Sometimes I like to start my car in second gear. I don’t know why, it’s just how I roll.

My YouTube video, Making an LED Throwie just passed the 42,000 viewer mark. That’s over 100 people every day since the video was posted. I’m kinda proud of that, although I really wish I had spent just a bit more time making the video suck less than it does.

The editing is OK, but I didn’t plan out what I was going to say at all, and that shows. It’s all just one-take blabber. The lighting is bad too (especially in the first shot), and the list of negatives goes on. I honestly never thought 42,000 people would see it, so I didn’t care about that stuff when I posted it. But then the eyeballs started rolling in.

So, lesson learned: if you’re putting something up for general consumption, take an extra day or two to put some polish on it and make it really good. Your thousands of unsuspecting viewers won’t notice the delay, but they will notice the higher quality in the video.

Another interesting thing I’ve found is how widely the comments vary. I’ve never been viciously insulted or attacked so much in my life as I have been in the comments of that video. I know the Internet can be a pretty nasty place (I’d contend that I know that better than almost anyone), but I’m still surprised at the vitriol some people will spew at me that has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the video. If you don’t like the video, that’s fine, but please don’t tell me where to shove it. It’s sorta like they had a bad day and just had to yell at someone. I’ve removed most of those comments from the comment log on YouTube’s page, so you won’t find them there anymore. I figure that I don’t want to encourage such talk by letting would-be insulters see how common their impulses really are.

My personal favorite comment? The simple, “I Love You Moby.” Excellent.

I realize that there may be people who really don’t want to know the gender of our child, because they don’t want to spoil the surprise when it’s born in September (or thereabouts). If you are one of those people, you should realize that one day you’ll just stumble across it accidentally in one of my blog posts, or while conversing with me, so you should probably just give up. But if you can’t give up, and you simply must resist knowing beforehand, you should stop reading this entry immediately.

Steph and I went to get an ultrasound a couple weeks ago to get everything checked out. The doctor measured its femur and its cranium and a few other things, just to make sure that everything was going smoothly. The baby’s parts all measured correctly for a baby at 16 weeks and 3 days except for the head, whose size was closer to the average at 17 weeks. So I guess baby’s got a big head. Excellent!

Anyhow, during the examination I asked the doctor if she could discern the gender of the child. She maneuvered around for a couple minutes, and then said, “Ah, look here. I think I’ve got it.” We were greeted with this image on the TV screen while the doctor explained that we were looking at the baby from the bottom. The blur on the right is a leg, and the one on the left is also a leg. That bright spot in the center is a scrotum, and the shadow above it is a penis. I know this woman was a professional, but looking at the foggy graphics on the screen I had to ask, “How sure are you that you’re right?”

“Well, legally speaking we can’t give percentages on this kind of thing,” she explained, “but I’ve never seen a girl with a scrotum and a penis. Granted, I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life, and I don’t get up to The City very often.” Everybody’s gotta get into the act. When she’s not practicing medicine, she’s down at Rooster T. Feathers.

So, there you have it. We’re going to have a son!

Steph is on a baby-related newsletter, and occasionally redirects them to me so I can get the facts. (This week, my baby is about the size of an avocado.) On one of these recent emails, they had a link to an article called Seven fears expectant fathers face. I can definitely feel the “security fears” (e.g. “Will I be able to protect and provide for my family?”).

I don’t mean to mock anyone here, but there’s one that really sticks out to me that I can’t identify with: “paternity fears.” The article says, “About half the new and expectant dads I interviewed eventually came around to admitting they had fleeting thoughts that they weren’t really the baby’s father.” I kept waiting for them to drop the punchline with, “The other half admitted to fathering the first half’s kids.” But no, men really fear this, I guess. It never even occurred to me to fear this.

But since announcing the baby’s existence recently, I’ve had some light shed on this fear. Two different guys I know each asked “Who’s the father?” when they heard the announcement. I know they were just making a joke (in poor taste, I might add, so don’t say this to your friends when you find out they’re expecting a baby). No women said it, just two guys. It struck me that they’re probably some of the ones who would actually posses this fear in the first place. When they asked this question, they were probably just voicing their own internal fears without knowing it.

I never realized how psychological having a baby would be. And it probably just gets deeper and stranger from here. Interesting stuff!

I’ve got some very, very exciting news. Stephanie and I are going to have a little Baby Lewis, and it’s due on September 17th.

Exciting, I know! Honestly, I’m very excited in spite of the fact that I’m pretty scared too. I can’t tell you how amazing it has been to see the ultrasounds live and in-person, see my tiny child in there, sucking its thumb, moving its arms and legs, or just sleeping. To see that tiny heartbeat. To see that gigantic cranium. That’s amazing. I got tears in my eyes the first time I put my hand on Steph’s belly and felt it move. That was just a week or two ago. It’s like a little alien in there.

We’re 15+ weeks in right now, so we’re well in to 2nd trimester. That’s good news because miscarriages are much more rare (although not impossible) at this stage of gestation. We feel pretty confident that this one’s a keeper!

We don’t know the gender yet, but I’ll probably keep you all up-to-date on the latest news of the baby as it progresses right here on this blog. I think I’ll have a hard time shutting up about it, honestly.

Yes, we have names picked out. No, we’re not telling you what they are. They’re set in stone, and we’d rather reveal them at launch than pre-announce anything. What kind of Apple employee would I be if I didn’t do it that way? I mean, we’ve gotta build buzz here!

Generally, Steph and I are very negative and snobbish about kitch. It’s not that we hate the people who buy it. We just don’t get into it. We’re not excited about garden gnomes or dogs playing poker.

But there’s one notable exception to this rule, and that’s the Dachshund Collection at the Danbury Mint. Somehow, at some point, we were added to their mailing list for Dachshund memorabilia, and they send us an ad with a large glossy photo of their latest craptacular masterpiece every single month. We would never actually buy any of this. I’m hoping no one misunderstands this entry as an invitation to send us small pieces of dachshund-shaped porcelain that we need to regularly dust. That’s not where I’m going here.

Having said that, whenever I see that envelope with the Danbury Mint return address, I get a little excited. Today I clapped my hands. I really wanted to see what they’d come up with next, and I wasn’t disappointed when my eyes gazed upon The Dachshund Calendar. Peep that sucker. Pardon the crudity of the stitched-together scan, but the biggest one on the web was only 400 pixels tall, and that just won’t do when you’ve got an 11″ x 13″ glossy in front of you and you know the splendor people are missing.

Steph’s favorite is September, whereas I’m a sucker for February. I think it’s the wings.

Why do I get the feeling that this experience could teach me something about being a parent?

In my promise to post all wrong-number voicemails to my blog, I give you “The mistaken Josh Lewis board member offering”:

I’m currently considering if I should accept on behalf of whoever they’re actually trying to find. Would that be a nice surprise when I showed up to the first board meeting in jeans and a t-shirt?