In which my father knows who's who in the hacker community

[maradydd]

Got a call from my dad just now: "Hey, do you know a guy named Dan Kaminsky?" Turns out he'd read an article in eWeek (which I don't see yet on their site, but whatever) which mentioned Dan, and sort of remembered his name from me rabbiting on about CodeCon.

You know your acquaintances are making it big when your parents ask you about them, but you know you're really a household name when my mom remembers who you are.

Comments

[ivy]

[laughs] I had the flip side of this recently -- just ran into Dan in the hallway, and introduced him to Cull. His eyes got all big, and he said, "Oh, *you're* Cull" with significant emphasis. Hahaha.

[stevenagy.livejournal.com]

My parents still tell me about other people. It's only in the past year or so that they've begun to acknowledge my own accomplishments.

Which stems from the whole blue-collar attitude under which they were raised.

Can't tell you the number of times they told me, "What are you doing with all that writing? You better buckle down and work hard at a real job." Definitely not an environment to boost confidence about someone's passion. Of course, this was in the days before computers. (Yes, that's a clue to my age, though 42 doesn't feel old at all.) Their concern stemmed from the fact that I was horrible at leaving anything down on paper that wasn't perfect. Took me years to get used to the idea of rewriting "after the fact" and whatever spot I picked for a writing session (usually the floor with a disassembled TV tray for a hard, flat surface) would end up resembling a mine field of crumpled paper balls.

It sounds like your dad is at least cognizant of your coding proclivity and somewhat accepting. Which is good.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Dad's always been supportive of pretty much anything science-related -- the only concerns I ever really get out of him are whether I'm setting myself up for a career that will have upward mobility. They've been awfully excited about things like conference presentations and Summer of Code.

That said, it was hard to get them to look at writing as a "real" thing until I started getting paid for it, but once I started selling things, they started asking me how other projects were going. All told, they've been really quite supportive of both my academic interests and my hobbies, but like any parents, I think they want to be sure I'm not going to move home at a moment's notice. :)