceiling, which of course the old fixture did. I wasn't about to remove the expansion screws to reset it, so I'll just have to stucco the hole later.

I was now ready to test it. I turned the power back on, returned to the kitchen, and flicked on the light switch. *POOF* A spark shot out of the fixture and the circuit breaker broke. Am I that incompetent? I opened the fixture and noticed a wire having a tear in the plastic coating. Did I do that? I clipped the wire, reconnected everything, and tried again. Voila! Let there be light!

I now have four little spotlights on the kitchen ceiling that I can turn and tilt in different directions. It's kind of cool, but turning on the light has become a scary thing. Perhaps I'll get a friend to help me with the other four fixtures.