Red Hat Tattoos

Not only did Thomas submit his geeky tattoos from an email address ending in @redhat.com, he also PGP signed the message he sent. All huge indicators of a true Linux geek. Thomas explains that geekiness and his tattoos done by Jon Weaver:

These tattoos are related but were done at different times. I got the Shadow Man in Orlando at some hole-in-the-wall place that I really wouldn’t recommend and won’t even name. Jon had to re-do it later to clean up some patchiness.

I’m a Linux geek through and through – I live for Open Source and am proud and humbled to be part of Red Hat. To me, it’s all about making technology available to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get it – – leveling the playing field across nations, economic strata, societies. We make amazing software and we give it away through our Fedora Linux distribution. We also sell service and support for it with our commercial Linux distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Anyway, I was at the annual team meeting and there were over a hundred other Red Hat folks there. I’ve always been passionate about what we do and at the conference I wanted to get some new ink that paid homage to that passion. I got the Shadow Man tattoo and it made a big splash at the meeting. My boss’s boss actually liked it so much she let me expense it!

I had Jon do the armband several months later. I wanted more ink, and I wanted to emphasize my passion for technology. I wanted an armband, but I wanted it to be different from the tribal/Celtic/barbed wire stuff you see all the time. So I designed the printed circuit band and Jon inked it in one sitting. I am very happy with the fine detail and the straight lines.

And then Thomas signed off his email with more acronyms than I know what to do with:
Thomas Cameron, RHCA, RHCDS, RHCVA, RHCX, CNE, MCSE, MCT
(Man, if only Words With Friends would let me play those)

Oh wait, there was one more email from Thomas too! He got the Fedora logo done inside a tribal design on his back by Chad at Taylor Street Tattoos in Chicago. The design was done by Máirín Duffy, another Red Hat person, using what else but the Open Source software Inkscape.