Sooooo................ I have this row of lights in the kitchen that, well, is supposed to light up the kitchen. Only they have never worked. I figured I had a short in there or something and I had no desire to tear up the sheetrock to find it. Impossible to reach from the attic. Since the sheetrock guys are coming to fix the ceiling I decided this was my opportunity to debug the problem.
I took the bulbs out and got my little handy dandy tester. The first socket tested hot. Then the second socket tested hot. Now, since I've never seen light out of these my brain is still thinking that there's a break in the circuit somewhere. After the third one tested hot the proverbial light bulb in my head finally came on. If they have power then they should work. So, I got a bulb from my stash and put it in and it came on. And the next one too, and, well, all of them.
All I can figure is that all of the old bulbs just blew when I originally turned on the power. They are these goofy little specialized bulbs. I don't have a better explanation but I feel really really stupid that I've lived with this for 10 years and never even tried to put a bulb in. ugh.