Any Day Your Socks Don’t Burst Into Flames Is A Good Day

I’ve been wanting to use this as a title for a blog post for a while now. It’s actually one of the quotes I have in my personal email signature. The open question has been what the topic of this blog post should be. There are so many asinine stories from fifteen years of consulting that could be used — I’ll eventually work my way through all of those. Instead, this time, I’m going to tell the story of how I came up with this quote.

In my personal email signature, I credit the quote as “unknown”, but in actuality it is what I said to my kids after a minor chemical fire, my socks smoking, and a sudden realization that there was an intense, acute burning sensation on the bottom of my foot.

So, some background on what led up to this tragic, yet amusing moment. First, I have poor circulation in my feet. Been that way for a while. Get up and walk around for a few minutes — usually does the trick in the short-term. Long airline flights back-and-forth across the pacific are getting harder to do with each passing year. One thing I found that helps greatly is compression socks. If you ever see me on the hottest day of the year wearing socks that go a bit hire up my chins than is currently fashionable, now, you know why. My exwife enjoys pointing out how stupid I look in those socks every time she sees me; though, she never, once, asked why I am wearing the socks and I’ve never bothered telling her. Grant it, yes, they do look a bit silly if wearing shorts. The compression socks I wear are made of some fancy fabric that claims to be nylon and that stretch just the right amount.

Next, I have a workshop. I have a variety of tools and materials for projects that might come up. As a bit of a side hobby, I collect and stockpile tapes, lubricants, and glues. I have a number of industrial adhesives that work very well with the right surfaces / materials.

One day, my favorite pair of sandals broke in the most annoying way imaginable. The experienced some type of adhesive failure and the entire lower sole of the left sandal fell off. Now, this was after four years of continuous use. I’m a big guy; so, these sandals take a lot of abuse. Being the prepared person that I am, I went to my adhesive collection and found something that claims to work well with rubber. It did. I let it dry for an hour and then put the sandals on to go out. As I was opening the car door, I realized that there was smoke and there was something burning my foot. It took somewhere between one and two seconds to get the sandal off and get the sock off. There was still some adhesive on the shoe that I missed when I was wiping things down. It came in contact with the sock.

Apparently, nylon plus that particular industrial adhesive equals combustion. At least, before the adhesive is fully dried. Well, my foot was fine. There were a couple of first-degree burns — equivalent of a bad sun burn. The sock was ruined. I should have gotten a picture of it to use with this blog post.

That was three years ago.

To my ever lasting shame, about a year later, I had to add some touch up adhesive on the heel of the same left sandal. I was in a hurry and not paying attention. A second sock began smoking that day, but let’s not talk about that.

Take aways from this story:

• Always have a ready supply of tapes, lubricants, and adhesives available.
• The right tape, lubricant, and adhesive for the right job (surface). Read the instructions.
• Clean up the surface of the shoe before the sock comes in contact with it. We’ll call this an analogy for everyday survival.
• If you are experiencing poor circulation in your lower legs, consult your doctor. This can be an indication of larger problems.

The next question is how do I tie this back into application security or Identity and Access Management. I’ll get back to you.

Be safe out there.

Notes:

• AI / GenAI / ChatGPT / etc were not used to generate this article.
• I used em dashes in my writing before the current GenAI wave was a thing. Not planning on changing now..
• Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
• None of the hostname or users used in examples actually exist.
• Feel free to post any comments or suggestions below.