StarDestroyer.Net BBS

We've all seen them, and wondered "WTF were they thinking? Well, I am guilty as charged, and my only excuse is that I have a five-year old son and he loves this shit. I present Exhibit A, my house:

Straight shot from the front. Six inflatables, two light trees, three deer, a penguin, candy canes, flickering candles, "gift" lights, and I don't know how many lights. Oh, and a poinsettia:

Click here for full size. How the hell do you post thumbnail pics, anyway?

Here's a little closer shot of the front. Yes, my car has lights and yes, they blinky-blink when I'm moving down the road! Inverters are cool.

Click here for full size.

Of course, no yard's complete without a six-foot-tall baby wearing a top hat:


I looked for a larger Santa, but the biggest one I could find after exhaustive shopping one my wife found is only 12 feet tall :


My son can count UP pretty well, so of course he needs a learning aid to help him count DOWN. And nothing says "I'm teaching my child numbers!" like Snoopy on his doghouse:


Sometimes you flub a shot and it turns out OK. I tried the "night" setting on my Canon EOS for a perspective shot, and it made all the lights look like they're flaring to burnout. I liked it.

Click here for larger image.

Merry Christmas to all!

For clickable thumbnails, if your image host doesn't do it for you:
You'll need to make a thumbnail-sized image and host it alongside, though.

Count Chocula wrote:Well, I am guilty as charged, and my only excuse is that I have a five-year old son and he loves this shit.

That's the best reason to do it.

Anyway, this isn't my place, I just found it on the tubes:

Here's the extent of my festive decorations:



A single string of USB-powered LED Christmas lights around my monitor.

Just to be briefly scroogeish, I went to a talk last year on the carbon footprint of Christmas, and lights were the biggest offenders in terms of cost and CO2, unsurprising given that the lights are on for the longest period, but still. Turns out that if we (the world) lived like we did during Christmas, then we'd need 80 Earth's to support the resources involved. We all tutted, shook our heads at the extravagance and then went to our mulled wine evening, turned on our christmas lights and played awful music. Go us!

I tried Simplicius' code, and it worked!

That's pretty slick. Thanks, mang.

Try to land on my house, will you? I got something for that! Oh wait...

Chocula, I think your house can be seen from outer space now.

And to stay in the mood, I went on the Internet and I found this:

How do you pay for all those decorations, CHOCLA? It looks expensives!

Shroom Man 777 wrote:How do you pay for all those decorations, CHOCLA? It looks expensives!

After Xmas sales in the 26th-30th feature tons of Christmas lights on massive discount (Retails hate having lights left over after Xmas, the holidy things can still sell for awhile but Xmas lights are just dead weight on shelves after the 24th). I know we decorated our tree when I was younger with all the lights and bulbs we bought on the 27th which my mother had calculated as the day where the truly massive discounts had (50%-80%) but before everything was gone. This was a more reliable tradition then spending Xmas with the rest of the family as during my first 17 years we only spent Xmas with the family about six times. But I have memories of 6-16 of going out on the 27th of December like clockwork to hit every mall in a forty mile zone to carry whatever she needed carrying.

Shroomy, it's what Bean said. Plus my wife's got a nose for bargains like a shark has for tasty blood in the water. Last year we had an 8-foot Santa popping out of a chimney (had it for 3 years, actually, but high winds burned out the relays last year); it was selling for $99 before Christmas, but my wife got it after Christmas for 25 dollars! Ditto for the other pop-ups. Light strings are stupid cheap, too, something like $1.50 for 100 lights.

Plus, we didn't go out and get them all at once. We've been buying on sale for 5 years now, and that's the only reason I can obscure my lawn in such an obnoxious fashion.

It ain't Christmas if there's no snow on the ground . Nice decorations though. Have a merry Christmas.

[R_H] wrote:It ain't Christmas if there's no snow on the ground . Nice decorations though. Have a merry Christmas.

Given his location, I think if he had snow, Christmas would be cancelled in favour of the apocalypse.

Vendetta wrote:

[R_H] wrote:It ain't Christmas if there's no snow on the ground . Nice decorations though. Have a merry Christmas.

Given his location, I think if he had snow, Christmas would be cancelled in favour of the apocalypse.

It has snowed in central Orange County (although Chocula is in San Diego as I recall). I hear tell that it was about 20 years ago. We came within a few degrees of it this year as well.

In fact we actually had ice on our walkways a couple of days this year.