February 2010

What a month! We received our 4 AC controller kits, all have been assembled, tested, and ready for enclosures. The new controllers will bring our controlled channel count to 128, enabling us to do quite a bit of new things with the display, which we will begin, building this month.
We are also testing a few new kits; the Blizzard and the Rainbow Runner. The Blizzard really excites me as it will add a feature rarely seen in personal displays. We are also looking at purchasing a new DC controller this year that will enable us several more possibilities with different products. DMX will probably not be in the mix until 2011, as this will a DMX controller as well as a host of other items.


We have finally started work on the Controller Calculator again, adding several new features, including calculations for DC, I know; A DC watt is the same as an AC watt, but I have had several folks ask for this feature and I decided I might as well include it also. We will be working on the 50 Controller calculator this month also (Imagine have 800 channels to sequence…..insane!) hopefully we can get version 3 uploaded for the extremists among us.

We have uploaded 10 sequences for download to the site, as well as our favorite Christmas Vacation sound bites; a must have for in-between songs. We will be uploading several more sequences trough out the year as we get them zipped and uploaded. I have also added several links to other sites of which the designers are also offering sequences for download.

We will be adding a few new pages to the web site to help organize things a bit. One new page will be for the many links to other displays, vendors, sequence sites, as well as other useful Christmas tech forums.

We will be starting work on our new display elements either this coming week or next; more than likely with the vertical corner stones, and leaping arches. Our corner stone’s will be one of two designs we have developed, we will make the prototypes first, try them out and go with the one with the most effects. We will document the progress of the corner stone lighting since we have several obstacles to overcome getting the implemented.

We bought 5 – 7 ½’ Christmas trees during the holidays, not sure how they will do, what we thought we bought is not what we actually bought; the trees we bought have individual removable branches, which may create an issue on pre-setup, since we wanted to semi-permanently attach the lights to the branches, so this will take some thought on the actual procedures we develop on the final assembly, if at all possible on these specific trees.


Nate was invited up to Cal State East Bay D2 (San Francisco/Oakland area) to try out for the college baseball team. He didn’t have a bad performance, but I know he is capable doing better. Last summer when he was a HS Junior I watched him dominate Westmont College roster from the mound, giving up 1 hit in 4 innings, he commanded the field so much, I thought Westmont just wasn’t capable of hitting the ball until they relieved Nate, Yes, they could hit the ball, 1st pitch from Nate’s reliever was out of the park, 2nd pitch to the next batter; again out of the park……pretty much the same results for the next four pitchers, they got lit up like they were part of our Christmas display.

Nate has been accepted to Cal State Northridge D1 (CSUN), and will be attending their 8 week training camp this summer, hoping to gain more interest in his abilities. All we have to do is keep him focused on the big picture and his choices that will make the rest of his life.


Little League Baseball has started up again for 2010, this will be Bubba’s last year of Little League Baseball, and will again play on the major dodgers (12U). This will also be my last year of Little League; I have spent the last 15 years as part of Little League either as a coach, manager, board member, or umpire. I have lots of memories in this organization and I have seen many of the kids I coached the fundamentals of baseball to play college ball, none pro yet, they are still too young, but I hope I made a positive impact in their lives.