[klyrs]

Hmmm... this sounds suspiciously close to "good" advice. I'm sure my grandpa would have done a spark test with the shaft of a screwdriver.

Personally, I take a radically different approach to household wiring: hire folks who know better than gramps.

[segfaultbuserr]

I'm not sure why you would think that my suggestion is "suspiciously good". Your suggestions included rubber boot or keeping one hand behind your back, which are what a grandpa would tell you as precautions when working on a potential live circuit. And my suggestion to double check whether a circuit is really dead before working under such a "deadly" assumption is arguably more important.

> Personally, I take a radically different approach to household wiring: hire folks who know better than gramps.

I never suggested otherwise. In a qualified household wiring, all switches are correctly wired, thus turning off a light switch and touching an exposed wire is as safe as turning off the breaker. And there won't be hidden junctions in the walls waiting to be burned up. And a single earth leakage doesn't kill the power of an entire home... - these properties are what you definitely want.

My point is not to assume anything while working on an existing system. I test live voltage even before I replace a lightbulb - you don't have to mess up the entire wiring of your house, a single miswired light socket can be just as dangerous. Fortunately, so far I've never encountered a single case where the light socket is live after opening the light switch, nor a single case where the metal thread of the light socket is live, which gives me confidence that the wiring at my home was probably in compliance. I simply don't assume.

[klyrs]

> I'm not sure why you would think that my suggestion is "suspiciously good".

With comedic intent. I don't want to give folks the impression that grandpa's advice was good.

[heelix]

I remember being in the attic with my Grandfather. He touched a bare wire and said something like 'wooee - That was 220.' I figure I've drawn heavy out of the luck bag already in my life with electricity.