I just read that it has to be at least 8ft in ground an 5/8” copper. Sorry about the delay
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Nice meter!
Looks like it came with a contact ac probe too, which is great.
Once the batteries are in that probe, you can turn it on and stick the business end into the straight blade holes on your receptacles. If the small one beeps, polarity is good, if the larger one beeps, polarity is reversed.
You can also use that probe on a cable, just put the end on the cable and if it beeps, you have AC voltage there.
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Ok I need to find a screw driver small enough to unscrew the back piece to put the batteries in lol
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To test if the case of your fixture is bonded to the ground pin, plug in your extension cord into the fixture but do not plug it into the outlet. Put the meter into transistor/continuity mode (just to the right of 200V AC, about 2 o’clock position). Insert the red probe into the red socket on the right, and the black one into the common (COM).
Now touch some bare metal, or a screw on your fixture with one probe, and at the same time touch the round ground pin on the male end of your extension cable. If you hear a beep and screen shows 0, you have the case grounded to the outlet. If no beep, and OL on the screen, the ground connection is not there.
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i just touched the one end to the round (ground ) prong on my extension cord and multiple areas an it was beeping and was at .002
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Sounds like the fixture ground is good then!
But that doesn’t mean outlet ground is…
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Did you end up getting a new timer, or do you still have the old one?
no It’s the same timer
I have another smaller size timer
Ok, I would repeat the test with the timer in place on the end of the extension cord, or between the extension cord and the fixture, to make sure the timer passes the ground through.
After that, let’s see why the timer did not turn off the light. If neutral and hot were reversed, it is likely that the timer is only switching one of the poles - the one that is normally hot. Test continuity between the small blade on the back of the timer, and the small slot on the front, with the timer turned on, and turned off. Without plugging it into the outlet of course 
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…and then test the large blade/large slot. This will confirm that the timer is probably only switching the hot, and not both hot and neutral
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Placed the timer in between the light fixture and extension cord an tested all four plugs on the timer switch side an all beeped an had a low reading @.002
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Tested both large an small prongs with the end of the plug and ground prong all beeped. Wait I didn’t do it with it off yet
K, I just put my kid to bed so can do this properly with pics.
This is our test case:
An extension cord, a fixture, an IEC cable, a timer, and a multimeter.
You have already tested the ground through the timer, so let’s do the timer on and off test:
Through the hot first - timer is on, we are conducting.
Then turn timer off, repeat - nothing, as it should be:
Now with the timer still off, check the neutral:
Whaddya know! Still conducts. Does your experiment confirm?
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I just checked the smaller prong with it off an now it turns off but not the larger prong
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Which means it’s only turning off the hot ?
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tested it one more time an the only time it stops beeping is when I turn it off manually on the side switch or when it twist the timer to off and the prong is in this hole
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Ok. So now that we know, for sure, that timer turns ONLY the hot on and off, we can say for sure that SOMETHING inside the fixture was energized when the timer was off.
Let’s see if we can test that.
Plug the IEC into the fixture, the timer into the cord, the extension into the timer. Leave timer off. Like this:
Then we measure between the neutral (large blade) and the ground pin:
Mine shows OL = open loop, no path for current. What does yours show?
This is a rudimentary test, it may or may not find a problem, but if it does, then we know, otherwise we keep looking
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