Or until my arm falls off at least….

I’ve been meaning to get a new tattoo for quite a while. And I wanted it to be geeky and to represent some memorable milestone in my life. So I was thinking, mulling over some various ideas, sketching some things out. And then it hit me. XNA. Specifically the XNA logo. It’s super geeky (so geeky I’ll probably have to explain to 90% of the people that say it what it even means) and I’m not sure that anything has been so memorable and made such a change in my life as XNA.

Cheesy but true.

When the XNA framework came out, thing started happening quickly. I stumbled into a geek community and started going to code camps, MSDN events, code-a-thons. I got an XNA MVP award. Met huge geek idols in my life (like Rory Blyth and Scott Hanselman) and just really started getting integrated into this fantastic development community. Then to add to all of that I became part of this fantastic XNA community. It’s really just been one of the best things to ever happen to me and I’m having the time of my life right now.

So sure, it’s permanent. Sure Microsoft could cancel XNA, rebrand it to Flimmer Flammer or some other name. Sure my arms are going to be wrinkly and flabby when I’m older and for sure I’m going to have to explain to people over and over again just what in the world “xna” means. But you know what, every time I look at that tattoo and every time I’m telling somebody what xna means, I’m going to remember all these awesome things that have happened to me. All the tremendous things I’m seeing people do with the XNA framework and more importantly all the stories and friendships I’ve formed in the XNA community.

And I think that deserves a little permanent recognition.