How hilarious is this? I found these old badges of mine while looking through boxes in my mom’s garage:

The first picture was taken in 2002 when I was a freshman at CSU, Chico. That badge was old and cracked by the time I finished working at the User Services department (four years). I met a lot of people over those years, fixing Macintosh computers for faculty and staff on campus — I even got to drive golf carts around!

The second picture was taken in 2005 when I was working as a summer intern at Chevron headquarters in San Ramon, CA. I was working as a systems administrator, doing some pretty sweet stuff with Perl and Unix servers. I know I look like Osama bin Laden, but I also look like that famous GNU guy, Richard Stallman. Besides, we all know hippies and spiritual figures are supposed to be hairy!

I put up the last picture to add contrast: the clean-cut Alan! That picture was taken just the other day on my road trip to Portland, Oregon. For better or for worse, I guess I’ve come a long way in the last few years. It’s probably for the better, but I swear I get hassled more by hawkers and makangas (conductors on Kenyan public transit vehicles) now that I look clean cut. Now I have to work twice as hard to convince them that mimi si mtalii (I am not a tourist)!