I get a lot of questions when I'm out in the display, I thought I'd answer some of them here for those too shy to ask. 

• What do your neighbors think of your display?  
  If I haven't said this already I'll say it again - I have great neighbors.  As far as I know my neighbors are very supportive of our display and I am extremely grateful for their patience in dealing with the traffic we attract at times.  Most of the time traffic flows through the community very well, but I urge everyone to respect our neighbors and all that they endure with living near our display.  The biggest problem we've seen this year is the blocking of driveways - PLEASE do not block our neighbor's driveways.  If I ever feel there is a major traffic situation that is impacting our neighbors I will shut the lights down immediately. Please don't ruin the fun for others, respect our neighborhood.
   

• Why isn't your display on when it rains?
  Technically speaking our display could be lit up in the rain, people in other climates with rain and snow do it all the time, but most often they can anticipate rain/snow and spend a great deal of time on weatherizing their displays.  In our climate it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to spend a lot of time on weatherizing our display for the day or two of bad weather we may see in December.   With that said, we utilize GFCI protected circuits to power our display.  Power travels from hot to neutral through our lights, a GFCI device monitors the current flowing from hot to neutral and will react if there is even the slightest imbalance.  We use both outlet based and circuit based GFCI devices to protect against electrical shock in our display. However, lighting up the display during or shortly after rain will very likely cause GFCI's to trip, which is good because it means they are working properly.  However, tripped GFCI's mean light controllers turning off, lights not lit, and the display not completely lit up.  This takes away from the experience - I personally want every strand to be lit and visible to every person who stops by, anything less is not acceptable.  Therefore, the lights stay dark during/after rain. 
   

• What about LED lights?
  I am a big fan of LED Christmas lights for several reasons.  The first is the low power draw - I can connect around 900 LED lights and use the same amount of power that a single 100 light strand of incandescent bulbs use.  Second, LED lights are true color, they don't fade, their color will remain the same year after year.  They are also very tough and don't break as easily as regular lights.  I always urge people to use LED lights whenever possible.  For most displays they are the perfect solution.  So why then, do we only have 2500 LED's in our display this year?  The main reason - cost.  Depending on where you buy your lights the cost for a 100 light set of minis is anywhere from $2.30 to $2.50 (not commercial lights, standard minis, not on sale).  At the same time a set of 70 LED lights will run 3-4 times that price.  If you're stringing some lights up around your eaves then this price difference is easily traded for the benefits LED lights have to offer.  When you have 45,000 lights to replace, the cost is an issue.  LED Christmas lights can also be electronically different - meaning they do not react the same way that regular lights react to things like fading.  You can get LED's that do work like regular minis, but they aren't readily available and they don't all react the same way.  White LED lights can also be an issue, if they are true white they don't look the same as clear minis, they often have a blue glow.  There are "warm white" LED's, but they aren't found very often in retail stores.  As time goes on and technology advances I think you'll see more and more LED's on the market that look and act like regular minis, and as more and more production houses switch from minis to LED's the price will go down.  I've heard rumors of incandescent light production stopping completely in the next couple years with a manufacturing switch to LED's. 
   

• Can I hire you to put up my display?  
  It depends on how much you're paying....  Honestly though, I have a couple thoughts on this.  Putting up our display is truly exhausting for me and my family.  Finding time to put up other displays would be difficult and our own display would likely suffer (I work a full time job already!!)  Second thought, putting up lights is something I enjoy and I fear if I ever commercialize this hobby the fun will be lost.  All that said, if the right opportunity came along for the right group, cause, or person, I would entertain the thought more seriously.
   

• Where do you store it all?  
  At the end of the 2007 season we realized that storing all of this in our garage was no longer possible.  We now utilize a storage unit to store our display. 
   

• How long did it take you to do that?  
  the exact time is hard to track.  I estimate 200 hours, but it's probably more than that.  What most of our visitors don't understand is that this is a hobby, not something I start in November and stop in January.  I work on and think about Christmas lights 12 months out of the year.  Technically speaking I start putting up lights towards the end of October. 
   

• Why do you do it?  
  I'd like to say "if you have to ask, you don't understand", but that wouldn't be very helpful.  There are many reasons.  I've done this for many years and at a very basic level it's tradition, I would feel strange if I didn't do it.  On a more complex level, to meet people, because kids love it and because we support a great charity that deserves to be in the spotlight.  You'd be amazed at what kind of conversations this can strike up and how many new people you can meet, simply by talking to people watching the display.  Kids are the best, they'll always tell you what they like and don't like.  I get kids from the neighborhood asking me about lights all year long.  Another reason I do this - because I can!! 
   

• How did you make.....?  
  Most people don't ask because they think we're like magicians and won't share our secrets.  It's actually just the opposite, most light enthusiasts, including me, are more than willing to share, just ask! Be careful though, you might get a longer answer than you wanted.   Most of what I have learned came from someone else who shared their ideas and knowledge.  Everyone has something to share, you just need to adopt ideas to your personal display.  A good example would be the leaping arches in our front yard.  Those were not my invention, someone else created them and many people are using similar arches in their display.  We all build them a little different (ours are smaller than most), use different materials and program them differently.  The concept was not mine, I did the design and creation of the arches we have, but got the idea elsewhere.  The mega tree on the roof is another example, they are well known around the world.  Ours is an adaptation that I've not seen anywhere else simply because we benefit from the design of our house, doesn't mean we were the first though.  So if you like something you see, just ask and I will tell you how it's made. 
   

• I've never seen lights dancing to music in the valley, are you the first to do this?
  I'd like to answer YES, but to be honest, I don't know if I was.  We started doing computer controlled animation here in 2005 and I've only seen a handful of displays in the valley that do the same.  However, judging from some information I've found I believe there is someone in Palm Springs that has been doing this for much longer than I have (I'd love that person to contact me!).  To be honest it doesn't really matter to me, see the section above entitled "Why do you do it" and you'll notice there is no mention of this being a reason for why this display is put up every year.  I would actually prefer to have a lot of people doing animated displays, it shows creativity and everyone's concepts are different.  There is nothing I'd like more than a street full of animated displays, I'd even settle for a street full of houses decorated (there is an entire neighborhood in Indio, I need to get the location again, but it's off of Clinton).  I'm not here to compete with anyone, we participate in the Indio contest because it's fun and because it draws attention to our charity. 
   

• Who put those lights on the big trees in front?  
  As unbelievable as it may seem all lights on our house are put up by hand, no machinery is used, only a few ladders and a couple sticks with nails in the end.  Our mesquite trees are hand wrapped in three different colors by yours truly using several different ladders.  I won't tell you it's easy, it certainly is not, but I think it looks great!  If anyone would like to volunteer to take the lights OFF of the trees please let me know.  
   

• Who stole the Baby Jesus? 
  I've been asked this many times, more than I thought.  I'm happy to tell you that we have not lost the Baby Jesus to theft.  It's tradition in the Hispanic culture for the Baby Jesus to appear in the nativity on Christmas Eve and not a day earlier.  Keeping with tradition if you stop by our house after Christmas you will find him there. 
   

• Can you turn the music up?  
  In a word - no.  We have a great deal of respect for our neighbors, they have been great over the years.  They deal with living close to a light fanatic and put up with all that comes with the territory.  Turning our music up louder would disturb their peace and quiet even further.  Anyone that does a large display that attracts even a little bit of attention will no doubt tell you that our number one priority is to keep our neighbors happy.  That's why we have an etiquette page, it's why we had voiceovers made specifically addressing our neighbors needs, and why we keep our music at somewhat low level.  I urge you to utilize your car radio to tune into FM 107.3 in order to hear the music.
   

• Can you run your shows later than 9:30 PM? 
  See the item above, we schedule our shows as late as we feel is appropriate for the neighborhood.  If we don't have happy neighbors our lights don't go on. 
   

• Why don't your shows run all the time?
  For a couple reasons - first we do it to control traffic, we like for people to come, view a show, check out our display in "static" mode, then make room for others who want to see the next show.  Another reason is because even though I'm a fan of musical displays I also enjoy a nice static display and I'm sure others feel the same.  So with our 18 minutes of animation and 12 minutes of mostly static I think we cover both. 
   

• How do you broadcast the music to your radio station? 
  This is a good question that was recently asked by one of our visitors who signed our Guestbook.  We utilize a low powered stereo transmitter kit.  This unit allows us to broadcast a short distance while still staying within the regulations of the FCC.  It is a low powered unit that runs on 12 VDC and simply takes the audio output from the computer and broadcasts it to whatever frequency we choose.  There are limitations, we did a considerable amount of research to determine which was a good frequency to use, we'd be violating FCC regulations if we were broadcasting over another station or causing interference.  We could (and have considered doing so) make the signal stronger by creating an appropriately sized dipole antenna and mounting it somewhere outside, however our concern is violating FCC regulations for the distance from our broadcast point that our station can be heard.  For this reason the signal you receive may not always sound crystal clear, just remember we have to stay inline with regulations if we want to keep the display going. 

Once again, thanks for stopping by, we're glad you came.  Hopefully you'll leave this site with a few less questions and a lot more Christmas spirit.