Month: February 2004

ABCs for your lil’ gamer

When my daughter was born, I started to research books and other educational materials. To my dismay, I found very few basic books appropriate for little gamers in training. Most of the materials were all about sharing, harmony, and caring. Where were the books about fragging, point whoring, and team killing?

Nowhere, that’s where. So I decided to take things into my own hands and create my own First Person Shooter ABCs for your lil’ gamer. Below is a taste that you can click on to read the whole alphabet.

Click to read the whole feature



Read the whole thing.

Also, while we’re at it, I made a few tweaks to the Grand Theft Auto Kids Games that you can check out to supliment the quality time you’re spending with your little clan mate.

Click to read the whole feature



Enjoy.

Jamie2 Comments

How big a geek are you?

Maybe it’s just that I’ve long since passed through the social mine fields of adolescence and high school, but it seems to me that the terms “nerd” or “geek” aren’t quite as derogatory as they used to be. To be sure, they’re still not up there with endorsements like “jock” or “nice guy” or “the guy who takes your money at the parking garage”, but being a nerd isn’t as bad as it used to be. Not that I’m going to go prance around in a Green Lantern shirt and composing Star Trek fan fiction, but still…

One of the reasons is probably that the same people who have made beautiful, athletic, and alcoholic people so popular have realized that nerds have money, too –sometimes a LOT of money. So now traditionally nerdy products and media like video games, science fiction, high fantasy, super heroes (if not comics), computers, vampires, and anime have become mainstream. These things are far from taboo according to the smiling heads of marketing; they’re pitched as exciting, trendy, and chic. Heck, MTV’s Spike TV even has a video game award show like a little beeping Oscars. And speaking of the Academy Awards, how much more mainstream can high fantasy get when a film based on Tolkein is nominated for Best Picture?

Since it’s just the two of us here, let’s be honest. I’m a bit on the geeky side myself. I’ve read my fair share of scifi and fantasy. I worked in the video game industry for three years. I’ve assembled my own computer from parts I ordered on the ‘net. My TiVo keeps recording anime for me because it thinks I’m a nerd, and who’s to argue with TiVo? And to make sure things keep running in the family, I just bought the creeper tee-shirt below for my daughter Samantha.

Click for more geeky baby tees



The caption reads “I TCP/IP, but mostly IP”. Don’t worry too much if you don’t get it.

Geeky, right? Imagine my surprise, however, when I found out that I only rank around the 33rd percentile of geekiness. Well, surprise and a little relief. How do I know? I took these two tests:

The Extreme Nerd Challenge
The Geek Test

Take them to see how you rank, adding 2% to your scores if you laughed at the tee-shirt above. Go on, I’ll wait here until you’re done.

Back? Good. How did you do? Post your scores in the “Comments” page for this entry.

You may have noticed that some people out there are hard core nerds. These new aristocrats of Geektown are over two standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution of nerdiness, and they’re apparently proud of it. Extreme nerds are the new nerds. Thank goodness.

Jamie3 Comments

Sam’s Story: Week 1

I thought that for the time being I’d post weekly updates about Samantha the same way I had been posting pregnancy updates. This will keep the week’s news all in one place, posted here every Sunday. I’ll also throw in new pictures if I have them.

The first week of Sam’s life went well. After she was born on Sunday, we stayed at the hospital for two days, mainly because she had a moderate case of jaundice and we wanted to take advantage of the nurses and on-site lactation specialist. You can see the yellowing of the skin from the jaundice in this picture:

We came home Tuesday and fully assumed our lives as parents, but Sam went back for two more lab tests and pediatrician visits to monitor the jaundice. After a couple of days it started to decline, thanks to regular feeding and sun baths like this one she took with daddy:



Otherwise, Sam is doing great! So is Geralyn. She has really impressed me with how well she’s taken to this childcare thing, and I had high expectations to begin with. Sam is still having a bit of trouble learning to breast feed, but Geralyn is patient and calm and making progress. Apparently it’s not something that always comes easily. To make sure she’s getting enough milk, Ger is expressing using a pump and we’re feeding it to her (when she doesn’t get enough at the breast) through a syringe like shown in this picture:



The syringe is hooked up to a plastic tube that we tape to Ger’s pinkie finger. She then inserts the finger into Sam’s mouth and feeds it to her this way. Why not just give her a bottle full of breast milk? Because finger feeding causes less nipple confusion (I highlight that term because it makes me chuckle to do so) and will make moving her to 100% breast feeding easier.

So everything is good and we’re enjoying the new baby even if it means getting up for an hour every two hours at night. I’m going back to work next week, so I’m anxious to see how that works out. I’ll leave you this week with a few pictures of Sam sleeping, sucking her hand, and getting her first sponge bath.

Jamie5 Comments