Category: …And Little E Makes 3

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...And Little E Makes 3

Evan’s first steps

Evan took about half a dozen steps toward me, completely unaided and unsupported, tonight. I totally wasn’t expecting it. He just turned around from his little piano and started walking toward me with a big smile on his face, and then he hugged my leg. He then did the same thing again a few minutes later, only about three or four steps this time.

Let the record show that when he stood up and started walking on his own, he was walking toward Daddy. *heart bursts with pride* He’ll be one year old a week from Friday.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters

Catching up (without Depeche Mode)

No real significance to the subject line, just a play on the album title Catching Up With…

Evan and his daddyNothing much to report – here’s Evan all dressed up on Sunday (much more so than his daddy, at any rate), complete with a little tie with a velcro dealie at the back. And I wonder…why aren’t all ties like that? What’s the great stigma of the clip-on tie? I could go further and ask why the hell we’re still bothering with this piece of cloth around our necks anyway, but staying for the moment within the bounds of the idea that the necktie just isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon…why is there this unspoken demand that it has to be a real tie, tied in a real knot? Is this some arcane test of skill whose use has far outlived its shelf life? Dammit, I want ties that close at the back of the neck with velcro. Then again, I also love ties that look like a big multicolored fish. Formal menswear and I do not play nice together – just be glad I’m clothed at all, society. That’s all I gotta say. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Gaming

Video fever vs. cabin fever

Video FeverReports are rolling in that OVGE was a big success this year – that’s a relief. I have to give a big, Discs-Of-Tron-environmental-cabinet-sized heap of thanks to Flack for flogging the PDF DVD at his table. He so didn’t have to do that what with hawking his own wares – namely his new book – but it was much appreciated, and I also appreciate everyone who bought one. Having seen some of the first photos posted and seen some TV news footage on the one Tulsa station carried by our local cable system, I’ve started to get bummed out – sleepless bummed out – about missing the show this year. This is the first OVGE I’ve missed since it started in 2003, and as with several other retro video game conventions I enjoy, it seems to have fallen into an every-other-year pattern now that the hobby has fallen out of the public eye a bit (the golden years were really from 1999 through whatever year it was that they had those little all-in-one Ms. Pac-Man joysticks you could get at Wal-Mart – 2004/05 I think – once those and others like them reached the saturation point, I think everyone was ready to let the ’80s die again). With icbrkr joining the Gamer Dad Squad soon, I don’t even know where this leaves the usual small-scale get-togethers that we have (not that I’ve had a great attendance record with those either). I’ve been trying to just routinely get out more during the week with Evan, but even then it’s not quite the same as getting out with the grownups – as long as you’re hauling your kid around, your primary function is still obviously dad or mom (or in my case, Mr. Mom, which I’ve noticed with some people automatically places you off to one side in a whole different social bubble from other parents, as if there’s something wrong with a guy who’s staying home with the baby while the kid’s mom is out working). I’m kinda yearning for the time out with the grown-ups, and my dentist’s appointment last week, and hanging out with my in-laws, just doesn’t count. And yet when I am off on my own, what do I talk about? My son. I don’t know how much of this isolation is naturally occurring due to the factors in play, or how much of it I might be unconsciously/subconsciously doing to myself, but…yeah, I’m kinda missing the company of like minds. And there is was for the taking in Tulsa today, and I had to miss it.

It’s charming, and yet on another level very worrying, that I talk about a nearly-11-month-old baby and a couple of cats as being my best friends. But whether it’s cute or creepy…it’s very true.

Anyway, sorry, I probably shouldn’t be up at 2am thinking about this stuff. I’m probably gonna start to look emo soon.
Face it, you're emo
Ah crap, too late.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Music ToyBox

Dancin’ with Delia and other random thoughts

You know, anymore, it seems like 50% of everything I blog about has something to do with Doctor Who. I really don’t try to do that deliberately, but it just kinda happens. I’m on a Who high at the moment – even rewatched Turn Left on Sci-Fi tonight. I’ve been kinda bummed lately, so I guess I’m clinging tenaciously to whatever has most recently brought a smile to my face. *shrug*

That also means clinging tenaciously to a certain baby. He’s now cruising around the house under his own power, delighting in his mobility, practicing standing up at every possible opportunity, and finding new and exciting objects that he really shouldn’t even think about putting in his mouth, and yet manages to at least think about doing it anyway. He loves chasing Oberon. Poor Obi woke up today, having slept most of the day away in Evan’s bouncy chair, to find Evan standing over him. You could see the fear: oh my God, he’s going to be able to chase me around now. 😆 Today I read him “Sammy, The White House Mouse,” a book that was given to me when I was an extremely young’un – it still has my nameplate sticker in the front of the book. I hadn’t read it in…well…let’s say 30+ years. I’m glad I still have so many of those old books of mine hanging around. (I’m loathe to do away with a book that isn’t a duplicate.) … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code

Big booma

Friday was a fun day. A really, really fun day. Where to begin?

Just the fact that people have been responding to the blog again is an indicator that the site’s been a bit more cooperative lately, especially on the database end, so I’ve been taking the opportunity to convert more HTML stuff to database entries while I can, as fast as possible, before I migrate the site to a new hosting service. The past two or three days have seen some really good progress on the Phosphor Dot Fossils front – I’m coming down the home stretch on getting all arcade game entries moved over, and I’m making good progress through the dauntingly large number of Atari 2600 reviews.

And then, all of a sudden, that whole portion of the site…just…stopped…working. Period. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

Complete and blatant randomness

In about 8 hours, it’ll be boys’ night here at Casa Green! My wife’s going to a postal workers’ convention, or she’s going postal at a workers’ convention, or she’s working on going conventionally postal or something. At any rate, she won’t be here all weekend, but Evan and I will, and, of course, Obi and Olivia will be hanging out too. As much as I sometimes get frustrated being “stuck” with the baby when there’s someone else inthe house who could be taking him off my hands for a bit, I don’t find myself feeling that way when it’s just the two of us and I know it’ll continue to be just the two of us. There’s a different psychological expectation there, I suppose – you know you’re running a marathon with no chance for relief, so there’s no light mocking you whilst standing perfectly still at the other end of the tunnel.

I just spent the better part of the last two hours listening to this SyFy Radio podcast, which is actually a bit of a hard news piece about the ignominious and not-just-a-little-bit-suspicious collapse of a recent convention in Dallas (the show was cancelled mid-morning on the day that it started!). It’s fascinating listening, though one’s advised to also visit Syfyportal.com and read the accompanying text articles for some additional context. But it’s a lot of drama, and it’s a legitimate news topics because a lot of people lost a lot of money – and may or may not have realized that the wizard behind the curtain of this show was the same fella who solicited donations to save Star Trek: Enterprise back in 2005. Between this and Flack’s podcast (which has just done its fifth installment), I’m reminded – cruelly – of how much I’d like to take on the podcasting beast and try to tame it, and then I hear my son roll over noisily in his crib and remember why I don’t even think about podcasting most days. At this rate I don’t think I could even guest on anyone else’s podcast. I mean, unless you people really want me to start podcasting baby feeding sessions…I mean, what’m I gonna use my old Radio Voice for now? Public service announcements about not misplacing your binky?

Evan’s entering that Extremely Clingy Stage of separation anxiety that little ones go through anywhere from the 8-month mark on; supposedly this passes at around the 1-year mark. Can’t wait for that. It’s not that I mind keeping him company all the time, but there are some times – i.e. showering, cleaning litterboxes, engaging in the taking of a dump, loading the dishwasher – that it’s just impractical, if not impossible, to haul him around and get this other stuff done that needs to happen. (Especially the dumps. Those are way important.) Basically, he’s at the stage where, if you set him down and then step out of sight to do something, he starts shrieking because he’s been left alone. Sometimes you just have to let him cry it out, because this stuff has to get done, but it makes me feel like the Worst Dad Ever. I don’t ever see this happen with Evan’s mom, so I guess it’s official: he looks at me and sees, more or less, his primary support system. The feeder of baby food, changer of diapers, mixer of bottles, and the bringer of darkness (i.e. the guy who keeps putting him down for a nap every 3-4 hours). If someone had told me, this time two years ago, that any child on this planet would ever look at me that way, I would have happily told them that they needed their head examined pronto.

One thing I’m thinking about doing, though, is putting a curtain over the “long” end of his crib – i.e. the side that faces the bed across the room where I sleep. In the mornings, if he wakes up early, he’ll sometimes be content to just sit up and play with the stuffed animals in his crib. But if he sees me move, even if I’m turning over in my sleep, GAME OVER, time to wake up! Get up, dad! I saw you move! I know you’re awake! FEED ME! 😆 He’s suddenly been getting up at about a quarter to five, ready to eat, which isn’t my favorite time of day to wake up. Where he gets this early bird trait genetically, I don’t know – it ain’t on my side of the family. 😛

One last baby note: he held and crank his own cup of water on Friday after lunch. Not a sippy cup with some kinda quasi-nipple thing on top, but a real live kid-sized cup. I’m sticking to my earlier theory: he’s got a big head because he’s scary smart. Case closed.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code Gadgetology

Thanks for the memories

The memory card snafu has been solved! Pantech pointed me in the direction of an incredibly useful piece of software called Easy Photo Recovery which recovered – get this – all but two of the photos that had vanished from the offending memory stick. (The two casualties were from this week’s ToyBox piece, and since that’s already posted the originals aren’t needed anymore.) This program is just amazing, and I had no idea anything like it existed – and I’ll probably be calling on its services in the future, since this isn’t the first oddball disappearance of memory stick photos I’ve ever experienced, and because I take a lot of pictures. (I don’t know anyone with kids who doesn’t, actually.) … Read more