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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
Nothing 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. … 
Reports 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.
One last note: I’m apparently never completely out of the gaming scene, because I just discovered that an upcoming repro release of the finished-but-never-released Odyssey2/Videopac game Martian Threat will utilize some artwork I cobbled together just for fun a few years ago. It will debut next month at Eurocon and will get a general (but limited – 100 or so) release afterward, with both PAL and NTSC copies available. The “frame” seen around the artwork here will probably be different, since it will almost certainly be reworked into a more traditional Videopac-style package, but that’s a good thing – there’s a lot of fine detail that would’ve been knocked out by that frame, including the work I did to make the “cockpit” look slimy, organic and alien.
… 
So I happened to spot a Usenet posting from Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski that caught my interest. I’m sure some folks are screaming about this, but in a way, I feel like JMS almost came to the same conclusion I did. Here’s what he had to say. … 
I’d give you my thoughts on the Doctor Who finale, but I decided to just save it for the episode guide this time; you can find it