Peter Sandin (Linode) demonstrates mallet strength test :)

I hope some day Linode will be at a con in Montreal :) Much closer than most of the cons they go to! We're only 750km away by road :)

Alas, entering Canada for business purposes is somewhat risky. -rt (at least the poutine is pretty great)

@hoopycat:

Alas, entering Canada for business purposes is somewhat risky. -rt (at least the poutine is pretty great)

So, they lied to the border guards about both the purpose of their visit, and the fact that they were bringing in merch, and got caught doing it. How does that make it risky to enter Canada for business purposes? They were tax dodging and made falsified statements to justify entering the country.

The moral of that story is clearly DO NOT LIE TO BORDER GUARDS and DON'T BE A FREAKING IDIOT, not "Entering Canada for business is risky."

EDIT: I should note that lying to DHS agents is just as risky as lying to CBSA agents…

The alternative involves paperwork and possible transfer of liquid assets, so I can totally see the motivation to omit particular elements of the whole truth, especially when you've crossed the line from "hobby" to "business" without fully comprehending it yet.

And yes… compared to DHS, CBSA is pleasant to deal with.

DISCLAIMER: Outside of writing letters to the municipal water authority with regards possible cranial-rectal inversion in their accounts-receivable process and the usurious nature of their late fees and accusatory tone of their correspondence, most of my interaction with government officials involves CBSA or DHS. So I have opinions, but not enough of them to have facts.

The con was ok but when you go to one you have almost been to them all… I think the highlight for me was the MediaTemple Party since they were giving out chocolate bars with golden tickets that gave you literally a year of any of their servers so basically a $15,000 gift certificate :)