My kid really likes me

Noah, my generally snarky 16-year old, just got himself an account on ZDNet and gave me a thumbs up on a blog post. ZDNet has this weird system by which registered users can rate a post worthwhile (thumbs up) or not (thumbs down). Usually unless I write some sort of Mac Users are big Girly Men post, I'm pretty even on my thumbs up and thumbs down.

H0wever, my post today on a day in the life of my Classmate got some extra thumbs-downs. I can't imagine why as it was pretty benign, but to give my numbers a boost, he climbed the ZDNet comment wall and gave me a thumbs up. I'm now at -4, thanks to him.

How nice is that? It was quite the father-son bonding moment. Maybe tomorrow I'll teach him to drive a stick shift.

What is a Luddite?

My mom sent me an email yesterday asking me what a Luddite was, since she'd recently discovered this blog via my Twitter feed. To my wife's horror, my mom definitely keeps tabs on my life more via Twitter and by reading my ZDNet blog than by me actually corresponding with her. Of course, that's why she's a Luddite.

To answer my m0m's question, I gave her the current meaning of the word (someone who eschews the use of technology, sometimes because they believe it is damaging to our lives, but often because it's easier to reject something they don't understand) and then turned to Wikipedia for the historical meaning.

I had first heard of Luddites reading The Difference Engine (still reading it, by the way - it's among the several books that was set aside briefly so I could just blast through Slash), but I could hardly tell my mom to go check out this great piece of historical fiction about the Industrial Revolution in 19th century Britain. She looks at my Twitter feed because I don't call her enough and she lives in Seattle, not because she's anywhere near as geeky as I am.

Fortunately, Wikipedia had a picture of a Luddite worth sharing:
Nice looking guy, huh? Quite the fashion plate. It figures that they were largely textile manufacturers. Here's the important chunks of the Wikipedia definition:

The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work.

The Luddite movement, which began in 1811, took its name from the fictive Ned Ludd [that's Ned in the picture]. For a short time the movement was so strong that it clashed in battles with the British Army. Measures taken by the government included a mass trial at York in 1812 that resulted in many executions and penal transportation.

Isn't Wikipedia great? I'm just glad my wife doesn't look like old Ned there.

Coraline

Gabriel loves to read, but sometimes I have to remind myself that he's only 6. We had been reading Coraline together (a brilliant book, directed at children, but worth a read at any age), but it got pretty scary, so we took a break.

He's taken up reading it again himself, so last night when I asked him what was happening in the chapter, he said, "She's in a closet."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Did her other mother put her there?"

"I think so..."

We went back and forth for a bit and, while he has no trouble telling me about what is happening in the Junie B. Jones books he reads, I think Neil Gaiman might be a little above his comprehension level. I guess we'll need to see the movie after we finish reading that one together.

On another Gaiman note, though, he just won the Newbery Medal for the Graveyard Book. Another kids' book on my list of must reads. He's on Twitter, by the way, but doesn't update nearly often enough.

Two words: Hand Sanitizer

I spent the day at one of our elementary schools rolling out a few pieces of software and really getting their mobile labs fully utilized. Of course, this meant spending the entire day in an elementary school. Elementary school is Old English for petri dish. Not only were there miniature people surrounding me today, but they were all coughing, sneezing, and picking their noses on the computers with which I was helping them.

The teachers had asked me before about the best way to clean the laptops before. Suddenly I understood why.

Then, after school, I talked with the teachers about the best headphones to get for the kids. Thinking of size and economy, I asked if the younger kids were all capable of wearing earbuds. One of the Kindergarten teachers looked at me and asked, "Have you seen the insides of their ears?"

We won't be ordering them earbuds. I was so happy to watch my wife clean Gabriel's ears in her normally thorough and efficient manner after his bath tonight. I will also be taking extra hand sanitizer with me tomorrow when I go back for day two of the innoculation...I mean, the rollout.

I have to get Classmates into our schools

I'll be writing a series of reviews on the convertible Intel Classmate this week. For right now, though, I'm sitting with Gabriel as he goes to sleep after reading a chapter of Coraline (he saw a preview today at Inkheart that said to read it before he saw it, so he decided to get back to it after taking a week's break). I'm actually typing this post on the mini-tablet and am really impressed.

I just did the handwriting recognition training and the little machine can even read my atrocious chicken scratch. So far, all I've really played with is ArtRage 2 - it's so cool that I can't wait to show our elementary art teacher.

This thing seriously kicks ass. Be blogging more tonight on ZDNet about it!

Don't you mean S-E-X?

Colby, ever tactful, mentioned sex in front of our youngest today. He was thoughtful enough to spell it, forgetting that Gabriel has become a remarkably good reader and speller for a first-grader. To mix things up a bit, my lovely Luddite made a vain attempt at spelling in Pig Latin to further the discussion. The next time she referred to E-X-S, Gabriel said, "Don't you mean S-E-X?"

Out of the mouths of babes, right?

An easy Sunday afternoon at home

If I can just get my family out the freakin' door. We just went shopping, did the church thing, and now they're getting ready to go to a movie (Slum Dog Millionaire and/or Inkheart). However, until they're gone, I can't get a damn thing done. If my darling Luddite could figure out the new vacuum (not even a Dyson...It's just a cheap-assed Target special), I could have at least finished this sentence uninterrupted. Of course, at the moment she seems to be in nesting mode, so everything needs to be cleaner and more orderly than usual. I'm hoping that she's just ovulating. Otherwise, I'll have bigger issues getting things done.

Here's my to do list:

• Figure out why the new tablet Classmate PC that Intel sent me to review seems to have a non-functional keyboard
• Replace our main family desktop with a mini-desktop that Acer sent me to review
• Apply for graduation (I still need to finish my Master's thesis, but I really have to get all the bureaucracy taken care of to make sure that I'm done in May).
• Organize my whole bloody office to make room for a giant family photography project and easier study space for the kids
• Write two blogs for tomorrow
• Finish a cell phone policy for the school district.

On the bright side, I just bought a Paula Dean percolator yesterday. There's nothing like percolated coffee to infuse you with caffeine.

Welcome!

Hi all...Welcome to my new blog, 5 Geeks and a Luddite. For regular readers of my ZDNet Education blog, it shouldn't be surprising that my wife is the Luddite and my four boys and I are, to varying degrees, the geeks. Bear in mind that I use the term geek in only the most positive sense. And we still love our little Luddite.

As I was relating a story the other day about one of my kids, though, I realized that it was pretty funny. In fact, it was blog-worthy. I write a couple posts a day for ZDNet, but only tend to peripherally talk about my family. My family, however, is pretty wacky.

So here goes: a personal blog centered around my family and my crazy life, as well as a grand experiment to see if I can actually generate some page views writing what amounts to a column.

By way of introduction, I'm Chris Dawson. My mom and wife will tell you that it's Christopher, but they're the only ones who call me that, along with a few close friends who picked up the bad habit from my wife. I'm the Director of Technology for a small school district in rural northern Massachusetts.

My wife, the lovely Luddite, is a stay-at-home mom when she isn't working at our local post office (it's right next door since we live in a tiny little town). Her name is Dawn.

Then there's the four other geeks: Gabriel is 6 and was tearful last night because Dawn wouldn't let him make a Twitter account. Stormy is 13, listens to terrible music, and lives by his new iPod Touch. The Touch actually brought him over to the dark side of geekdom; welcome, Stormy. Colby is 15 and a master of all things console. Noah is 16 and a big drama geek.

So that's us. Check back for stories, thoughts, irritations, and everything that goes into raising a family of six in the digital age.