It may sound stupid, but I can't sleep right now. I am all pumped up about leaving for Florida to attend this year's DevCon. I think I get like this every time I go on a trip. Usually it's the night before I leave that I can't sleep, but this time it's two nights before.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that my wife isn't going with me. Normally when I go on a trip, she goes. So I know that she is going to take care of packing the basic necessities of the trip. She is very thorough. So I tried for an hour or so to sleep, then I decided to just get out of bed and make a list of what I need to bring. It starts with "2-3 (Pairs of) Pants" and ends with "Master of Disaster labels for badge". But I realized I need to add some personal hygiene products to my list (I planned ahead and left room the page for write-in items).

Here's the background of the Master of Disaster labels: Every year while working at Price.com with Mike we would attend events like Comdex or Internet World. If anyone has never attended, the whole purpose is for the sponsors to sell you stuff. Or at least get your name on their list so they can contact you later about their products/services. We figured that we could be funny and track which convention produces the most junk mail at the same time. We would just give ourselves a unique Job Title when signing up, and when ever we got mail sent to "I CARRY THE BLACK PLAGUE", we knew it was from Mike from the '99 Internet World. And we could chuckle about it for months/years as the mail came in.

So... this year for the DevCon I put down Master of Disaster as my job title, and I actually got a call from a very nice person named Jennifer or something or other. And she said that "this year" no silly job titles were allowed. And that her boss wanted her to call me to get a different title for myself. I tried convincing her of how I was really the Master of Disaster at my work. My co-worker Joel even started to pick-up at what was going on and yelled out in the background, "Hey Master of Disaster can you come over here?", but that didn't help. So I decided that I would make labels of different sizes and bring them with me, and which ever one fits best to the badge I would place it on there myself. Who da man now? Huh?