I have shared that frustration, trying to find that balance.

I try to get some basic wisdom through to them to help prevent something horrible happening later, but I don’t want to cause them pain now, either.

I have taken to asking them to take my hand in theirs, when I think they aren’t listening.

The younger kid appreciates the connection. The older kid practices their active listening skills to make me leave them alone sooner.

“We can’t all be robots, Truman. Because if we were all lying to you, I would be. I’m not a Robot, Truman.”

Paraphrased from Noah Emmerich’s fantastic delivery in “The Truman Show”.

Damn. I love this community. Lemmy goes hard.

“My kid can read now.”

“It’s never too early to teach them regular expressions.”

Edit: To be clear, I agree. It’s just great to be among like minded folks, here.

I intend to leave a complex and detailed inheritance plan for my Hot wheels.

You can make an image of the / drive so it’s easier to restore if they break the system.

That’s good advice. I always meant to do that with computers my kids access.

Although I haven’t ever had my kids break a Linux Mint install. I set them up as non-sudo users and that was enough.

Of course, they grew older and have sudo now, so I should actually think about taking a drive image, now.

Teach them to launch Vim, and they can spend their remaining computer use time using Vim.

Unless they figure out how to exit vim, then please have them come teach me how.

Sorry. I will see myself out.

If they are ready to move beyond block code, Pyxel looks like a fun way to learn some Python.

You could do what my dad did and accidently delete some of the system files, leaving it for your kid to fix.

Now I assume this thread is full of folks trying to figure out if we found our siblings Lemmy account…

My kid was all in on Tux Paint for a good while.

He eventually settled in to make cars and cats, but at first he just enjoyed making abstract art with all the colors and paintbrushes.

This is for me.

I love open hardware and the modern 8-bit game scene.

Good point. With the specs fully open, hopefully we get a portable of this, at some point.

I want to spend Christmas at Lance’s house.

Very nice. What frameworks are you considering binding your game in?

If one person has never used Twitter, I think they get all three antidote doses.

We are actually watching Brooklyn 99 right now!

I hope you’re having fun. Because I specifically requested it.

(and Blackboard Monitor)

Still gets me every time. The best Dwarfs call each-other as each introduces themselves. And that Vimes introduced himself this way in an un-filtered moment implies it matters to him, deep inside.

One could argue Tetris could carry the whole competition alone, but it is joined by Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, Spy Hunter, and Gauntlet in 1985

I would leave it at that, except Pac-Man, Frogger, Galaga, Defender, and Donkey Kong make 1981 a contender

That’s a fair point. I enjoyed the game later out of curiosity - but it wasn’t a “this is your only Christmas gift” kick in the gut, for me.

they’re all some random platformer which sometimes alluded to they had a movie name.

That’s a good point. E.T. was not alone in this, and had more to do with it’s movie that many games that followed.

I played E.T. relatively recently to remind myself what the fuss was about.

The game plays fine (with average Atari bugginess).

It just stands out as an early huge miss for a movie tie in. Almost nothing about the game feels like the movie, or is particularly anything a fan of the movie would seem likely to enjoy.

I say “almost” because the exploring kind of fits. The same exploring that is constantly frustratingly interrupted by pit falls.

It’s really not that bad of a game, though.