A Few Reasons to Love Having Geeky Parents

So, I got a little constructive criticism for my last entry, since it was about geek mamas, not geek parents. Fair enough, because any of the items in my list could easily be done by a geeky father as well. I'm just tired of people hearing geek and looking no further than the father. It does irk me when I show someone my personal blog and our photo gallery, and their response is how wonderful my husband must be to do that. Although my husband does occasionally upload pictures to the gallery, I'm the one who handles upgrades for the gallery software. He's also never had access to the server my blog resides on.

The great thing about doing geeky things with your kids is that it's not limited to just one gender. Paul will grow up seeing both of us working with computers, cooking, and working on our various side projects. He also sees us enjoying things together, like geocaching, playing console games, and table top games.

I think a lot of geeks are natural problem solvers and don't mind learning something new in the name of solving the current problem. I think that's a really positive thing for kids to see. Learning still isn't considered "fun", but maybe seeing a parent learn something new on their own time will help change that perception.

I think having two geek parents is also good for a child to see how to make a marriage work. I don't have to feign interest when my husband starts talking about something technical. If it's something I'm not familiar with, I can ask questions and my husband will answer without talking down to me. That's part of why he's wonderful. He's also interested in several of the things I am, and often sends me links that might interest me. I think it's bad for a marriage for one or both of the partners to dismiss something because it's "too geeky" or "not interesting", especially when that something is what one partner does for 40-50 hours a week.

I guess from a kid's perspective, the best reason to have geeky parents is that we're much more accurate than Amazon recommendations when it comes to giving presents. We don't buy the wrong type of hardware because it was cheaper. We don't buy a 64mb mp3 player and pat ourselves on the back for saving money. If we're going to buy something like that, we'll most likely buy what was asked for. Occasionally, we might ask if a substitution would be ok. We know if our child is anything at all like us, each component has been exhaustively researched.

[Growing Up Geek] 10 Reasons to Love Having a Geek Mama

So I saw a link to Top 10 Reasons Geeks Make Good Fathers via Blogging Baby. Why should geek daddies get all the love? Here's my 10 reasons to love having a geeky mama.

1. We love playing with Legos too and will even brave taking our munchkin to a place like Tyson's Corner for their visit to the Lego store.
2. A lot of geek mamas love to read. When I come across an interesting kids book review, I pop it in Paul's wishlist, although lately I've been using Amazon's gift lists. It also means Paul currently owns about 150 books of his own, since I buy a few of the $5 fill your own boxes at the library sale with nothing but kids' books.
3. Geeky mamas don't mind sharing things they enjoy with their children, like geocaching. Although I haven't gotten around to logging all of his caches, he's visited one foreign country and 20 states in the name of geocaching - all before he was 1 year old.
4. When you're a geeky mama and you live far away from all your family, you're the one who sits patiently with the less computer adept members of the family while you walk them through using your gallery or blog.
5. Geek mamas understand that importance of being yourself. We know what it's like to not fit in with our assigned gender role. We're proud, not worried because our little girl is not into dolls, but would rather play on the computer or our little boy wants to cook rather than go play football.
6. Geek mamas also know that game rental services exist, so they can preview any video games before they consider buying one for their kid. We also know how to check logs on our home network, so we can check up on our kids if we think they're overstepping the boundaries online.
7. A fair number of the geeky mamas I know are good at math. We don't defer to our husbands to pay the check because we feel we're going to miscalculate the tip. Helping our kids with their math homework doesn't strike fear into our hearts, not even college senior math classes. In fact, we kind of look forward to it.
8. Geek mamas don't feel the need to wait for daddy to come home if one of the grandparents sends a toy that needs assembly and it arrives before 5pm. I think the only things I have not assembled for my son were his bed and dresser... and well, I was 9 months pregnant when they were finally delivered.
9. Geeky mamas make great researchers. Serious illness beware - we have the power of google and we aren't afraid to use it to make sure we're getting the best care for our child. We know not to believe everything on the internet, but generally know when signs point to getting a second, and even third opinion.
10. We understand when one of the computers in the house needs to be replaced for gaming purposes and we enjoy building a new box from scratch. Granted, understanding the need for a new gaming box doesn't mean the person in question will get it, but we will consider it. We are still gamers and we know how easy it can be to lose yourself in a MMORPG. BUT... we're the mom and we're not about to let you do something that will put your goals in real life at risk. We also know what it's like to be involved in a community online, and that it's not always a bad thing. We know how to help our children balance their online lives with their offline lives.

[Growing Up Geek] Gotta love Legos…

As I grew up, my family accumulated quite a bit of legos. My brother and I, as well as my cousins were all into lego. My Grandma Mary even had a lego playroom at her house. We would spend hours building towns, vehicles, and anything else that happened to cross our mind. We probably had enough lego to build something on a larger scale, but it never occured to us that we could. You have to admit, there's something really neat about about a working harpsichord built entirely of legos, even if it took about 100k pieces.

If you only have 10k pieces floating around, you could build a lifesize replica of Hans Solo frozen in carbonite. If that's still too many legos, you could always build working logic gates. Personally, I think that's neater than the Hans Solo and would actually consider doing something like this with Paul when he's older. Years ago, my final for my Digital Design Class was to build an 8bit CPU. We did it in a cad program, but if I had a working 8bit CPU made of Lego, you can bet I would have kept it for my desk.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Paul has discovered something else he enjoys. Awhile ago, Clayton downloaded a new screensaver. He had it awhile before Paul really noticed it. Paul can see well enough to enjoy the colors in it and is entranced by the changing colors and shapes.

It's called Electric Sheep and it displays fractal flames. While the screensaver is going, it computes new "sheep" as part of a parallel network. A new sheep is created about every 15 minutes. It's pretty neat.