Comments on: Contest: Would your Dad like some 3D printed metal cufflinks?

By: Denis

Denis — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:56:38 +0000

When I was 12 years old my Dad bought me a kit from Radio Shack to build my first computer. It was a simple little thing with 3 large paper dials that was nothing more than a giant electronic slide rule. I was facinated by it. By high school I had graduated to a TI99/4A. The rest is geek history!

Thanks, Dad!

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:28:41 +0000

My Dad forced me to drink a magic potion which turned me into one.

By: Jeremy Hatfield

Jeremy Hatfield — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:20:37 +0000

Growing up my ‘old man’ would get into conversation with me about his work. Being an engineer who builds nuclear powerplants (including three mile island) it was hard to understand. Telling my old man that I didnt understand would only provoke him to go into more granular details trying to help me understand. These conversations could go on for hours and were not limited to the dinner table. Oh no, these technical engineer conversation (teachings( would go on at family picnics, weddings, church. I was not the only on who didnt understand him at first, for years people would try everything possible to excuse themselves from the uncomfortable conversations he would engage people in. All in all Im glad I was exposed to this very technical and confusing information cause I have since followed in his footsteps (to some degree) and am now an information architect that loves technology. I cant get enough of it and the best part about it is, all this new age technology confuses him. Having conversations with him about web services and technology goes over his head and I make a point to talked about it till I’m blue in the face. A little sweet payback have you. Good intentions, I hope I have a son so I can keep this going on gen. to gen.

Thanks, Love you DAD!

By: Andreas Jaritz

Andreas Jaritz — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:26:33 +0000

My dad turned me into geek cause he was one of the first in town (a small town in Austria) to have a Commodore 64 with Needle Printer and some kind of office software. At that time I thought Basic is some kind of metaphysical spell…

C64 was the best gadget for me as a young kid to play around. Remember good ol´ Wanderboy, Space Invaders or Frogger!

Greez from Fluid Forms’ Andy!

By: tdburn

tdburn — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:49:33 +0000

Dad bought me a commodore instead of a nintendo which got me interested in computers. Then we had the first networked computers on the street! So awesome.

By: A. Bosch

A. Bosch — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:26:29 +0000

My dad made me into a geek by being a cop. Seriously. He was a New York City cop, and I was a contrarian by nature. He was always bugging me to take the civil service test to become a cop. “Do you know what you could be making in 5 years as a cop?”, he’d ask. “About what I’m making now, and no one is shooting at me”, I’d usually reply.
Thanks dad!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:08:55 +0000

We watched Star Trek together.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:22:01 +0000

Simple,

I got my dad to buy an iPhone.

Instant geek!

By: Glenn

Glenn — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:02:26 +0000

My dad worked as an electrical engineer on the giant excavators and trucks/haulpaks in the mines.

Seeign those work and watchign the guys use RF detonators for the explosives for blowing up hillsides might have had something to do with it.

By: Les

Les — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:25:48 +0000

My dad got a MS in mathematics, did a bunch of work with super computers at TI in the 90’s and did some early work on SETI@Home like distributed computing at Los Alamos. I can remember talking computers and math with as some of my earliest memories. Apparently, I even came into my parents’ bed room late one night when I was just yea-high and woke them up to ask if I did some multiplication correct, so it happened early. I practically followed in his footsteps, getting a BS in CS and Math and then a MS in Computational Math. I still call him most days and we talk new tech, especially mobile.

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:14:20 +0000

He never did, but two of his four sons (my brother and I) became tech entrepreneurs without a second thought and I think our current successes gives him as much joy as his own would have.

We’ve told him many times how much those meetings meant to us.

By: Jake Bouma

Jake Bouma — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:03:34 +0000

My dad turned me into a geek by being the exact opposite of a geek.

By: Oriana Warnock

Oriana Warnock — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:19:01 +0000

I love my Dad, he is brainy, funny and cool all at the same time :)

My Dad is also the biggest geek i know, he makes websites and stuff for phones (although he won’t get me a iphone grrr). He helps me push myself with my homework. My science Fair project is awesome (testing how good different materials are at stopping a sneeze lol). And he has inspired me to start my own email service that i sell to friends, they sign up and i send them craft ideas each month…..and i am only 12

To make this easy, my Dad taught me about Netvibes, RSS, Blogs……so much stuff i felt like spongebob soaking it all in.

Please let my Dad win

Oriana

By: Conrad

Conrad — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:15:10 +0000

My dad said I needed to learn electronics to teach him.

By: Uri

Uri — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:14:15 +0000

he gave me his looks and sex appeal

By: Zachari

Zachari — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:45:29 +0000

He bought me a laptop, a used black and white IBM that took a looooong time to boot. The best gift ever.

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:01:23 +0000

My dad was a geek before I even knew what that was!! He got me my first computer, a Texas Instruments one to be exact, when I was like 6…I’m 33 now. He got me this game for it that taught me how to type by pushing the right key before a dragon lit it on fire. It was really cool at the time and it totally stuck as I have been on computers ever since. The tables have now turned, I teach him things all the time, but back then, my dad was the in-house computer wiz!!!

By: Bob Hiler

Bob Hiler — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:49:12 +0000

Justin, did your dad ever figure out a genius idea that would let him quit his job?

By: Bob Hiler

Bob Hiler — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:42:48 +0000

Growing up, I wanted to be just like my Dad, so I became a geek by watching my Dad be a geek. In 1982, this mostly involved watching him tinker with his PC when I was 8 years old.

My Dad actually wanted to buy an IBM PC as soon as it came out in 1981, but I guess we couldn’t afford one. However, he was a structural engineer and saw that computers would replace draftsmen who created blueprints by hand and that not mastering PCs would mean he’d eventually lose his job.

So when the clones came out in 1982, he bought a IBM-compatible Sanyo PC. My brother and I wanted to play games, but since we couldn’t afford them, he bought us The Big Book of BASIC Games. We typed in the programs without understanding what we were typing, and when they didn’t run, we learned to debug.

I wasn’t the kind of prodigy that learned how to program by retyping a book of program listings, but I learned not to be afraid of computers and that computers were interesting. And that’s why I’m a geek now. :-)

By: geek4life

geek4life — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:29:17 +0000

dad bought me books…lots of books! my favorite – ‘let’s play geometry’.