I was in PRECISELY your situation in 2000 and have felt your pain. I read a 1-year taught masters degree in Comp Sci and haven't looked back. I paid back the costs of the degree within 3(ish) years, including the year of "lost" salary where I wasn't paid for study. This included a 2-year stint where I was underpaid compared to the average junior developer, and this was immediately post the 911-attack where the job market in the UK wasn't exactly fantastic. If possible I'd go for a pure Comp Sci degree, the web ones

As ever, there are a few caveats :

• Make sure your finances can withstand the costs & time taken out to study
• Don't believe the average graduate wages claimed for a new developer by your university. There are a few graduates who get taken up by the large consultancies who get paid a whack-load of dosh, this skews the average upwards. If you get a well paid job, you're in clover.
• You'll still have to deal with lusers, and they don't get any cleverer when you're trying to get specifications (or common sense or abstract thought) out of them
• You should be learning new technologies at home anyway...

"Introduction to Neural Networks" by K. Gurney was a pretty good introduction. It clearly presented the biological and mathematical basis for NNWs without stinting on the maths side (e.g. it gives derevations of learning algorithms). I used it heavily in my master's dissertation(using a NNW to control a virtual game-playing tank). There is lots of good material in the Internet. The article at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/aforge_neuro.aspx/ gives a good introduction, additionally it provides a .net implementation of several network types you can just use and has a demonstration front end which allows you try try different NNWs against different problem surface with configurable factors (such as learning rate and "momentum"). You should have a go at implementing your own neural network however, as you'll get a much better appreciation of whats happening.

Don't expect your PC to become self-aware at any point soon however :-).

There's well-known .netter out there called Scott Hansleman, he's written a freeware program called Baby Smash for windows, which might be a better option. http://www.hanselman.com/babysmash/ Baby Smash locks down the keyboard and responds to "keystrokes" (ie baby-smashes) with coloured shapes / letters and numbers. Letting junior learn that input gets a response on a computer. Except after BSOD :-) .ALT-F4 exits the application and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-O opens the options. Scott has a link to "Alpha Baby" if you prefer to use a Mac (in fact he says himself Baby Smash is a "homage" to Alpha Baby). This doesn't solve the problem of keyboards and salivia not mixing terribly well however....