Thanks to the energetic James Lyndsay, a bunch of us are meeting at the conclusion of his Exploratory Testing class and my Rapid Testing class on Friday, June 3 2009, in London, UK. I expect we'll be there somewhere between 5:30 and 9:00pm. The venue is the Prince Arthur pub, 80-82 Eversholt Street, Euston, London, NW1 1BX, right across the street from Euston Station, north of Euston Road. Three large tables have been reserved. All are welcome; please spread the word!

A few weeks I went down to the U.S. Consulate in Toronto to register Ariel, my daughter, as an American citizen born abroad. (She's a dualie, because she was born in Canada to an American parent: me. I'm a dualie too, born in the U.S. to Canadian parents. Being born a dual citizen is a wonderful example of a best practice. You should follow it. But I digress.)

The application process is, naturally, fraught with complication and bureaucracy. There's also a chilling and intimidating level of security; one isn't allowed to bring anything electronic into the Consulate at all. No cell phones, no PDAs, and certainly no laptop computers. That means no electronic records, and no hope of looking anything up. So one has to prepare.