Technical Reviews and Geek Toys

Disney - Pixar's latest animation, Wall-E was recently released on DVD and we picked up a copy. What a great film. For those of you who haven't heard, Wall-E follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a polluted Earth. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space on an adventure. Check out Wikipedia for a detailed analysis. Bella and I enjoyed it so much we bought the 3-disk special edition and will send the other to the grand-kids. I highly recommend this for anyone who likes a good video.
On 12/8/2008 Bloomfield, NM hosted a Lighted Christmas Parade. Bella and I thought it would be a good way to be visible and decided to put together a little "float". We decided Bella's shiney - clean truck would be a great platform and also that Wall-E and Eve would be a technology related - fun theme.

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Of course, Wall-E is an animation and done by professionals.... our float was real life and done by amateurs. Bella had the hardest task. She was to try to find a way to build Eve in such a way that we could fill it with helium balloons. Since we had no idea how much lift there might be we decided a balloon filled with water would keep the bottom down and hopefully let the rest of her float.

We had just received a really nice big box that I thought would work really well for Wall-E and so we got to work.

The day of the parade found the weather to be partly-cloudy with a chance of rain. We live around 20 miles North of Bloomfield and it is not uncommon to have weather at home and a beautiful sunny day at Bloomfield. Such was not the case as we were soon to discover.

We had everything ready to assemble. Bella used the air compressor to fill the balloons so she could drape the cloth, pin (without popping a balloon) and sew Eve. The "dry" fit turned out pretty well. A couple of hours before the parade I headed to Farmington to pick up a bottle of helium and was to meet Bella in Bloomfield.

When I got to Bloomfield it had been raining, but had stopped and I was hopeful that it would be a pretty decent time. Bella pulled in and we started putting everything together. As we started putting Eve together it started to rain. It brought back memories of our Oktoberfest booth. The water balloon was a little heavy and Eve's face wouldn't stick because the fabric was wet so that was that.

Since I am webmaster for the Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce I thought I would go stand by the judges booth and try to take some pictures for the website. I was standing in the rain by the judges table which had a little pop-up canopy trying to keep things dry and I look up at the Citizen's Bank marquee to see the temperature was 37 degrees. I smiled to myself..... Just then a gust of wind hit us and the canopy started to lift. I reached up and grabbed it as others scrambled to secure other items and a thought flashed through my brain that nothing on the back of Bella's truck was tied down. I felt a cold chill and it wasn't from the cold.

I called Bella to see how things were and she told me that she had just backed out of where she was parked and Eve (the water balloon) fell off of the truck and exploded. I discovered later that a couple of the bulbs had broken. Also the Christmas tree behind the cab had fallen over. She was just turning the corner to start down the street towards the Judges booth. Bella was the fifth float so I headed her way trying to take pictures as I went. When I got to her I straighted the tree and headed back to the Judges booth to take more pictures. Unfortunately, it was so dark and wet that the flash on my camera just didn't have enough light for the pictures to come out. The below picture was taken after we got everything assembled before the parade begin.