Monthly Archives: October 2005

FINALLY!!!

After 3 days of hard work, the Cable Modem costume is complete. I wish I could say it went smooth, but if it did, this post would be timestamped about 2 hours earlier 🙂

After finishing assembling the back panel, I cut out the lights, only to realize that I cut em out with the damn thing upside down. I ran outside with an extra foam-board and sprayed it, praying it would be dry early enough for me to attach and cut it out. I then cut the bottom out (as a head-hole isn’t big enough for my feet!). The sucky part is the top is not as secured as the original top was. No wood supports or caulk this time.

Anyways, it came out great.

Note that I have attached the back panel to the costume and re-sprayed the parts that look faded.

Day 2 of the great costume build:

I finished assembling (for the most part) the modem box, and took the thing out to be sprayed! Despite my using the Garage as my paint room, the whole house stinks of Paint and Rubber Cement 🙂 Funny thing is you don’t notice it until you go out and come back an hour later.

The thing you saw in yesterday’s picture is now black. I glued on the top panel and sprayed the whole thing. I picked up more paint and more foam board today bringing the project over budget. It started to win the Costume contest at work on Monday… Grand prize is $100. I don’t think I’ll even break even if I win, but it WAS fun to build and should be a good laugh on Monday.

Tomorrow, I’ll secure the top panel better, Caulk the entire innards of the thing. Glue the back together (It’s painted and complete, but just in sections now), Figure out what to do for a handle/shoulder straps, and cut out the lights and mount the actual lights (yes, this thing will have authentic working lights on the front of it!)

It looks awesome! I am excited. I need to get out more!

While on the subject of my creativity, I started my next Haloween costume…

As some of you know, I work for a company that provides Internet service via cable modem. (Yes, It rhymes with circumcision!). I decided to create a new costume from scratch this year. I decided to be a “Motorolla Cable Modem” :)….

Using tons of Foam Board, Masking Tape, and Rubber Cement, I managed to put together the bulk of the unit. I only have a few days as there’s a costume contest on Monday. First prize is a $100 Gift Card (No, I don’t know where to). I even made a Coaxial connector for the back. Tomorrow I have to pick up more foam board, some paint (I’m paranoid I may run out) and finish assembling it.

Note that I have not attached the top or back yet, cut the holes for the lights (yes, they will be working just like on a real cable modem), nor painted it. Lots to do tomorrow.

At work today, I arrived at the location for our event early so I decided to take a few random shots by the Nautical Mile in Freeport. I got this great shot of the American Flag and with a bit of tweaking in Photoshop, I was able to come up with what I think is a pretty stunning shot of the american flag. Now, keep in mind the ONLY modifications I made were to adjust the coloring a bit and increase the sharpening quite a bit. I didn’t even need to crop the image. It came out just right (I just cropped the edges so it would fit in 640×480)

Picture behind cut…

This sucks!

I sneezed, and immediately felt a sharp pain behind my bottom left rib. I think I pulled a muscle….Grrr