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It's a bad week to be a Boy Scout.

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Toronto

I just got back from 4 days spent in Toronto at the 15th Annual World Conference on Disaster Management or WCDM for short. Yeah, I know. It was a little weird, but that's part of my business now. I spent the last few days talking to people about how to plan for pandemic threats and checking out blast-proof furniture. It was all a little surreal.

The best part of the trip though (aside from checking out Toronto with my new pal Doulgas) was going to a bookstore. As it turns out, Cory Doctorow (one of our new favorite authors and a Toronto native) was going to be signing copies of his new book! I headed over to Bakka Phoenix books in downtown Toronto to check it out.

When I got there, there were only four people in the back of the store including Cory, and they were busy trading stories about data packets, distributed computing, war driving and geeky t-shirts. While I couldn't keep up with all of the conversation, I felt like I was home with family. After a bit Cory looked up and said "Hi, I'm Cory!"

It was a little weird, but at the same time it seemed right. From all that I have read about the guy and seen from his posts peppered here and there on the "internets", he is a really nice person who loves to connect with others. I introduced myself and he said that it was nice to meet me. After getting a signed copy of his new book "Someone comes to town, someone leaves town", he asked me to stay for a while because he was thinking of reading a new story he had been working on. Shea, of course I would!

In a few moments the room was packed with about 30 people and he settled into the chair. It seemed like he was a little nervous, but had no trouble kidding with the room full of like-minded, tech-saavy, t-shirt laden folks. He took some time and first talked to us about his feelings on the bombings in the UK (he lives in London right now) and then read to us from his new story "When sysadmins ruled the world" for about 15 minutes.

All in all, it was a great time and I am glad that Tara tipped me off that he was in town. Cory is a real gentleman and not a half bad writer either.

"There are only two stories"

Laundry

Dave doesn't like it when I do laundry, but on nights like tonight—when he's otherwise indisposed and there are clothes in the washer—he's been known to grudgingly let me do it.

But he won't ask.

He stands in the dining room and sighs. "I wish I could do X, but there are clohtes in the washer..."

And I say, "I'll do it."

And he laughs the laugh that means, As if.

And I say, "No, really. I'll do it."

And he takes a long, calculating look at both the washer and the front door and says, "Okay, but I'm going to set the timer and when it goes off, you have to move the clothes from the washer from the dryer and fold the stuff in the dryer."

And I roll my eyes and say, "Duh. I know how to do laundry."

And again he laughs the laugh that means, As if.

And I always thought he was right, because my laundry always comes out wrinkled and I end up at work with a fabric softener sheet poking out of my sock. But tonight I realized that the root cause of my laundry-doing strife is that there is a fundamental difference between Dave and my laundry-doing goals.

His goal is to get clean, unwrinkled clothes into our closets.

My goal is to touch each laundry item for as short a time period as is temporally possible. Nine seconds is about my limit. After nine seconds I start to get a feeling like I'm chewing on a wool sock and I get a twitch on the left corner of my mouth. I've been known to throw a perfectly-clean-but-unfolded item of clothing back into the dirtry hamper so that someone else can clean, dry and fold it and I don't have to touch it anymore.

Not that I did that tonight.

Ah... vacation.

What you can almost see in this ghostly photo is Trevor and Dave having a midnight bounce on a trampoline in the dark.

Back in NJ

One thing New Jerseyans have perfected is the art of the 24-hour store. Rolling into town at one o'clock in the morning, we spied a Starbucks packed with people. Not only are these Garden Staters out at one in the morning, they're drinking coffee in anticipation of being up for a while. That's hardcore.

By contrast, the entire state of Vermont goes to bed promptly at 8:15.