This is going to be a long one, unavoidably but not regretably. If you are a fellow father then hopefully you can appreciate the sentiments expressed herein. If not, then regular programming will return tomorrow.

Just looked through my reading list and decided to link up bloggers that I know are fathers and wish them well today. Those that I miss recognizing, sorry, but you don’t talk about your children enough I guess LOL. Seriously, every once in awhile you might mention kids-oriented stuff so that us readers out here know you are, in fact, a father.

Jeremy Wright is a dad and has talked about his son before. He’s moved around a bit this last year. Hope all is going well on that front and that he has a special day. I met Jeremy briefly at Northern Voice conference in January. We didn’t get a chance to talk much, but I’m sure there will be another opportunity.

Rowdy from DuhDotCom is one of those dads who manages to make every one of his kid’s games. That is so important for kids. I remember my grandfather doing that. He would quit early to be at a game. That means so much. Great guy and I’ve met him a couple times. Both Rowdy’s wife and mine plus the two of us went to this cool Shark Reef in Vegas in January. Good people.

I don’t know Eric Mack personally, have never corresponded with him via IM, email or otherwise, but he has written in more detail about his Tablet PC acquistion than anybody else in my reading list and that got my attention. But what I also noticed is that he is a family man:

Through it all, God has blessed our marriage. I’ve been faithful to her from day one and I will continue to be so. (She only has to share me with a robot, four daughters, and now, a Tablet PC.)

Four daughters, Tablet PC and a robot? Wow! In our family we stopped at three boys. I realize I’m probably a stranger to you, but I hope your Father’s Day is joyful, Eric.

FrancisoIV doesn’t blog about his family very much (at all?) and I run the risk of being wrong by including him here, but we’ve started working together this past year on a project online and we’ve exchanged some teenager stories. Therefore, I am pretty sure that he’s a dad, though I’ve never asked him specifically what his children(s) names were or how old they were, you know, the normal pleasantries. Over the next year I’m going to try and do that. Kids make us all more human. Hope your Father’s Day goes good, mon.

Rob Greenlee has a daughter. I met Rob at a local Seattle Blog Meetup (which I totally spaced out attending the last one, BTW) and he and his friendly wife Dana have invited me to guest co-host their Webtalk Radio Show four times over the past few months. It has been an absolute joy to be a part of their program and be there reporting on the launch days of the Sony PSP, Mac OS X Tiger, Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith and tabbed browsing in MSN Desktop (beta). A lot of fun and though I don’t know much about their family, I do know that they are really great, professional broadcasters and super nice people. I’ve listened to their program since before my radio show went on the air in May of 2000. Long time huge fan of what they do and they are just as nice offline as they are online. Have a happy Father’s Day, Rob.

Scoble is a guy I find myself on the fence with on business stuff quite often; agreeing sometimes and totally disagreeing others but I have absolutely zero doubt that he’s a pretty darned good guy and father. He ate dinner between my son and I at a blogger meetup dinner. I left the following comments on another blog that Robert linked in his linkblog (the search still doesn’t work, BTW, Robert):

Scoble is one of the good guys and we’ve traded back and forth links for some time now. Most people have a defense up when you first meet them and you don’t really know what they think about things, but the more you get to know them, the more they say some things that you disagree with. I’ve seen Scoble on more than one occasion recant and apologize after realizing he was wrong. He can laugh at himself which some people find very hard to be able to do. A lot to be learned from people like that.

I would add that Scoble seems like a great dad too based on some of his past bloggings. He’ll jump in an airplane to fly down and spend time with his son and he makes his blog readers a part of that. I get the feeling that his son reads his dad’s blog. You can just feel the love through Robert’s writing for his son. Forget that China stuff and have a happy Father’s Day, Robert.

I get teary-eyed at the end of the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. There is something about the way Robin Williams explains how families sometimes don’t live together but as long as children have loving parents that is the glue that makes them a family. I come from a family that divorced when I was nine years old. My mother died in October 1996 and nary a day goes by that I don’t think about her. I think about what if she had stayed with my dad and they’d never gotten a divorce. Would it have changed her destiny? I’ll never know on this earth and in this life, but perhaps in the next.

My dad I don’t speak very much. It’s not that we are on bad terms really, he just isn’t the type of dad that is your buddy or friend or very involved with what you or the rest of your family are doing. He’ll send gifts for Christmas and call every once in awhile, but we haven’t seen him in person for several years. We tried to line up a Mariners spring training trip last year but that fell through. It’s tough organizing a family of five for a trip anywhere during school season. I don’t doubt that my father loves me and would do whatever he could to help if he could if someone in our family was in trouble. And at a couple points in my life when times were bad he has been there. That’s the bottom line really for parents, isn’t it? That you know they love you and will try to help you if they can. I will try and give him a call later today and see what he’s up to and wish him well. I sure hope our family gets to see him in the next year. He’s living in Arizona at the moment.

Some bloggers that I’m just not sure (sorry) if they are fathers are not include: Jason Calacanis, who I’ve traded some friendly fire with over the last year, Stuart Henshall who I’ve “known” via Skype since September 2003 and got to meet at a recent Skype meetup in Seattle. Bill Campbell who came with Stuart. Both Bill and Stuart run Skype Journal, and excellent online publication dedicated to Skype. Warner Crocker, a fellow Tableteer is one I suspect might be a father, but am not sure, also gave a Father’s Day wish today. I’m sure many others will do the same.

There are so many, many other men bloggers on my reading list that when it comes their fatherhood status I. Just. Don’t. Know. Maybe this stuff is too personal and most bloggers do not feel comfortable sharing these kinds of personal details. The fact is that along with the internet privacy has become an afterthought, unfortunately. There is no such thing, really, of anonymous blogging unless you can write a really, really good character blog, maybe.

To help combat this, we’ve given our three children minor name variations that we use when talking about them on the web. It’s not quite as personal as using their real names and it’s not really anonymous — and we do slip up sometimes and use their real names — but we figure that if they want their real names on the web then as they get older they can do that.

For those fathers in my reading list that I didn’t mention here this time: sorry again for excluding you (this is the one sucky thing about doing any kind of list, because somebody always gets omitted unintentionally. The fact is that my computer’s brain is vastly better than my own so all omissions and mistakes belong to the author solely).

Hopefully all father’s reading have a very special day today. Please, consider writing about your kids once in awhile over the next year. You can still, in fact, be involved by writing about them today and then trackbacking to this blog entry.

It gives kids a very special feeling to be a part of what you are doing online. My son who we affectionately call Jowl online, has been doing a radio show with me online for the last 43 weeks learning how to publish content and become a skilled webmaster online. Sure there have been some rough times, but the father-son time is something I’d never want to change. This last Friday we were having a crazy moment on the other radio show I host and called him into the room to sing a Midi version duet of James Taylor’s You’ve Got A Friend. Thank you for special moments like that, Jowl, I love you, son.

And then there is Spawn, the other name we use online for our son. Nobody I know, adult or child, loves games as much as Spawn. Any games: online, offline, whatever. He’s super competitive but a lot of fun to have on your team. He’ll stay up until the wee hours of the morning to play games and today he was telling me he’d like to play one online game with me. I’ll be your game compadre any time, Spawn. I love you, son.

Our youngest child Nean will always be our baby. He is well past that baby age, but it’s hard to think of him as anything else. And no, he doesn’t act like a baby (well, sometimes he does LOL), and the one thing Nean has shared online is a love for shaing his drawings. He has used ArtRage to draw some pictures on the Tablet PC and he always asks me: “Dad, are you going to post that up? Are you, are you, are you?” Of course, I’ll post it! Every time. I’m going to ask him to draw a picture today that I can post but he’s sleeping at the moment. I’m proud of you, Nean, and love you very much.

To my wife, Kara, who sometimes contributes to this blog, and without whom I would not be a father today. I love you more than the earth and stars and though I do things sometimes that are stupid, irritating, annoying, etc., I hope you’ll always want to grow old with me. Just do me a favor and don’t die first, please. Same for the kids, I want to be the first to go in our family. I’m not sure how I’d handle anyting happening to our children or you.

Outside the sky is blue and the wind is wafting gently through the trees as I write this on Father’s Day morning 2005. Children, please call or visit your fathers today if you can. Even if it’s to put a flower on their grave or visit a place that they used to love to go. Fathers are listening, somehow, somewhere, some way. One of our proudest moments in life was hearing you cry for the first time, taking that first sample of air from a warm, welcoming world.

Happy Father’s Day!

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