That's not an electrical glitch, it's a salutation -- from people as far away as Pakistan. It's what happens when a budding inventor invites the world to fiddle with his holiday decorations.

Two years ago, the N.C. State University alumnus was hunting for a project to entertain himself beyond his Wake Forest University graduate studies. A devoted virtual-reality tinkerer, Sintay wanted to make the Internet do something.

At age 25, this songwriter, poet, cartoonist, guitarist, entrepreneur, electrical engineer and computer engineer decided to find a way to hook up his home Christmas lights to the Internet, so that people all over the world could turn them off and on, according to their own whims.

The project sounds simple; it wasn't.

Sintay had to design a system of circuits, switches and software to translate taps made on computer keyboards continents away into commands for a lighting system at his house.

He needed a good bit of juice, but stopped at 24 high-voltage switches because he figured any more would overwhelm the home wiring.

"When I turned on the system, I got down in an egg position and hoped I wasn't going to shock myself," he said.

Sintay also set up a video camera to train on his beige house, telecasting the light show on a Web site: www.controltheshow.com.

And, oh yes, he put up lights.

Last year, with help from his father, Sintay hung about 30,000 mini-bulbs. They placed three different colors in spots around the house. That way, on the Web site, people can make the front of the house red, one side white, the other side blue -- whatever strikes a person's fancy.

Sintay, who grew up in Mooresville, asked his virtual visitors to send him donations to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, which lodges families of patients at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, where Sintay conducts biomedical engineering research.

Last Christmas, the project attracted a lot of press -- CNN and ABC World News did spots -- and some snags. Millions visited his site, but when too many linked too fast, his server crashed. He raised very little for the charity.

This year, the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Science leased him computer equipment with better capacity. Over five days, with help from friends, Sintay put up about 35,000 lights.

This time, he's asking people to send gifts directly to the charity.

The site, active only when it's dark enough to see the lights, turned on Friday. So far, Sintay said, traffic is good. He had more than 800,000 hits one night. Money isn't yet pouring toward the charity, but he's hopeful.

Between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., it's a free-for-all this year, with all kinds of people playing with lights at once. After 7 p.m., people queue up to control the whole house for one minute at a time.

And already, B.J. and Ashley feel like they have company for the holidays. That's true when they sit inside and see the colors change outside or when they step outdoors with their three small dogs and the Web cam spots them.

Internet "friends" flash lights nearest where they stand -- by the garage door or covering the fake reindeer -- as if to say "Hi."

Sintay couldn't have predicted that. "It's been more personal than I thought it could be," he said.