Slashdot Mirror
Children's Books for Geek Parents?
Lithium_Golem asks: "My wonderful daughter will be nine months old next month and I figure that it's time to buy her some new bedtime story material. My problem is that I can't find any children's books that describe fathers as white collar workers, let alone computer geeks. For example, many of the stories I find portray the ideal father as a fireman, carpenter or truck driver. I'm not looking for anything specific like 'I love my dad because he's a programmer,' I'm just looking for a story that will help her understand what I do for a living when she's older. So, readers of Slashdot, does anyone know of a children's book written by or for geeks, or should I write my own?"
Right now why don't you work on stimulating her imagination, rather than trying to help her understand what you do? There'll be plenty of time to talk about your boring job (no offense) to her later in life.
...and that's all there is to it.
Just try any old technical manual off your shelf. They'll know just what you go through every day, and it'll put 'em right to sleep, too.
Next?
Childrens' books won't be her only source of understanding. You want her to know what you do? spend time with her. Tell her yourself. Explain it to her as best you can for whatever age she's at when she wants to know.
;)
My dad's a physicist. I don't remember any kids' books (when I was nine months, nine years, or now) that really "feature" physicists on the same level as truck drivers and cops. I learned what he did because he told me. And I cared 'cause he was there to tell me
To paraphrase something rather different, "you may be the only book about programmers your daughter ever reads".
I read books about kings, and firemen, and soldiers, and... my father was none of those, and it didn't matter. My father taught me about what he did by teaching me himself about what he did. You don't need a book for that.
Just rent Office Space.
I *must* recommend Everybody Poops or any of it's companion books such as The Gas We Pass.
...although his father is a caterer. Accountants are knowledge workers, right? Closest that comes to mind, but Arthur's mom's work isn't really explained in any of the series that I read, come to think of it. Computer programming is a harder concept for a very young child to grasp than fighting fires, I think. If you're perceptive, you'll be able to tell when the child is ready to get something out of an explanation, but you are unlikely to find the best such explanation in a book, IMO. I think DIY is called for.
The song in "The Roads Must Roll" is all reet.
Just spend lots of time with her at that age. They are really neat when they are so small.
Change her diapers, feed her, burp her, carry her around, etc. She may never remember you doing these things for her, but you will.
It also helps later on when your inevitable foot comes down. It's much easier to do so when you can cite "all the things I did for you, and here's the video evidence".
I'm assuming you have a video camera.
Snowcrash :-) I wish my Dad was a pizza deliverator hacker who also just happens to be the worlds greatest sword fighter.
www.linux-skunkworks.com
I'd recommend printing off Microsoft product descriptions from their website. They have a huge collection of fairy tales.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
You might be pressed for finding a good book for yourself, but here's an idea:
Build something that none of the other fathers can make. Find a cool little project that your kid will love that only an IT guy could make.
For example, a home entertainment box, custom LCD panel fake windows (thanks slashdot;)) etc. I can't really imagine a fireman being able to make them, and they'll illustrate what you do a hell of a lot better than a kid's bedtime story. Plus your kid will be able to talk about the thing that that their dad made that the other kid's couldnt.
Why do you think your daughter needs to understand what you do? By "understand", based on your message, I'm assuming that you mean "programmer vs. farmer" type of understanding, and not just an understanding that people need to work for a living.
I am a computer geek trying to start my own business. I stay home and program all day, for the most part. My intelligent, college-degreed wife, has no clue what I do, which sometimes causes friction. How do you expect to explain anything meaningful to your daughter?
For that matter, I don't recall understanding what my father did until I was well into high school. Why would that matter?
I'd also like to echo a couple of comments to the effect of "you are the book". What can a book, a child's book of perhaps 500 child-level words no less, hope to explain?
Why not just show her, and answer damn near every question with "You might understand when you're older"? Most kids I know will accept that, and at this point, it is the literal truth. There are oh-so-many ways that a child at that age can't understand programming; learn about child developmental psychology. Children are not little adults. She's several cognitive frameworks short of understanding your job, and pushing the issue can only hurt your relationship and her interest.
Your daughter is very young. She doesn't care what you do for crust. She doesn't care what firemen and policemen do for crust either.
Your daughter cares about you and her immediate family. They are her entire world right now. Just spend time reading big colourful books with her. Cuddle her, change her, feed her, do all the things parents are supposed to do.
There's not point trying to teach her what you do. In the grand scheme of things it's not really important as long as you can support her and love her.
There is inherrent value in teaching her what people like police and firemen do though, she may need to call upon them early in her life.
Let her learn and understand you as she grows and develops. Kids aren't stupid. They're surprisingly smart, and they absorb so much more than anybody gives them credit for. She will figure it out in her own time, provided you are willing to share with her at her pace.
I drink to make other people interesting!
That's what I'm doing. Not books about programing per-se, but stuff to get him (my son) thinking about things the way geeks think (my wife is an engineer, so he's got it from both sides). It isn't all that hard, and it is interesting to sit down and try to think about the core concepts.
Two routes: 1) buy sketch pad and go for it, tearing out the pages that don't work, or 2) do it on a computer and print the product. I found drawing with a mouse to be a pain in the diaper, so I just got a Wacom tablet thing (but have yet to try it).
It's also fun to work with him on it, showing him pages and talking about them.
Also, stories about magic (e.g. the sorcerers aprentice) often have a lot of core-concept overlap with science and engineering. In fact, you could quite honestly tell her that you are a magician--and your guild's powers are so great that, by working together, you can make bits of melted sand obey you.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. "When I want a good book to read, I write one" -- Benjamin Disraeli
It also teaches her a solid mistrust of all things Fox, which should always be encouraged.
For example, many of the stories I find portray the ideal father as a fireman, carpenter or truck driver
Those jobs can't (yet) be outsourced. Your fluffy computer job can. A healthy respect for those lowly blue/grey collar jobs is a good thing. With any luck, my son will be a plumber when he grows up. Lord knows one thing we'll never have down pat is how to pump shit out of our houses.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
My dad was an engineer and my mom read the bearenstien bears. While papa bear was a furnature builder and my dad's favorite hobby was woodworking this worked very well. So unless you find the dad is a programmer book try to find something that you do besides work to read about.
That said, try to remember what you thought of your dad as a small child (ie he was indestructable and omniscient and such) and realize that even if you are not exactly like a storybook hero your kids will still be amazed by you. Try to find a good book for your kids to expand their minds and don't worry about what characters do.
If you insist Calvin's dad is a patent attorney which is a pretty intellectual white collor job.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
... that Daddy tells computers what to do.
Come on man, sometimes it's hard to explain this stuff to grownups, let alone children.
I read him the the question, and here is what my son said:
I want you to write a book. Not about you, but about a story. "How about dinousars, please?"
q:Do you want to learn about my work?
a: sure
q:Do you want to learn it from a book?
a: yes
q:Would you rather I wrote a book about work, or about a story?
a: a story about dinosaurs
q:so, how would you like to learn about my work?
a: going to work! (excited about this).
from my son: I hope you get my dad to teach me about it, and to try do do the same things at work, and I hope you have a great day, end it with a smile. If I ever come over to work, please have a great smile ready for me. I hope you have a fun day at work.
In short, being a dad is more important than being a geek, They'll learn about your work in time.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
You need good stories first, characters just like dad are a much lower priority. Some mathematically oriented books, like the Number Devil, or A Wrinkle in Time, or Flatland will be interesting enough and give some ideas for what working with programmer-style mental modelling is about. Since you'll hopefully be around, though, programming is just about the last thing your kid will need outside references to hear about. She'll actually need the books about firemen and truckdrivers, because I bet the odds are pretty good she won't talk to them everyday.
....or Sandra Boyton (sp?) books or anything like that. Read her those fun stories about Thing 1 and Thing 2 or dog parties or singing pigs. Don't worry about how your daughter will learn about what you do (assuming you're still doing that when she's old enough to really understand). My older son is 4 and a half, and he's never really asked or wondered what I do.
You'll have an opportunity to explain it to her hands-on when she's older. When she's playing on the computer and something goes wrong, you can "fix" it and say that you make computers work....or write a simple game or whatever it is you do. When my son eventually asks me, I'll show him some simple chemistry experiments (ie, baking soda and vinegar to make a rocket) to explain what I do.
To this day, I still remember my dad using forks and spoons to teach me how PNP and NPN transistors work (he specialized in electronics in the Navy). That, more than any book, gave me an idea into what he did for a living.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Wow. I can't believe I just wrote that
The possible titles amuse me
Junie B. Jones Determines that Cleaning Her Room is NP-Complete
The Little Finite State Automaton That Could
Goldilocks and the Three SysAdmins
The Monsters in My Code
OK, it's late. My apologies for subjecting you all to my incoherent rambling
BTW, I tell my daughter that I write video games (I am a developer, but not a game developer) because, at 8, that is the only software that she can relate to.
Well, not so much about Geek parents, but there's always this classic childrens book.
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Many Waters
If I recall correctly, the children's father was a bit of an intellect. The boy hero certainly was. This probably isn't suitable just yet since it has no pictures but I thought you needed to keep this in mind. Amazing stories requiring a great deal of imagination and a respect for intelligence. They're probably what have kept my feet so firmly planted in the air all these years.
Also, to put her to bed I suggect the ISO/IEC C standard. The 1999 committee draft is a doozie.
Direct away from face when opening.
I'd adhere to the advice and just ignore the job part.
However, if you want to teach the child about computers and programming, try a stealthier approach: Winnie the Pooh, Little Prince by Saint Exupery.. the more abstract stuff to get her thinking right (or left really, I suppose).
If you decide to write one, don't write about a programmer, write of a generic scientist/intellectual. Oh, and you must read Stephenson's "Diamond Age".
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
What better children's book to help explain your geekiness than The Story of Ping
On the other hand showing her the work of a sysadmin is easy. Just change her diaper. That is your work. Cleaning up other peoples shit.
Me bitter? Nah.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Should be fun to read together for you two.
...has a nice collection of reading material. Look under BOFH...
I Don't Work Here
Gave it to my little sister fixed her up for about 2 months then some neglect relegated her back to skateboarder status, it's not completely for kids but if she get's magic maybe she'll understand nano tech?
just the childrens books classics (the stuff thats bought by other parents - ask your bookseller or other parents). not necessarily geeky stuff.
if you want to help your kids education encourage them to read.
I remember having lots of science oriented books for kids during my childhood and my mom read to me several children books classics.
if they become geeks one day they will show the typical interest in geeky stuff sooner or later. don't force that.
Works for ethernet, too...
I wasn't sure if I would be able to find the info, because I had read about this in the Sydney Morning Herald quite a while ago. Never the less...
p
The Museum of Victoria has released a book with the title "The First Computer Mouse". The title speak for itself. The reviews I read at that time were sparkling. Maybe this is what you were looking for. Here's a review (6'th review from the top): http://home.vicnet.net.au/~hornet/reviews.htm
This is a link to the publications of the Museum: http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/about/forsale_des.as
Hope this might inspiere...
He was actually one of the earlier people to get 'puter time in Sweden. He finished his PhD in astronomy around 1967 IIRC. By the time I was born, he was a "gymnasium" (ages 16-19) teacher of computer science, maths and physics - but still very much a geek. I learned about geekiness in two ways:
1) When he was sitting at the dinner table in the evening, going through students' tests and lab reports - I used to slip up in his knee, and he'd show me neat geek stuff. Geometry, the four colour problem, and riddle type of stuff from New Scientist and other papers like that.
2) When he had to work evenings at school, he used to bring me and my younger brother. He'd leave us in the 'puter labs (playing worm and hack, among other textbased games) - and go away and do stuff. Sometimes he took us to physics lab, and showed us some neat experiments (static electricity was great fun).
This was when I was in ages 6 - 10. Before that, it was all cops and firemen for me.
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
In the meantime, don't bother trying to be the protagonist of a story in a book somewhere. From her point of view, you're Daddy. Do the daddy things well, and love her well, because what you do for a living is incredibly peripheral to her life---it's just something that you go to in the morning and come home from ("Yaaay! Daddy's home!") at night.
Read her stuff you enjoy reading and that she enjoys having you read to her. Read her Where the Wild Things Are and James and the Giant Peach. Read her lots and lots of Seuss. Read her stuff you enjoyed as a kid. Read her Pooh. Read her The Monster at the End of This Book, starring Grover. Do the voices when you read---she'll be giggling at your Grover impersonation even when she's in college.
When she asks her what you do for a living, don't point to some character in a book: Tell her. Show her. Invite her to the office along for an hour or two and show her off to everybody you work with.
I swear to you it doesn't matter what you read to her, as long as it amuses and stimulates her, and as long as you do it out of love.
This is not my sandwich.
My mother used to read me the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a bedtime story. Not sure it's what you want, but it certainly didn't do me any harm :)
By the time she can read all the IT jobs will have been outsourced
... of my oldest was always A Fish Out of Water. She didn't know it, but it was her first science fiction story, right down to the "Black Box".
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
your /father's/ occupation? It's not like you had any hand in it.
Here are some books I enjoyed, where the father figure is white-collar:
* Ordinary Jack. Not only is this one of the best books ever written, but
the father is a writer, who works at home in his study. Also, Uncle
Parker's job is something to do with the stock market, so I'd call that
white collar too. This one is my number-one top recommendation.
* I think the father in A Wrinkle in Time is a scientist.
* I don't know if Calvin & Hobbes is the sort of literature you had in mind,
but Calvin's dad is a patent attourney.
* The adult male in The Chronicles of Narnia is a professor. He's an uncle or
something rather than the father, but the children are living in his house.
* In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo's father-figure Bilbo (though not technically
his father) doesn't have a very well-defined occupation, but whatever it is
it's definitely white-collar. He teaches Frodo to read and write Elvish.
Also, nine years old isn't too young to start reading biographies and
nonfiction.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Yea - creating a hero from a software or hardware guy is as easy as unplugging the router before you leave the house to go to work. By 9am you are getting calls from home because the kids can't surf the net and wife can't 'do email'. By the time you get home the natives are restless, or perhaps on the verge of panic.
You get home, put a bath towel on your back like a cape and ~fly~ around the house from computer to computer using your ~x-ray~ vision to ~diagnose the problem~. Then you plug in the router, fix the Internet, and you are a hero.
Works for me about once a month.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I am not a father - but what you say is true and wise, I wish I had mod points!!!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I'd recommend what many others already have: read her books that'd stimulate her imagination. You'll find that many of these books are rather geeky in themselves. Don't let the System get her too early (Disney'll take care of that for you).
Rolling up your own stories is always a good idea. And i guess making up stories of heroic programmers shouldn't be that hard, either -- there's tons of IT lore out there; some of it must be suitable for a children's story. Use some fairytale as a model. Add some magic (shouldn't be hard -- computers are rather magical in themselves) and mystery (people typing magic words, etc), and you're ready to go.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Little Kernel's First Upgrade.
Like everybody else seems to be saying, just be with her, read to her. At nine months old, she's still learning to assemble basic causality, so I don't think it really matters who does what (a fireman saves lives, a dog buries bones, etc.). It just fascinates her to learn what is out there. You should pick up a basic developmental psychology book if you're really interested in figuring out what she would enjoy, and benefit from, being exposed to.
Personally, I feel that my technology bent makes me possibly more prone to being upbeat about wading through the piles of information available for us. If there is something about which I or my daughters (now 4 and almost 1.5) have questions, I'll take the time to find what I feel are the right books or websites (or disc-based encyclopedia) to learn the answers. In a way, I think that this teaches them as much about what I do as if I were to take the time to describe my day. These kinds of problem-solving approaches and attitudes towards information, as well as what you select as the best examples, are what will rub off just by spending time with your daughter.
Otherwise, if you're really interested in having her see a geek as a role model, one piece of advice -- why not at least wait until you can get her to successfully add 1 + 1?
Quite simple. Write a story that puts a computer programmer in the context of a hero, fixing evil buffer overflow errors, patching the gaping security hole that lead to the hacker's domain, saving millions of packets by setting up a more efficient routing solution, etc.
Perhaps when she gets of age, get her a computer and c++ compiler, so she can do what you do!
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
My parents read to me everynight, since i was born, dosen't matter that i don't rember it, but at this point, I actualy read still UNLIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON I KNOW MY AGE (im 17).
If i ever become a parent, thouse years are going to be the most stressfull part of my life, period. People spend so much of there damned time making sure that they get the best for there kids, while in the first 5 years of there life, they just threw them infront of a televison.
read to her, all the time, make sure she loves what ever you read to her, sooner than later, have her sitting in your lap, to read the book along with you. You'll be proud too when shes the only two year old who can read basic sentances.
Don't be afraid to throw tons of postive influences at her, (i know, clieche'), i wish my parents HAD sent me to lern piano, when i was 4. i wish my parents HAD just left me at book stores for hours on end INSTEAD of babbysitters.
oh, probebly biggest thing, if you want to make sure shes not going to grow up mentally handycapped : cancel your cable bill. maybe by her a snes or somthing. movies are great, go by her the kubric collection or somthign :D.
888 d8 d8 888 ,"Y88b d88 d88 888eee ,eee, .Y8b Y8b Y8P 888 88b "8" 888 d88888 d88888 888 88b d88 88b ..Y8b Y8b " 888 888 ,eea888 888 888 888 888 888 , ...YP Y8P 888 888 "88 888 888 888 888 888 "YeeP" .dP,e, 888 ,8,'88b .8b " 8888 8888 e88'888 888 ee " 888D .888 Y888 888P Y888 , 888 b ,"' .888 "88e88" "88,e8' 888 8b "8"
Y8b Y8b Y888P 888eee
888888 8888 8888 d888 '8 888eP 88P
... was what my father read to me in the 1950s. A true classic. I still have it, including my scribbles from when I was 3 years old.
0 900074/qid=1095627727/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/002-6629950-4455238?v=glance&s=books&n=507846#p roduct-details
It is available on Amazon, still in print for $19.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/193
The original book is a collectors item that goes for about $100.00
It is good to start our little ones on the path by turning them into code monkeys for us, and what better way can they learn if not for those epic tales of mighty hackers slaying the evil dragons/putrid filth that is M$?
But also important, we should be instilling in them holier skills: the art of coffee making, fear and reverence of thy mighty power button, and the gateway to the sacred realms of deep hack mode.
They are never too young to learn...
The book I learned to read with, and many people I know, was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree. Its a really great book about the thrills of exploration, and it's really REALLY fun to read to the lillins (i worked with kids for a few years).
:-)
Also kids love the whole Ender's Game series, but you might want to wait until she has a better grasp of english (wait a year or two) before you start into those ones
you might want to try WIzard's Bane. It's a fantasy story about a programmer who is transported into a fantasy world and learns how to program magic. If you're a geek you'll enjoy many of the small puns the author works in, and it's a fun read and kids would enjoy it. Best of all you can get access to it (and the sequel) for free at www.baen.com.
Another excellent book is Summerland by Michael Chabon. The novel is concerned mostly with baseball, but the father in the story is an inventor of derigibles and is a pretty geeky guy. It has some pretty powerful imagery on when science can go wrong, too.
All you have to do is pick any fariy tale and change the names to fit. For instance the part or the evil villan can be named Bill Gates and the fairy god mother named OpenSource. :-)
And they will be interested.
My son wants to program when he gets old enough to work. I'm not certain that it's a real desire for the field, or just 'I wanna be like Dad' thing. My daughter wants to be a scientist or doctor. Neither was read stories that had father characters that were office workers.
Alvin's Secret Code is part of a larger series of books about a child inventor that also introduces kids to some interesting scientific concepts.
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet is also part of a small series of books about a scientist.
A Wrinkle in Time is also a classic.
What I like about all of those books is that they are geared towards encouraging kids to explore the world around them and use their imaginations.
I'm guessing that your daughter won't really care what you do for many years to come. Keeping the curiosity flame lit seems far more important than filling her head with facts. If she grows up curious about the world around her and wanting to explore it, she may gravitate towards scientific fields all by herself.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
write a book. write a story. it's fun and not that hard. but either way kudos to you for thinking of reading to your baby. it promotes literacy later in life when we do that to our kids. well done man!
How many of us actually aspired to be what we read about? While certainly some of the concepts of chivalry and conduct in novels I used to read may have rubbed off on me, I never wanted to become a jumpship operator, transdimensional starship captain, or anything of the like.
Becoming the geek I am today had a lot more to do with what I interacted with (Lego, mechano, and other things that stimulated an interest in putting things together or taking them apart, electronics, etc), my first PC, etc
Of course, I do suppose that the old QBasic book I got into way back when started me along the coders' path, but my interest in the book was probably stemmed from games that provoked an interest in coding (and making games)
This story may be too late to get any notice in this thread, but I'll tell it anyway, just in case!
When I was a young boy during the late 70's, my dad worked for CSC as a software engineer. Every so often, he would bring home a portable computer terminal so that he could check on his jobs from home. The thing connected to the mainframe over the phone lines using an acoustic coupler modem. It had a full size keyboard for input and a thermal printer for output. As a seven year old, I had seen typewriters so I was familiar with them, but this device was completely and totally different and amazing! A mean, here was something that typed back to you automatically!
I spent hours in the evenings watching my dad and marvelling over this neat invention. I asked my dad over and over again how the thing worked. He tried to explain to me about how his machine was talking to a big machine across the country somewhere, and about how there were these programs on a big record player somewhere that were "running", but it was hard for me to wrap my head around the concepts that he was throwing out.
Ocassionaly, after much bugging, he would let me "help" by typing in commands. I was enthralled with how the thermal printer came to life after I hit the Return key. After awhile, I become bored with just typing in what my dad told me. I wanted to learn how the thing worked. Why did it respond to the commands that I typed in the way that it did?
I guess my dad got the message because one day he came home with a book entitled _Game Playing With BASIC_. He told me that this book would teach me how to "program" the computer and tell it what to do. The book taught the BASIC programming language using simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe, Blackjack, and the like as examples. It took me a little while to get through the book, but by the end, I was able to understand BASIC and even write some simple programs of my own! The biggest thrill came when my dad let me type in and run some of my little programs on his mainframe terminal. I was hooked!
Fast forward 25 years: today I have a BS in EE and an MS in CS and I am still working with computers.
Post Script: While it is natural to try and steer your child towards your own interests, I think it healthier to expose them to a little bit of everything and see what they gravitate towards. If they show an interest and ability in a certain area, that's great. If they don't, then don't force the issue. I hate seeing kids who are pushed into doing things by their parents when they obviously have no desire. It seems to especially happen in the realm of sports, but I can see it happening in other areas as well. If your son or daughter would rather pick up a bat and ball than a computer manual, there's nothing wrong with that. Forcing the issue too much will only cause resentment down the road.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
Teach her to enjoy language first. Try "Charlie Parker Played BeBop" and "Hip Cat" - books that you can "scat" to her, are easily memorized for singing on road trips or at the dinner table, and show her how fun language can be. She'll get the rest when she's enjoying reading on her own and making her own choices.
Get her Peter Pan.
Some of the suggestions posted here brings back a bunch of very fond memories for me. But that is actually off-topic because I only started reading in English as a 7-8 year old. The questioner is a relatively new dad. Is his daughter ready for the likes of Danny Dunn and Madeleine L'Engle? I agree with many posters who say simply just be a good dad and don't worry about how your child views your profession. But I also think in order to have your child appreciate you on a personal level, it is important to instill in him/her an appreciation for the qualities which reflects your chosen vocation in life. Perhaps she won't comprehend the ins and outs of programming, but the idea of building or realizing something by being creative is a simple notion any child can relate to. In many ways, it is the very spirit of "playing". To that end, I recommend "Harold and the Purple Crayon" . It is just a simple picture book. But all things considering, our hero Harold is as much a geek/hacker as any of us.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Make up a story for her, tell it over the nights, write it down and illustrate it (if you can). She'll love it!
Join the fire department, and be a real hero. I recently joined the local department, and it works just fine with work and everything else in my life, and it makes me feel good about myself. Be a real hero, and don't pretend to be one. Once you join, you will be addicated, and never want to leave your department. It's the best thing I ever did. When you ride the fire truck down the road, little kids are waving at your, girls taking their shirts off in excitement. I'm a geek, but being a firefighter really helps your social life, and makes you feel good about yourself. P.S. I'm only 17, so since I can't fight fires yet, I'm considered a "Junior Firefighter", and I'm not a dad. So it may be a little different for you, but should still be kickass.
Sig: I stole this sig.