About the Author

Hi, I'm Chris, a web developer and a founding member of Analog. I live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

In Toronto for php|works

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 at 21:24:31 GMT
3 Comments
References

I'm sitting in the atrium of the Holiday Inn Yorkdale in Toronto, enjoying the free wireless access. I'll be here all week for php|works, a conference hosted by the fine folks at php|architect. I'm giving a talk on PHP Session Security on Thursday, and I fly back to New York on Friday.

When filling out the card for customs, I paused when it asked whether my trip was for business or pleasure. It's pretty nice to do something you love - I felt like checking both boxes. Technically, I suppose this is a business trip, so that's what I went with. When I got to customs, the lady there inquired about the purpose of my trip:

What sort of business are you on, Mr. Shiflett?

I replied that I was attending a computer conference, which seemed descriptive enough, but she persisted:

What's the conference aboot?

(Yes, I misspelled about, but that's not how it sounded to me.) I explained that it was about PHP, a programming language. Then came the awesome question:

PHP? What does that stand for?

As you can imagine, the term recursive acronym came up shortly thereafter. I found it pretty amusing, even if she didn't.

(PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.)

About This Post

In Toronto for php|works was posted on Tue, 21 Sep 2004 at 21:24:31 GMT.

3 Comments

1. Adam Trachtenberg said:

That's why I always answer the questions at the border with the simplest true statement I can.

For PHP Quebec, I said it was a "computer" conference, and when they asked for more info, I said "Internet." I rarely get to the level of PHP.
Tue, 21 Sep 2004 at 22:10:23 GMT Link

2. Raj Shekhar said:

PHP == Pretty Horny Programmers. the programming language is just a coverup.
Thu, 23 Sep 2004 at 03:46:23 GMT Link

3. Jason E. Sweat said:

I made them work even a bit harder. Starting out at:

Why are you coming to Canada?

Attending a conference.

What it it about?

Computers.

Computers and what?

The web.

Okay...move along.

I supose I could have gone for the old Jedi mind trick:

These are not the computer programmers you are looking for.

;)
Sat, 25 Sep 2004 at 12:43:55 GMT Link

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