Hannah update: 9 months

By popular demand, Hannah updates are back. In short, she's doing great. She's running small on most measurements, particularly weight, but developmentally she's exactly where she should be, if not ahead. For the record, the measurements were 27.75" long and weighs 15 lbs. 2 oz.

She's dangerously close to walking. She can walk as long as bigger person holds her up or she can cruise holding on to furniture. In fact, she seems to prefer cruising to crawling. I fully expect her to be walking before 12 months.


She also has gotten her first two teeth. They're the two bottom ones. Hopefully you can make them out in the adjacent picture. She was starting to eat solid food even before the first tooth came in, but still gets plenty of mom's milk, too.

We had a scare over the weekend. Hannah spilled a container full of paper clips. Dorothy thought she had picked them all up, but then Hannah found another one, which Dorothy got away from her. Then, just a bit later, Dorothy thought she saw Hannah put something in her mouth. She checked and couldn't find anything, so she thought maybe she'd imagined it. Just a few minutes later, though, Hannah started choking. She spit up a bit of food and seemed to be fine, but that was scary enough that we took her to the pediatric ER.


It turns out they make teeny little hospital gowns for babies, as seen here. There was a bit of a wait, but it wasn't too bad, and much more pleasurable than going to the regular ER. Finally, we got an x-ray technician who loaded Dorothy and me up with lead smocks, as it was our job to hold her still during the procedure. We had to remove Hannah's cloth diaper, because of the snaps on it. The technician then seemed way too concerned about exposing her privates during the procedure. I mean, give me a break, she's just nine months old and the only people there were him and the three of us!

After another wait, we got the good news that nothing was found in the x-ray. So one $175(!) co-pay later, we were free to go. The cost made us feel a bit silly about the whole thing, but really, the peace of mind is priceless.

In other family news, our church had its music camp a few weeks ago. It was the story of the apostle Paul. Walter played the part of Peter. His main job was to do roll call for the rest of the apostles, which he did well. Andrew—seen here with his friend, Andrew—was in the sailor chorus, but also got to "stone" Stephen, which is what the costume he's wearing in the photo was for.

Found needed 2600 cart for -$1

It hasn't happened in a long time, but today I got a 2600 cartridge I didn't have before: Pete Rose Baseball. Unfortunately, this wasn't a quarter find at a garage sale or flea market, but when you've got as many 2600 games as I do (about 300), you'll take about anything new. And in reality, I actually made money on the deal. Well, sort of.

You see, a few weeks ago I found out via Craigslist that there was a new used game shop in town. It deals exclusively in consoles older than current. That is, everything that's not Wii, PS3, or Xbox 360. They've got PONG consoles on their shelves, for Winslow's sake! While I never completely lost interest, collecting video games has been on the back burner with me for a long time. Finding this store, however, has got me interested again.

My interest was mildly renewed upon finding another used game store a few months ago. But this newest store is an improvement over that one in two ways. First, while the other does have some 2600- and NES-era games, the selection is very limited. Second, it's closer. :-) And in general, it's just nice to have a couple non-GameStop video game stores in town.

So, getting back to the point. My trade bait is an absolute mess. I came to realize I've go to pare things down a bit a while back, but haven't done much towards that yet. One of the things I acquired that's got to go are some used Genesis games I'm not really interested in from the local Freecycle group. Those were handy, so today I took them down. There was a couple versions of Street Fighter II, Primal Rage, and some sports games. Unsuprisingly, they only offer $0.50 for sports games, so I wound up with a grand total of $5 for them.

Checking the 2600 games, however, I discovered the Pete Rose Baseball. A game I actually needed! Although worth more, it was $3.99, so she gave me the game and $1. All for a bunch of carts I got for free. So I guess that's:

1) Troll for games on Freecycle.
2) Trade them in.
3) Profit!

Old photo of Douglas Adams, insane resolution

If you hadn't heard, Jason Scott of textfiles.com is working on a text
adventure documentary called "Get Lamp." His latest update mentions
the PR photo of Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky that made the rounds
back when the Infocom Hitchhiker's game was released. Scott got to
scan an original slide of the photo and has now made it available at
8760 x 6010! Go to the previous link for the blog entry, which gives a bit of
context, then click on the photo there for the Flickr link.

Hasbro's Rom trademarks refused, but it's not over

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer! So take anything I say about trademarks with the grain of salt.

In checking on the status of Hasbro's trademark applications for "Rom" and "Rom the Spaceknight," I learned a little bit more about just what information the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has available throughout the registration process. It turns out that the USPTO had issues with every single one of Hasbro's applications. Letters were sent in January and Hasbro was given six months to respond. So we might know something by July 21!

While we're waiting, I thought I'd explain briefly the problems with the filings. First, in every single case Hasbro was told the classification they requested was too broad. Hasbro's lawyer(s) simply copied the description of the entire classes of goods they were applying for. The USPTO wants something more specific in each case. For example, rather than "games," they want something like "computer game consoles for use with an external display screen or monitor."

Second, all the trademarks for "Rom" were initially refused for being "merely descriptive." In other words, Hasbro can't trademark "Rom" for something involving "Read Only Memory" because it's a common descriptive term. Similarly, in all the "Rom the Spaceknight" applications, Hasbro was told they must disclaim the word "Rom" as part of the trademark. In other words, they can claim a specific, stylized logo including the word "Rom," but they can make no claim to the word itself. (I should point out that Hasbro did not submit any specific logos with their applications.) It turns out Casio already has a trademark on a "ROM" logo they use on memory cards for some electronic musical instruments, as seen below.

But the best refusal I've saved for last. Three of the four applications for "Rom the Spaceknight" were refused because of the registered trademark Marvel got for "Spaceknights" back in 2001! Yes, you read that right; Hasbro was refused because of Marvel's limited series featuring Rom's children. Oh, the irony! And unlike Parker Brothers/Hasbro, who let the original Rom trademark expire, Marvel applied for an extension in 2007, meaning Spaceknights should remain a registered trademark of Marvel until 2017, at which time they can apply for another ten-year extension.

Now as I said, Hasbro can refute the USPTO's refusals and answer their calls for clarification, but they're quickly running out of time. I don't know how much lag there is between the USPTO receiving materials and updating their database, but hopefully we'll see something by the end of next month. I promise you that once I know something, I'll share it.

Purpose of the blog revisited

You might have noticed a dearth of family related stories lately. That's because, as mentioned earlier, I'm on Facebook now. I was iffy about publicly posting so much information about my family in the first place. Now Facebook has become the default place to post photos and keep people updated. This is because 1) I (theoretically) control who sees the information and 2) it's been much easier to get people to look at things there than to coax them to my blog. I'm still considering whether I should cross-post the blog to Facebook.

So, what will you find here? Well, it's still the home of the Rom blog. I'll also use it to rant on those rare occasions I feel something must be ranted about. And, as I said originally, I'll be going back and posting pre-blog items here.

And that's what I've spent this evening doing. First, there was the "thoughts and tips" section of my home page. That's now done, although I had to guess at some of the dates. Then there was a couple Usenet posts about collecting video games and a Weird Al concert I wanted to preserve. That's now done, too. The links to them can be found below. I've turned commenting off for these back-dated posts, so if you want to comment on them, do it here.

• 28 Nov 1994: Finally found my gold mine!
  
• 1 Jun 1995: Tip of the Moment (cat in bushes)
  
• 10 Jan 1996: Tip of the Moment (company in the red)
  
• 30 Jan 1996: Thought (blank disk)
  
• 10 Feb 1996: Thought (babies don't take holidays)
  
• 26 Feb 1996: Thought (fortune cookie)
  
• 13 Mar 1996: Thought (Bad Hair Day)
  
• 12 Apr 1996: Tip of the Moment (laser surgery)
  
• 20 Jun 1996: Tip of the Moment (washing machine hoses)
  
• 01 Aug 1996: Tip of the Moment (second opinion for cars)
  
• 2 Dec 1996: Thanksgiving finds (Goldmine lost)
  
• 15 Apr 1997: Tip of the Moment (tax withholding)
  
• 1 Sep 1997: Thought (leather leisure suit)
  
• 16 Mar 1998: Tip of the Moment (holes in walls)
  
• 25 Aug 2000: Weird Al concert report: Birmingham and Bermuda (LONG)
  
• 21 Feb 2001: Tip of the Moment (battery springs)