Allie's First Computer

Tonight was a special moment in the Heady Home, Allie now has her own computer. Your heard right, her very own computer. Granted it isn't the worlds fastest, and isn't bleeding edge, but pbskids.org runs just fine. From a systems admistrators point of view, i mean a dads point of view, there were a few challenges that needed to be tackled. If you've ever watched a 3 year old use a computer you realized that it doesn't take long for them to hit 5 keys at once that some how magically moves, renames and hides your hard drive. Those crazy little munchkins can screw up your preferences quicker than the Titans can give away a 30 point lead. Having said that i brushed up my skills on the mac on how to "manage" a user. Coming from a windows background this would be some what of a nightmare. But the mac makes it quiet easy to own their little part of the mac world. Allie has her own account on this computer, everything is turned off except music, dvds, and access to 3 websites. Pbs kids, Nick JR, and Sesame Street. Thats a big load off my mind to know that she isn't going to accidentally stumble into a deep dark corner of the net. As you can tell from the picture above she has a microsoft keyboard, a dell mouse, a used LCD monitor and at the heart of the system a mac mini. We are an equal opportunity computer user. If i can find an old gateway mouse pad at the office i think we'll have all our bases covered. I'm pretty proud of how well Allie can use the mouse and navigate. I'm especially glad she doesn't have to use the big iMac or the Macbook. Little greasy nasty fingers and snow white macs together make me want to cry. So now learning occurs in a safe, semi-clean environment. All parties involved are happy. The mac mini (which came from ebay for about $300) was on a different assignment for the first year of its heady life, but got moved to permanent kiddo duty this past week. Based on our conversation during the setup process she was happy about the new career move. Her only fear involves small children and the slot load DVD. I hope we never have to blog about her ingesting oatmill or any other like substance.