As I’d mentioned previously, and did a bit of twittering about in theater, the family spent the weekend at ravencon, which politely decided to set itself up about 20 minutes from my front door this year. This was the first year doing the whole weekend (last year, we did a spur-of-the-moment Friday night drop-in), so we were hoping to get in full weekend slate of geek friendly entertainment.

Truth be told, it’s almost too much entertainment (and this is a reasonably small convention), but once you convince yourself that it’s perfectly acceptable and expected to only catch up with a small portion of the programming, things become a little more bearable.

Overall, we had a good time, playing some games, taking in some panels, engaging in some geek-friendly banter, people watching, and picking up some interesting goodies that’ll keep us busy for a while.

Might as well get the goodies out of the way first, here’s a portion of the stuff we came back with:

Lots of books, mostly, a couple of t-shirts, a few games, and a copy of Cthulhu Sex magazine (that came into my posession completely by accident); this picture might have half the total haul in it.

Also in that pic you’ll see a copy of my convention badge (your pass to all the weekend’s entertainment) – I was delighted to find that I had been issued badge number forty-two, which is significant if you know your humorous British science fiction, and of course, you do, don’t you?

Rather than a chronological account, I’ll just hit some of the highlights of the weekend:

Virginia Creepers, a documentary about horror movie television hosts in the Commonwealth, which was very well done, even if it wouldn’t have suffered if it were about twenty minutes shorter. I vaguely remember the existence of these sorts of shows, though mostly, my practical experience consists of Elvira and MST3k, and I’m sorry I missed most of it with the advent of cable TV and home video.

I also attended the controversial “I hate Heinlein” panel, a debate of sorts about the merits of the influential author, including comments and memories from Yoji Kondo, a scientist and author who knew and worked with Robert Heinlein, and edited an anthology of his work after his death. The general consensus was that while some of his work feels quite dated and disturbingly sexist, people are still talking about his works decades after he wrote them, and underscores his significance regardless of how someone feels about them.

Also of note, I suppose, was the “Knitting and Science Fiction” panel, where Colleen made a few new friends (and, I suspect, a shot at landing on the actual program next year, thanks to the goodies she showed off), and a discussion of “game supplements every gamer should own” with Steve Long from HERO games.

Games…we played some games too. Friday night we had a fun session of D&D 3.5; it was nice to play with out being the dungeon master for once, and the kids got to play at the con, which was one of their goals. Our party of four ran through an adventure designed for six, and we totally failed to rescue the kidnapped noble’s daughter. My ranger got whacked by a sewer-dwelling gator, and my body was later tossed to a school of ravenous piranah as a distraction. It’s good I became fish food, because I was able to distract Catherine when she got fussy.

I also played a rousing and VERY LOUD session of Toon, the cartoon RPG (think Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, etc), with one of the MIBs from Steve Jackson Games. I hadn’t played this in more than fifteen years (this is what we did nights at scout camp of all things); I had fun, and everybody watching had fun, enough that Colleen sat down and downloaded the rules (it’s only available as a PDF now, it’s been out of print since the mid-90s) so we can add it to our game cabinet at home.

Beyond the panels and games, though, the real fun is hanging out, watching people, checking out the costumes, and having conversations with fellow fans and people who are doing and making interesting things; whether it’s talking about the new Doctor Who season with webcomic editors, listening to authors talk excitedly about how the writing process took them in directions they didn’t expect (and then buying a bunch of their books!), talking guitars, kids and last-call convention pick-up lines with a Wizard Rock band, discovering a neat new (to me) webcomic after the creator asked me where I got my t-shirt, or tripping over the Guest of Honor in the hallway as she rushed to a panel.

Suffice to say, we had a lot of fun. Can’t wait to do it all next year. Of course, before then, we have MarsCon in Williamsburg in January, where maybe I can trip over Jim Butcher!

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

Here’s the latest neat little bit of Colleen’s crafting; a crochet Cthulhu! Who’d have thought the Great Old Ones were so cuddly?

The whole household is terribly excited about this weekend’s RavenCon coming to town; three days of hanging out with like-minded science fiction and fantasy fans, playing games, meeting authors and creators, and generally discovering new things to get excited about.

This morning I got the email confirming our registration, and late last week the schedule of programming was posted, with a bunch of neat panels, workshops, and gaming sessions lined up.

Just a few more days…

Having been a parent for more than a decade now, I feel that I’m at least a little bit qualified to talk about trends in parenting; I can’t say that as parents, my spouse and I have gotten everything right (far from it), but we’ve had enough practice over the course of three kids to develop a style that works for our family. That style shouldn’t be considered that controversial, really; we’re merely raising our kids to be responsible, independent, and inquisitive citizens of the world.

It’s a shame that our style diverges so much from that of our peers and immediate generational predecessors.

The style du jour is, of course, helicopter parenting, where parents, like helicopters, constantly hover nearby, always ready to swoop in and intercede whenever there’s a perceived threat. The wikipedia link above also references other terms I like, such as “Curling parents” (who attempt to sweep things out of their kid’s path) and “lawnmower parents” (who try to “mow down” obstacles in front of their children).

My favorite description, however (mentioned here in the comment section) is “smothers”, which covers the whole phenomenon succinctly (you really ought to read that whole post I linked to; it’s quite good).

-Apologies for the linguistic digression; these things, however, interest me-

Anyway, helicopter parenting; over-protective parenting. it’s here, and it’s the order of the day among most people. A quick example: My oldest enjoys riding her bike to the store a couple of blocks away now and then; no biggie, she’s mature enough to handle it, and she is issued the extra cell phone in case she runs into trouble. Invariably, she returns safely without incident, aglow with pre-teen independence with a cold soda pop in her backpack.

Then we hear about it from other parents we know who saw her out on her own, and they’re scandalized(!!!111one!eleventy!) that we let her out by herself in the big bad world like that.

I’m not sure when things changed, really, though I do know the line doesn’t fall too far past my birth; there are clear differences in how parenting was handled for someone born the year I was and someone born even two years later, by the same parent in some cases; and many of these children (now adults in their late 20s and early 30s) aren’t as capable of independent living – they’ve never had the chance, given that mom and dad are always swooping in to intercede on their behalf in college admissions, job interviews, and salary negotiations!

Clearly, I’m not a huge fan of this trend: kids who never have the chance to fail are never going to have the chance to try again and learn they can succeed on their own with effort (even if it’s hard for a parent to sit back and watch he kid fall short in the first place). Every parent wants to be “needed”, certainly, but I’d much rather have my kids take the initiative to (in age- and maturity-appropriate circumstances) work out their challenges on their own first.

I think as a parent, seeing the kid succeed on their own merits has a better reward anyway; pride in both the kid’s accomplishments, and in the fact that I, the parent, successfully raised smart, independently functional offspring, is far better than the feeling I’d get by swooping in and playing the hero the moment the kid hits a roadblock. After a certain point, in a lot of areas, being “needed” means I didn’t do my job as a dad.

I wish more parents could learn that lesson.

My wife and I are big fans of the whole Free-Range kids concept, which, as I said, isn’t particularly controversial; set limits, but within those limits, let the kids have a certain degree of autonomy and freedom to learn to deal with failure, and how it’s merely one of the steps along the road to success in life.

It’s what generally worked for me when I was young, and it’s what’s working for my kids; and that’s all that really matters.

Like I said, I’m not sure where this trend came from, but I have some theories, which I think I shall investigate in a future post.

TheRAM arrived today; just swapped it out with the old chips. Twice as much, and a much faster transfer rate. I think my login time (password to desktop) is down under 10 seconds now; boot-up is under half-a-minute.

I just opened up an 800 line openoffice spreadsheet in like four seconds…seriously, this thing is flying right now.

The laptop feels brand new (well, except for the scuffs on the case), and it better, because with this memory upgrade, I’ve maxed out the board…I really don’t want to give up this case for a newer model; I love the form factor. It’s a little ugly, but terribly comfortable and convenient.

Hopefully now, with all this extra speed and storage, I can put off buying another machine for another year or two…wish me luck!

I spent the evening on phase one of my campaign to make a few cheap tweaks to the laptop so I can keep it going another couple of years, dropping in a new, huge hard drive, installing Ubuntu 10.4 beta 1, and re-loading all my important old data (cheap usb hard drive enclosures are a great invention).

All is pretty much well, except in my haste, lost a couple of weeks’ worth of old email, which, in the scheme of things isn’t really much of a crisis; most of what I get isn’t particularly critical. However, I get a lot of it, and may have missed something important that, thanks to my ineptitude or whatever, I’m not going to be able to dig out again, as it’s gone, vaporized in a cloud of fsck.

So, I put this out here – if anyone’s sent me anything in the last six weeks or so that they think is important that hasn’t been satisfactory resolved, go ahead and send it again, ‘kay?

As for my impressions of “Lucid Lynx”, even in not-quite-ready-for-release beta, it’s fast, seriously, boot-up and connected to wifi in less than 30 seconds. That’s impressive. It’s also really, really pretty. the only problem is the min/max/close buttons being on the left side, which is going to take some getting used to. But, if that’s the only problem, I’ll deal (or, if it gets too annoying, I’ll tweak some code in the UI and move them).

Now, to wait for the RAM to arrive…

The DC area was filled with families of tourists and kids on spring break, all marvelling at dogwoods in Old Town and thinking they’re cherry blossoms. The metro was way too darned crowded. But, that’s spring in Our Nation’s Capital and the surrounding environs.

Here’s a little bit of the soundtrack of my week:

1. “Little Shadow” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. “Jesus Etc” – Wilco
3. “Nullabor Song” – Kasey Chambers
4. “Don’t Stop Believin'” – Journey
5. “In The Nightgown of the Sullen Moon” – TMBG
6. “Mercenary” – Go-Gos
7. “Mr Brownstone” – Guns n’ Roses
8. “So Happy I Could Die” – Lady GaGa
9. “Dancin’ Shoes” – Arctic Monkeys
10. “Being With You” – that dog

I love living in the future.

Seriously, lag-free video conferencing with my wife and kids who are sitting over 100 miles away is a very, very cool thing.

…now, to get working on those warrior robots.

…stop intruding on my breakfast!:

“Hop, step, jump-jump, poo! Let us cooperate yeah-yeah-woo!
Magical spell is Ei-Ei-Poo!”

…and give me back my caps!

/totally jerkin!