Techies Unite!: Featuring Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet

by Peter E. Zale

Book Overview

A highly acclaimed Web cartoonist presents his collection of over 200 popular comics strips from the award-winning "Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, " including new material. With its blend of geek... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071360735
• ISBN13: 9780071360739
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Hilarious!

"Techies Unite" is the only book of its kind. Having been in the tech world for some time I have often felt and sensed the things that this book treats on. I'm amazed actually that someone out there actually wrote all this stuff down and used it so well. This guy knows this business. At least he seems to know me.I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who knows anything about the tech world. It's hilarious and true. And Helen is a totally cool and unorthodox character. Nothing like her I've ever seen.

The soul of the Techie

Helen captured my heart when I first saw the comic strip because Peter Zale had first captured the soul of the information technology guru. Helen is the spiritual embodiment of those of us who competently labor to keep the information infrastructure running while constantly enduring the overwhelming "lost in the wilderness" dependency of the know-nothing "Wharton School of Business" idiots who surround us and unfortunately are ultimately responsible for our pitiful paychecks.If you like Helen you have to love this collection. Starting with the first Helen ever and following with the best of the best of the strips. Be careful where you take it though. I am ordering my second because I happened to show my first to the (female) instructor of a technology class I am taking, and the minute she saw it, I had to give it to her to under threat of instant flunking if I didn't.For those of us on the tail end of the Boomers or the X and Y genners who take fast processors and instant access as our birthright, Helen is our icon. This book is the PERFECT thing for taking a break when you finally look away from the monitor after four hours of serious debugging (or playing Doom, whatever).

A geek... a beauty... she's not to be trifled with

If you caught Helen when she was the Sweetheart of the Internet and available only on the Web, you already know she is a genius not to be trifled with. She is headstrong, female and beautiful, and she takes no guff from anyone. The Internet was a perfect place for Helen. She is capable of meeting Bill Gates at hacker conventions held so far underground that participants have to take an elevator up to the sublevel parking garage in order to leave. Gates creeps around her back door looking for sympathy when the Feds go after him (she's not the right one to ask for sympathy). Now Helen has been reborn in syndication more as a generic super techie than a Web denizen, but since that's really what she's always been, the translation to paper went smoothly. This book is a great, sometimes goofy celebration of geekdom. If you've ever wondered if geeks, nerds and techies can be sexy, funny and wonderful, here's your answer. Her name is Helen. This book collects some fine, funny strips from one of the best post-Dilbert comic universes of all. Highly recommended!

Helen is a geek's dream girl.

Helen, the comic, will likely be enjoyed by people who dig Dilbert and UserFriendly, but also has elements of more socially oriented strips like Sally Forth or Cathy. (Except that Cathy is terrible, IMHO, whereas Helen is actually funny.)Helen, the character, is the ultimate grrl-geek. She has all the arrogance and brilliance required to be an alpha-geek, codes artificial intelligences in her spare time, rules over the techno-illiterate, and inspires awe and fear in lesser geeks.Whether or not you're a techie yourself, you'll enjoy this caricature of social life inside the technocracy.(If you really get into the strip, it's also interesting to note that the author, Peter Zale, is quite accessible to his readers, maintaining a personal website and a mailing list about the strip's progress.)

Helen rules.

In surfing the web you have failed to run across Helen and the imaginative drawings of Peter Zale, you're about to discover the real power behind the internet. Helen is the essence of the modern CIO, brash, always right, incredibly powerful. The only glass ceiling Helen recognizes the the one below her.Helen isn't afraid to be herself, but still manages to portray the joint lost feeling that the modern IT professional often finds themselves in.In Helen, Peter Zale has managed to capture the mood and humor inherent in this wired world (which, bTW, Helen doesn't read anymore. Peters creations have just enough of that ring of truth to make most people laugh, and to even bring a smile to grizzled old CFOs.Do yourself a favor, buy this book and meet Helen