Pain Joy Elation Dissapointment I've run the gamut these last 2 weeks...
A couple of weeks ago was Halloween... first I had decided it was to hard to continue in the efforts from years past, but my family conveinced me that they would all help and since it was on a Sunday we could do a lot over the weekend and not have the big rush usually associated with a build like this . For those who don't know I build a Haunted House in my driveway and garage. I set up a 20'x20' pipe tent and attach that to my 3 car garage. Inside of that I build a dark maze complete with custom sound, lighting and props. All of the props inside are mine, I made them. Some are even pneumatic running off of motion sensors and computer controlled timers. In addition to that I have my family act as actors in the haunt.
This year went great, we only had minor malfunctions and everyone had a grand time. About 600-700 guests went through the haunt, and I did not hear one complaint the entire night. I will say that it looked bad in the begining, a small little rain shower that lasted all of 2 minutes threatened to wash it all out, but it cleared and everything went off in the end.
walkthrough::: First as you approach this year you are greeted by the 2 6' cemetery columns at the end of the driveway, they had fencing atteched to them and jack-o-lanterns on top. As you walk though you you see the tent, only this year the front of the tent is made up of air brushed panels giving it the appearance of a solid building behind, there is a grave yard to your right complete with tombstones, more columns and more fencing. All of the columns have jack-o-lanterns on top. The line to get into the haunt is cordoned off by lighted skull stanchions. There were times when the line was 50-75 people deep!
When you turn comes to enter and hooded monk opens the door and lets your party in to the first room. This room has a cobwebbed coffin in the corner with a corpse inside all of this is bathed in red light. You are led by your guide to the door and allowed into the haunt on your own. With a custom soundtrack playing throughout you enter a 40' long hallway that is very skinny. You are only allowed in in groups of 5 or less and this hallway makes it so you cannot walk side by side.
The hallway is full of rotten material and cobwebs on the walls, and is lit by a string of bare light bulbs every 5 feet or so, and they don't seem to be working properly as spit and sputter and go completely dark at times. As you make your way down the hallway you come to a section where there are more painted walls with windows in them, inside one of the rooms sits a dead bride with her possesed baby. She does not move, much and you are wonder if she's even alive, the baby's eyes glow like fire, as you are trying to figure out whether they are real or not a large crate in the corner suddenly springs to life, glows bright red, and violently fires open allowing the crypt keeper inside a breif chance to peer out! Then just fast and as violent, it slams shut, leaving you in a very dark hallway, lit only by a single torch. By now you are the end of the long hallway and as you round the corner past the crate you are greeted by a small hallway that is an obvious dead end. As you move down it a blue light comes on lighting up a skeletal ghost 12' beyond the end of the hallway.
As you continue to move towards the ghost he suddenly rushes at you jumping 10' up in the air and 12' forward stoping just before flying over your head all in about 1 second! He slams to a violent halt and fades back into the darkness.
In this new darkness you notice blacklight spilling from a door so you enter. You find yourself in a 10'x10' room completely covered in flourecent dots and markings. You relax since you can now see clearly in the well lit room that it is empty. Across the room is an exit sign so you head for the exit when out of the corner of your eye you notice the wall seemed to move. You look to be sure and you can't see anything there when suddenly it moves again! There is someone in there with you and they are so camoflaged you cannot see them even when looking right at them! You hurry through the exit and into ... another dark hallway!
As you wind your way though this maze a green light appears and a ghoul rockets straight at you! Once again he stops just in time and disappears back into the darkness.
You find your way out of the maze and into a dungeon where a man sits in a large throne chair covered in ornamental bones. You are sure this man is not real until he starts rise, as you back away and hurry for the exit blasts of air whip past your ankles making you hurry all the faster to next room. In this room you find it has been overrun with giant roaches and very very very large spider. Here you also find another monk who hands you a treat and your hurry out of the exit and back into the graveyard.
Most people took about 4 minutes make it through the haunt although some were much slower! All of the air powered props were working off of motion sensors and event control computers. All of the air props have safety valves, regulators, and high capacity air cylinders. The air cylinders I use are rated to 250psi well beyond the reach of my compressor and all but one prop, have the air regulated down to around 40psi. Each prop was made by me, there are very few store bought items inside. They only include things like lighting and some of the atmosphere decor. All of the major props were one of a kind. Our haunt was even featured in the local newspaper on the front page! I hope eveyone had a good a time! Next year will be much smaller I promise!
As you know 2 days after halloween cam the election! I was on pins and needles I was so sure that the "I Hate Bush Because the Media Brainwashed Me" Club would elect Kerry but as you can tell it did come to be. When I look at the county by county map I think it tells a great tale.
Next comes the nightmare of our T1 bonding issues at the office. For the better part of a week we had been trying to bond out 2 lines together without success. Finally it happened, then everything went to hell. It ended with a lot of cursing and me spending the night up at the office. In the S figured out the problem and we are going strong now.
Finally I'm up to the past weekend! For the previous 10 days or so I'm burning that candle at both ends so I'm ready for a lite weekend. Friday we decide to go see The Incredbles. Angie gets home and we take off for Gulf Pointe Theater. We find our seats 30 minutes before show time. As showtime approaches one of those magical moments came for me! Many of you know I'm a bit Star Wars crazy, well I had been to busy to know that the Revenge of the Sith's first trailer was going to debut at The Incredibles! So let me set the scene, there are people milling about trying to find the last of the scattered seating as the light dim. The screen lights up and the Lucasfilm logo splashes the screen... I immediately think "what is this" then "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away..." comes on screen. Suddenly the all of the people milling about stop start watching the screen even though they are not in seats yet. The trailer starts with scenes froim the original movie "A New Hope", but then there is a cut in of Qui Gon from TPM. Then a new scene! The crowd now starts to murmur a little midway through the trailer all the hair on my now standing the screen goes black and the Emperor's voice can be heard saying "Lord Vader ... rise", then with the screen still black you hear the breathing and James Earl Jones' voice comes booming across! People cheered out loud! As you see Vader rise from the mist! By the time trailer was done the crowd whooping and applauding! It was awesome!!! ... oh and BTW The Incredibles... Pixar has another hit!
Then on Sunday... Angie, Dade and I went to the Texas Renaissance Festival... wow has that thing gotten big! It was well cool... The weather was perfect, Dade was perfect, everything was great! We had a great time! Dade dipped his ahnd in wax and rode a camel. We saw the jousting and the Mud Show and lots more... it was just the ticket to help cap a very hectic 2 weeks!
I think I'll leave it on that high note for now...
Halloween is a buuuuusssssyyyy time of year for me! So sorry about lack of updates... I have just a couple of quick links, both require sound please.
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From my friend S John Kerry Waffle Compilation it's easy to say something everyone likes when you talk out of both sides of your mouth... incredible!
This Britney game gets hard at the 2nd level I made it to the 5th and could make it no further. The crap she says is the best part of the game though!
Finally from Big G...
Little David was in the 4th grade when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came back--fireman, policeman, salesman, doctor, lawyer, etc. David was being uncharacteristically quiet so the teacher asked him about his father.
David's reply was this: "My father's an exotic dancer in a gay cabaret and takes off his clothes in front of other men and they put money in his underwear. Sometimes if the offer is really good, he goes home with some guy and they do stuff I'm not supposed to know about."
The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on another project while she took little David aside to ask him, "Is that really true about your father ?"
"No," said David, "he works for the Democratic National Committee to elect Kerry, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids.
Ok who wants to string up Qualls right now... the way I see it is we pissed away a perfectly good game... if you really look at the game as a whole we match up pretty damn good here and should take some of these games down... let's hope it's 4 of them!
My friend G just sent me this... damn dats funny! Lot's more here ... the Stabucks one is great!
I have a link... this link is not a video of some crazy bike stunt or a new graphical interface, it is simple a well told story of life and Scrabble. While you are there check out the rest of the Vidlets on the site, nice stuff.
On a side note my son turned 7 yesterday... it's so great having boy, I thank my wife every night when I lie down. I know I had an equal part in that but she cooked him up just right. Anyway Mom's birthday is tomorrow. It's a busy time of year right now.
War Berkman, Bagwell, Biggio, Beltran, Brad Ausums, and all of the other Killer B's Backe tonight! Go Stros!
Ok your cruise control gets wacked and speeds you up to 120mph ... you have a card for a key so yanking that does nothing, what do you do? Call for help! wow! Wild!
I know woe is me is the norm these days but damn I have been putting the time in lately. First we had a major software release that was due today! and what happens our office is moving the week before. Last week between mon and fri I put in 70 hours, it was insanity the whole time. Nothing worked as planned. Furniture was late, the phones were late, the furniture turned out to be to small to house the double monitor set up the dispatch computers have, the power poles didn't reach the ground it was hell!
It's all a big blur now but here are some ofthe hilights as I remember them. Wednesday was the real start of the move, One of our 2 T1 lines went hot and and we moved our server. We are only going form the 9th floor to the 5th floor so it was not far but the web server is the core of the business and this had to go perfectly and it did! Texas.net! they are the shit! so far so good... while we are there I see they are installing furniture, it's about time. Oh but wait they never fixed the carpet?!?! Two weeks prior they installed the carpet and it looked like crap! It like it came form two different rolls or something totaly unacceptable... ok contact the building manager... "ummm they are writing a report." ... For what it looks like hell! You should ahve already fixed this crap! now we got furniture in place over it! Anyway ... Thursday the day before the move, contact MCI to make sure everything is Kosher, phones are the next biggest portion of the business sothis has to work or we go in the tank! Oh yea and the phone company is there installing the new system the day before we move! Anyway MCI!&@%#&% they are providing us with a T1 and a PRI for voice. Early morning I contact provisioning to work out the details of the data... "ummm we haven't got a norder for you?!?, well the circuit is there??!" It turns out they didn't put the order in for the T! Ok they did 2 months early but it got canceled and despite an email telling me the order was being reentered it was not. Ok we are moving down there in 15 hours what am I supposed to do? they escalate Telco and try to get it going. G and I come up with optional plans! Everyone will go on the other T for now and monday the telco will be sorted and we can get rolling. ummm where is our router? MCI, We don't supply that. Me, are you kidding? I am just now getting wind of this was it not in our contract? turns out is was implied but not in there. ok more on this later! ...
We are about to move the next morning at 6am MCI contacts me and tells me that Logix will not release our phone numbers?!?! Why no what is the deal... well MCI has screwed the pooch on this deal too. Turns out they did not put in the request to roll the lines properly, 3 times in a row!!! So when they finally got it right, it was to late. Ok so we movie in 15 hours to a space that has no data and no phones numbers this is gonna be fun! During this time I go down to check on the progress of the phone install, it turns out the power poles on the cubilcles were to short so the phone guys decided not to wire them and they were gone?!? Huh! also the electrican decided to wire them anyway so at the bottom of each pole is 3 feet of exposed wire! WTF!!! oh and because of that they won;t put power to the poles... so let's recap, no data line, no phonen numbers, no phone jacks to plug into and no power for the PCs anyway and we are moving in 12 hours now! HOLY SHIT!
We called the furniture people they brought better poles out right away. The phone people made a guy stay and wire some temp plugs up before he left for night. getting better, go forward with the plan to put everyone on the Texas.net T ... we decided to leave the existing phone system in our old space and forward the calls to one of our new numbers that MCI had ready because they were new and did not need to be cut over from another provider... it's now 10pm I need to be here at 5am I'm gone...damn... show up at 5am no power yet, send someone after lot's of extension cords, start getting private office PCs online on the alternate set up. 6am we forward the phones and amazingly enough we are operational, barely. 9am they hook up the power nice. we stay this way throguh the weekend, checking email remotely.
Monday, Alright G scrambles and gets a router and tech for monday. After spending all day on monday he finally gets it working and we move the email server. We only put one person on the new MCI T and his packet loss is gigantic everything is failing! Ok OK! get MCI on the phone, by now we've moved our mail server and there is no turning back we need this line fully operational!!! MCI screws it up so bad that here is on Thursday and no email no line no anything! We had to move the email box to the Texas.net T and prop it up as we did not realy have the hardware to do what we wanted through that line. On Wednesday MCI was supposed to be keeping us in contact every 30 mins... nope they quit calling and they quit returning our calls. Nice. as it stands now the T is still not operationaly and theya re blaming telco funny this is telco just showed up to install another T at MCIs request. We asked about the other circuit, his response was that it was another MCI debacle. what a mess! I've brely scratched the surface of all the crap that happend and while this was going on I had to be wrapping up a major major development project for delivery... insane!
I'll try and post some links later... I haven't even had time to surf this week... samu
