[RyanZAG]

Personally, I'd say just take them at their word: this is how they actually feel. Not everyone is trying to win some kind of popularity contents with every sentence they write. While he may have been trying to temper his 1st sentence, as you say, I'm going to just believe he is being genuine here and means exactly what he says. I don't think he is really going out of his way here.

[donmelton]

Yeah, there was nothing devious there. I hope.

The line about my son was partly to annoy him since he, unlike my wife, reads my blog. And we punk each other like that all the time.

[kami8845]

It might be a learned skill.

Be humble -> People react positively -> Act more humble as a consequence.

In the end you get frequent "humbleness" injections like in his writing. Nothing wrong with that, just interesting to see.