CHILDREN GET TASTE OF WORK; COMPUTER-TECHNOLOGY MAKER XIRCOM HOSTS KIDS OF WORKERS.

Byline: Kevin F. Sherry Daily News Staff Writer

Xircom employee Richard Austinson remembers visiting engine rooms of Navy ships with his father, a naval engineer, and driving around town to learn routes with his mother, a bus driver.

On Thursday, Austinson gave his own children a similar hands-on experience.

Across the country, Thursday was Take Our Daughters to Work Day, although many companies, like Xircom, expanded the day to include boys.

Austinson, a manager in application development at Xircom, showed his daughter, Rachel, 15, and his son, Rick, 13, just how he spends his day.

``I actually had a couple of problems that I had to deal with,'' he said.

Rachel and Rick checked out the employees' individualized cubicles, visited the company gym and heard war stories from last week's stress-ball fight.

``Largely it's a fun day, but I think they learn something out of it,'' Austinson said.

Xircom, which manufactures technology for mobile-computer users, hosted about 30 children Thursday. They spent the morning with their adult hosts, then toured departments such as sales, engineering and finance to get an overall flavor of the company.

``We learned what my dad does,'' said Rachel, a freshman at Camarillo High School. ``He explained it to me once, but . . . lost me in the first three sentences.''

Other children had a pretty good idea of what their parents did for a living, but had never seen them in action.

``I'm not really that familiar with it, and I wanted to learn more,'' said Bretany Dapper, an eighth-grader at Sinaloa Junior High School in Simi Valley.

Bretany spent the day shadowing her father, Michael Dapper, a senior network-systems engineer who works in customer support.

``Ever since I was little, I've seen him at the computer,'' Bretany said. ``I hear him talk about work a lot.''

Bretany listened in on phone calls as her dad helped customers with questions.

``We haven't had any juicy stuff, yet,'' he said.

Bretany said she always has been interested in computers but now thinks she's at an age where she has the ability to learn beyond computer basics. ``It's sort of confusing, and it's sort of fun,'' she said.

Tiffany Madsen, a sixth-grader at Mesa Verde Middle School in Moorpark, joined her uncle, Stuart Quirke, in Xircom's sales department.

``It sounded interesting to come here and see how they do it,'' Tiffany said.

In the morning, Tiffany learned that the company's microchips are manufactured in Malaysia and that the company's modems help people dial up the Internet.

She listened to her uncle's voice mail from customers.

``She got an idea of what kind of calls I get,'' Quirke said.

With a miniature basketball hoop just a short toss from her uncle's desk, Tiffany also learned ``we do a lot of other things here than just work,'' Quirke said.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) (Ran in Simi Edition only) Michael Dapper, left, in customer support shows his daughter Bretany, 14, and Tiffany Madsen, 11, what he does at Xircom.

(2--Color) (Ran in Conejo Edition only) Patrick Parker in engineering demonstrates to Evan Gates, 10, how an etching machine works, at Xircom in Thousand Oaks.

Bob Halvorsen/Daily News