Teaching the London Police.
While I was in Stuttgart I had a colleague who was lecturing in Saudi Arabia when he stepped on something and his foot got infected. They would not discharge him from the hospital until they knew he would be alright. He started to panic because he was supposed to teach a class on Macintosh Server Forensics in London and it was looking like he wouldn’t be able to get there.
That was when my phone rang. He realized that he needed someone who knew the topic, which I did, and someone closer to London, which I was. I agreed to go teach the class for him.
A week later I flew to London and was met at the airport by several members of the London Metropolitan Police who escorted me to their main building…where I was going to teach the class. Yes, I knew they were the students before I left.
The class went really well and I got to see a couple of forensic geeks I knew from my days working with IACIS. While having lunch with one of them I asked how hard it would be to get a classic British Bobby helmet. He looked at me and said that finding one for sale was “more rare than rocking horse poop”. OK, He used much more colorful language but you get the idea. No helmet for me.
One of my favorite memories was walking to the big urn surrounded by coffee cups and all the fixings. I grabbed a cup and started pouring liquid into it. I was looking at someone who was talking to me and when the cup felt full I stopped and went to take a drink.
It wasn’t coffee.
It was just hot water. Brits drink tea. I felt kind of silly and started to pick the tea I would now brew and drink. Earl Grey is my go-to tea, and they had lots. Which is good because I drank lots.
This was also shortly after my book on OSX Exploits and Defense had come out. One of the students had a copy and he was looking things up that I was lecturing on. I happened to be looking his way when it hit him that I was one of the writers. It was a classic look at the book, look at me, look at the book, look at me while his brain put two and two together.
He came up to me during a break and asked me to sign the book, which I gladly did for him. Over the years I think I have only signed roughly a dozen books. If you have one it is a rarity.