A friend of mine has a gorgeous wrist tattoo that never caused her problems until she tried to join a health club in Japan. Apparently even caucasian-american ex-pat girls can be Yakuza.

SH, those are the primary reasons that keep me from doing it. Although, a "ring" tattoo can easily be covered with a real ring. But I hate wearing jewelry.

Okay then-- electrician has been and gone. We have a new GFI outlet, the old one apparently having been installed by a team of baby howler monkeys who couldn't be bothered to carve out a large enough space for the unit, so it was just crammed in there and as the house settled was gradually crushed, with wires touching the metal screws.

Since this electrician was not a baby howler monkey, he made the space larger, wrapped electrical tape around the screws, and essentially did the job right.

I'm still going to check the outlet every half hour or so.

Depends on the industry you work in.

True. As a software QA guy, it's been made clear to me by all my contract companies that I need to be a lot more conservative in appearance if I want to make more than minimum, though.

As a software QA guy, it's been made clear to me by all my contract companies that I need to be a lot more conservative in appearance if I want to make more than minimum, though.

Really? Oh, how frustrating.

Ring tattoos hold no interest for me because I wear a lot of rings, and I don't think I'd be able to keep myself from scratching during the healing period.

Actually, if one works in an industrial setting, ring tattoos make loads of sense. My buddy Bob has a ring tattoo instead of a wedding ring because he doesn't want his finger ripped off if his ring gets caught in a piece of machinery. Which happens fairly often, I guess. Not to him, I mean in general.

One of my coworkers has a tattoo of a rune that he says means "fidelity" on his ring finger, in place of a wedding ring. But then, I work at a lefty liberal NGO. One of the VPs suggested producing a "Tattos of [Workplace]" calendar as a fundraiser and, while he was kidding, it would be totally doable.

My current workplace could care less...and I'm not really counting on THOSE OTHER PLACES finding me work (since they haven't talked to me in over 6 months anyway).

I'm just sayin' - it's more conservative in Seattle than it used to be. The general consensus amongst my peers is - visible tattoos? Better work in a tattoo parlor.

I like looking on tattos, but they're all too "ouch!" and "forever!" for me.

However, if I would ever have one, right now the Women in Black symbol is the only thing that I feel committed enough to ink on my body.

I'm just sayin' - it's more conservative in Seattle than it used to be. The general consensus amongst my peers is - visible tattoos? Better work in a tattoo parlor.

Huh. Well that's annoying. I mean, my tattoos barely show, but it's not like I look exactly *normal*, nor will I ever, really.