It’s that scary, haunted, ghostly time of year. Who doesn’t love it? I know I do. Take a look at my Halloween project builds. Halloween is a lifestyle, I think.

I thought it would be fun to do a month of Halloween-themed 'toons. Luckily, I’ll be able to do five this month! How fun.

This week is about one late night at the workshop. Those project wires bundled up always looked like scary claw arms to me. I wanted to try to make one of those '50s/'60s monsters with the stark shadows behind it.

The scariest part about it for me? I took that laptop (on the left) apart to change a soldered-on CMOS battery. I was hoping it would let it boot again. It didn’t! To make matters worse, I broke the screen hinge by brute-forcing it back together. This picture is from before all of this madness. A scary project for me, indeed.

That laptop was a Grid Case 1520, released in 1985. It had a red/orange plasma screen. The CMOS battery was a 3.6-V lithium ½ AA cell. Both features are fairly modern compared to today’s technology. I really like these laptops. I had three of them at one point, but, unfortunately, I got rid of all of them. Their preservation is beyond me at the moment.

You can see why I love these Grid System behemoths in this older cartoon here. It’s a very simple reason… you’ll see.

See the rest of the environmental campaign drawings and my other cartoons in the Engineering on Friday comic gallery.