The exterior display was much like last years, with only a few changes. The Great Pumpkin was found near Brenham TX (I think) and weighted in at 80 pounds. Stella & Josie found him on a trip to Thorndale TX one weekend.

We used 40 pounds of dry ice this year. That’s twice as much as last year. It’s truly the most effective way to cool the output of the fog machines so that the fog stays on the ground all creepy-like. There was very little wind which really enhanced the effect of the fog. It didn’t blow off too quickly.

Josie came dressed as a witch and sat in a chair near George (the dead guy) who was in his usual hot-tub/cauldron. The highlight of the evening for me was when she surprised a parent. The parent was positioning her child near between Josie & the couldron to take a picture. Josie reached moved to help position the child. The startled mother responded by yelling “You’re real!” in surprise.

Fred came in costume as well, and was seen reaching for kids from behind a large headstone. He was scary enough to worry some the the parents might not appreciate his work.

Over the past three weekends we made all new “teeth” and today I mounted them in two of the four locations. It was fine use of the pneumatic nail gun kit that Stella bought me for my birthday in August. Boy did that tool making mounting the little wooden blocks really easy. We painted them in advance (2 coats) and then mounted them today.

If you look really closely you can see that I have yet to touch-up each block with blue paint. I put a little wood putty where the trim nail head is countersunk, making a little white spot on each block.

I worked on this from 10am to 2pm today, until it become simply too hot to carry on. I guess we’ll do the touch-up painting some time during the coming week.

That whole “Peter Brown suggested you become a fan of Peter Brown” thing just reeks of the old Bob Dole presidential campaign. It would seem to be a bad idea for candidate for elected office to refer to him/herself in the third person…in any way, anywhere.

Moreover, if I didn’t respond the first time….don’t send the same message over and over! It just shows that your attempt to leverage social media as a platform is lame and ill-considered.

But then again, if “lame and ill-considered” describes your candidacy, you’re at least portraying yourself truthfully.

The process of taking off the old paint was painstaking and tedious work. The crew from Nixcon was first rate. Highly recommended!

Pixel Power, my employer,  just happened to make the cover of the June issue of Broadcast Engineering magazine. Not that we’re featured in the magazine. Rather, they decided to take the cover picture at the NAB show in April, and selected a location near our booth to get a broad shot of the hall. Notice the balloon bearing our logo in the right side of the shot.

Here’s a pic of the installer putting in the slate tile this afternoon.

There’s going to be a 48″ strip of tile along the wall with the French doors. This will protect the carpeted portion of the floor from the occasional water penetration that we suffer during heavy storms.

The office is about 400 square feet dedicated to my various pursuits. It adjoins our garage and was once a one bedroom apartment. These days it’s an open L configuration, the kitchenette having been removed as well as one wall.

The carpet will be installed tomorrow once the grout has set in the tile.