Fri, 08 Jul 2005
IMPORTANT WARNING!!!!
If you happen to have one of the Debian DVDs which where specially made for LinuxTag throw them as far away as you can! Immediately! That's no joke! I firmly believe, that they bring bad luck!
It started with the DVD manufacturer telling us, that the burned DVD we send them, was broken - don't ask me, what they had for problems, we tested it, and it worked. We were under a big time pressure - luckily Martin Zobel-Helas made it just in time with a new copy of the image to the post office - about 3 Minutes before they closed for "mail to be delivered before 10 AM". Soon later they called again - this time they had problems with the cover design, somehow they had problems with the height, length and the cutting edge of the graphics we send. So they got them again, and it worked.
They should have been delivered by a transportation company directly from the manufacturer to the exhibition area. But they didn't deliver in time - because he thought he shouldn't deliver that stuff to the delivery address we gave him (the exhibition area in Karlsruhe), but looked at the LinuxTag webpage, where he could see, that LinuxTags main seat is in Kaiserlautern. So instead of just delivering those damn DVDs to the address we gave him, or to get in contact with us, they decided to... not deliver at all. Instead of having the DVDs two days before the start of the exhibition, we got them one and a half day after that!
Well, you might know, that this DebConfs "kick off" event is the DebianDay, having some "low level" talks for a more general audience. It would have been nice, to have some of those DVDs here in Helsinki, to give them away.
The first thing, that went wrong was, that we got that idea far to late. It would have been easy to give some of the DVD boxes to one of the Belgian guys, who where there by car and drove to Helsinki by car. Okay, they would have needed to leave some beer behind, but some sacrifices needs to be done...
Well, as said, we didn't thought about that. The second thing, that went wrong was, that the guy, who has access to the storeroom where the DVDs are, went on holiday right after LinuxTag. A well deserved one, no question. But so we run out of time, to send the DVDs to HEL.
No problem, he arrived in time, so we could arrange, that he would send them via mail to Munich, where they should have been picked up by someone flying from Munich to HEL. That didn't worked either. The one having those DVDs in his storage room gave them to his brother, since he was busy. His brother forgot to send them away, so the guy flying to HEL couldn't pick them up...
Well, we were quite desperate, so we decided to send them with FedEx or UPS or something over night. As far as I have been told, FedEx wouldn't deliver such packages over night, since they want to store them for a day in their freight house: To protect us from terrorism. Don't ask me for details. I didn't understood that; the guy phoning with FedEx didn't understood that; and I'm sure FedEx didn't understood that either.
Well, so we gave the packages to UPS, who promised us to deliver them at least by this midday. "Promised" says all, doesn't it? According to their package tracking system, the current status of the package is: "MULTIPLE ERRORS EXIST IN THE ADDRESS LABEL. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO DETERMINE THE CORRECT INFORMATION TO COMPLETE DELIVERY". It seems that one of the two boxed with DVDs is currently in Cologne, while the other made a small excursion via Paris (yes, that Paris in France) and is currently in a town called "St Brice Courcelles" (still France). Don't ask me for details about that - I can't understand that at all...
So, I'm very sorry, that we won't be able to hand out the DVDs at DebianDay tomorrow. Perhaps they will be delivered on Monday... of course only if they find their way out of France...
postet at 21:48 into [Debian/events/DebConf-5] permanent link
[DebConf] Milk problem solved
A small note for the milk drinking people: If you would like to buy real milk,
without any intrusive changes, don't make the mistake I made. Just
look for this:
.
... and you will get quite normal milk (according to my standards: 3.5% fat
content, pasteurised, not ultra high heated (or whatever
"ultrahocherhitzt" means in english)).
Note: There is no cow at all printed on that milk carton...
PS: Uhm... should I start to think about something, when the first picture I take in Helsinki is a picture from a milk carton?
postet at 14:45 into [Debian/events/DebConf-5] permanent link
[DebConf] Burn in the HEL...
... still nice weather - mostly sunny, occasionally a bit rain, but nothing serious. IIUC this trend will continue for a couple of more days, probably even the entire DebConf.
Tried yesterday a new trick to get some sleep - let's get so tired that my roommates snoring doesn't bother me any more. Didn't worked well, since I needed to long to get tired and needed to get up to soon :(
I Was again jogging this morning - well, I did, that I hereby define jogging for myself. After not doing any sports for more than a year, it isn't that easy to get back. Somehow I seemed to expected a bit too much, too. Someone told me that starting jogging is in some way like stopping smoking: As soon as you get past the third day, you are okay...
postet at 11:56 into [Debian/events/DebConf-5] permanent link