Getting Inked for Tux at OSCON 108
OSCON isn't just a gathering for talks on topics like Creating Location-aware Web 2.0 Applications on an Open Source Geospatial Platform and fightin' words from the stage; it's also an excuse for some interesting social gatherings, like this year's Community Choice awards (organized and sponsored by the corporate overlords at SourceForge, as you might recall, and with Slashdot's own special category), at which, among other festive activities, attendees were offered the chance to get open-source-related tattoos. There are shots of some of these up on the SourceForge Community pages, and — with some overlap — even more in this set at Flickr. (My pasty bicep^h^h^h^h^h shoulder is the one now adorned with a circled head of a happy Tux ala IBM; I was expecting it to hurt more than it actually did.) Anyone with techie tattoos, please disclose below.
Re:Please tell me you're joking... (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed, I feel sorry for these people who get tattoos like this.
Oooh, look what geek cred I have, I have open source logos on me. Except that the penguin has never been anything but, well, pretty lame really.
And then add to the the speed of progress in the tech world, and you've got yourself a permanent reminder of how narrow focused you happened to be at one point in your life.
Fast forward 10 years or so and you have so many other things that you are interested in, and you can see how foolish it may have been to be SO consumed by an operating system for pete's sake.
You'll regret it... yes you will.
Re:Please tell me you're joking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if no-one points out the folly in doing this when others do it, but just heap praise on them, well, others are likely to do the same thing.
Then you have even more people who wish they maybe should have thought a bit longer about getting something so topical inked onto their body for life.
If comments like this make just a few people think 'oh... hmmm, yeah, maybe I won't still think Linux is the centre of the universe in 10 years', and perhaps just get themselves a nice t-shirt or something, then my work here is done.
BSD Daemon (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're going to do something stupid like get an OSS logo tattoo, at least get something more cool than a penguin.
Re:Please tell me you're joking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that was a well thought out response pulling on all available knowledge, bravo sir.
Did I say all tats? No
Did I even state any kind of age at which getting one of these tats is foolhardy? No
Do you know how old I am? Well, maybe, it's not hard to find out, but I would say, no.
I'm not going to say that everyone who gets a tat in their 20s will regret it, but I am going to say a lot will, especially with the numbers who get ridiculously fleeting things like company logos inked into their flesh.
Band names are another great one for this. "Oh, yeah, well, I did like Metallica X years ago, not so much now, but erm, yeah, I have their name across my back"
People don't seem to think about how they're going to feel about what they get inked on themselves later in life. People get the most ridiculous little in jokes and the like inked on themselves and then regret it only months later because the novelty of that joke has gone.
Get something you will never tire of, something to do with your heritage, your deep life philosophy, your kids... something that isn't fleeting.
Not Tux, not a Zune logo, not Super Mario, really... try and imagine having some hindsight.
Not Exactly a Tux Tattoo (Score:3, Insightful)
At the time, I was working heavily with MS Site Server (what they called portals before portals were called portals). It jumpstarted my career as a systems administrator and I don't ever want to forget that time, when I was energized, full of life, and right about nearly everything.
That said, all of my Windows skills went out the window(s) when I became a Java middleware admin.
Tux and more (Score:1, Insightful)
Ya, I am one of those uncreative fools that got tux too....But I also decided to get a bit more done after that:
http://www.bbdforum.com/gallery_image.php?action=view&iid=662#pictop
I could not be more happy with how my tattoo's have turned out. And I look forward to wearing them forever....Tux is awesome, and in 30 years if I am the only one who knows what it means...then fine by me. The point of a tattoo is for yourself anyways. And it can always represent the start of something, or something that you enjoyed at the time. For me it was a large foundation in my open source lifestyle. And it will always be that foundation. Even if the symbol changes to everyone else, I will always have that symbol which means something to me.
Re:Please tell me you're joking... (Score:2, Insightful)
I got my tux tattoo about 8 years ago, and had it touched up with the rest of these folks (actually, earlier on in the day because I had to MC the party.)
I think it's still as timely now as it was when I got it, and I think that if 30 years go by I'll always remember how important Linux was to me during this time in my life. If it weren't for my exposure to Linux, I probably wouldn't have become a sysadmin when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't have become a developer in my twenties, and I wouldn't be the community manager for SourceForge.net today. I hardly think that's a narrow focus.