I'm trying out a contest on 99designs.com for Guess Who's a Mess's album art. If you're a designer, feel free to have at it. If you're not, you can still enjoy these goofy photos of me as a kid I included in the design brief:

That was a Michael Jackson Thriller FM transmitter microphone. So you could sing through your stereo. Also an all-black Thriller jacket. The cabbage patch doll was not mine. I had sparkly socks too but I'm not wearing them here.

Atari 2600 and a Texas Instruments 99/4a, my first (borrowed) computer. All I did was type Basic programs into it. I had no cartridges so I'd lose whatever I had typed in when I turned it off.

Math tells me I'm eight years old here. Update: ken and my mom disagree. I was seven and the eighth candle was "one to grow on". Embarrassing.

Sulking at my sister's birthday party (reason: too much attention for her, not enough attention for me.)

A few years later. Lanpar IBM PC, my first official computer. It had a 20 meg hard drive and ran at 4mhz. Later I found out it had a "turbo" mode which doubled the speed to 8mhz.

Also visible: terrible, boxy first mouse, Gravis Joystick, collection of Sierra games and my entire California Raisins collection.

Update: Contest's over. Unfortunately it was not a success. There were lots of entries but nothing I could actually see using so I'm still on the hunt. Thanks to everyone who entered, sorry I'm so picky.