ok ... instead of fighting with the steam icon in the tray and right clicking it a bunch of times ... try left clicking the icon once :) it works everytime for me

also, with litestep showing through on top of your games ... I found this. this is how I do it.. left click the icon, click servers. find a server I want to play on, and double click it. As the game starts up, and the splash screen shows, and it flashes a few times, start clicking feverishly on where your desktop usually is while the game is flashing/black changing resolutions... it works for me ... about half way through loading, the litestep stuff will disapear and everything is good hehe

about litestep showing on top of your games... an even easier solution is to put LSAutoHideModules in your step.rc
this should work for every module, although lsxcommand has a bug that causes it not to work if you use it to display the clock or winamp song