Jörg Reuter

After more or less successfully upgrading three very different machines online and at least ending up with usable network afterwards, I dared to upgrade the machine in the data center at the other end of town. And promptly ran into bnc#546575, which earned me a trip to said data center as the machine wasn't accessible by network anymore.

If you want to upgrade a machine with a fixed network configuration, better check if /etc/udev/rules/70-persistent-net.rules contains the string ATTRS{address} and change it to ATTR{address} before starting the update.

Everything hosted on and provided by martes.yaina.de should be working again. I apologize for the downtime and like to thank you for your patience.

Something went wrong during the upgrade from openSUSE 11.1 to 11.2, thus martes.yaina.de is currently down for unscheduled maintenance. I'll drive to the data center tomorrow to take a look why the machine does not come up anymore.

(I tested the online upgrade with three different machines before, they all at least booted with working network afterwards.)

I've encountered some unusual obstacles during the upgrade from openSUSE 11.1 to 11.2. Apparently, my setup is a bit outside of the spec... This is what I had to do.

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I have the packman repository added and lots of packages installed from there. Packman sometimes changes package dependencies during the lifetime of an openSUSE release, which don't necessarily get resolved by zypper up. This can lead to zypper attempting to convert an x86_64 system to i586 on the actual upgrade to 11.2. With many packman packages installed it gets near impossible to find the cause. My advice: make sure to run zypper dup with the 11.1 repositories before the upgrade.

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After the update, the X11 server came up without working keyboard and mouse. It didn't work with the old xorg.conf configuration file, it didn't work with the server started by sax2. For upgrades, the option
Option "AutoAddDevices" "off" in the ServerFlags section of xorg.conf should had been added, but wasn't.

Manually adding that option at least gave me back a working server. But it should work without it. Looking at the process list revealed that I had hundreds of hald-addon-cpufreq processes, but not a single hald-addon-input process. Running hal-device revealed every single entry, including the one for the mice and keyboard, being and CPUFreq interface (info.interfaces = { org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.CPUFreq' }). Strange. But at least I had a working X11 server again.

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Oops, but what's that? Suspend doesn't work either? Okay, I have to go and fix the hald configuration after all. But how, I don't know anything about it and everyone I ask claims to know even less... So I reinstalled the rpm with zypper in -f hal and ran rchal restart, and... Wow, it works! And even the autoconfigured X11 works now.

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Sound needs an "rcalsasound restart" to work. I haven't investigated yet why.

Leah was a coworker at SuSE a couple of years ago. I barely knew her, as she was in a different department and the company was in rough waters at that time, but I remember her as a cute crazy girl from America full of energy, always in motion, a daredevil. Now I learn she has died falling off the roof of a building she was trying to climb.

There are many in the furry fandom who are just like her. Some like to climb on stage trussing or power poles, maybe even buildings like Leah. Some go out in fursuit doing stunts that are dangerous even without wearing a costume. Some like to race cars on public roads, some do dangerous things on their motorbikes. Daredevils like Leah. Cool, crazy, funny people. By all means, stay awesome. But think before you do something stupid. Being dead is anything but cool, crazy or funny. And for sure not awesome.

I've been observing problems mp3 tags not being displayed on some devices, while others display the information just fine. ( By chance, I found out why... )

The large shoulder support I built a while ago is really useful and I don't want to film without it anymore. However, it is also quite bulky and heavy, which means it is quite impractical to take it on air travel.

Thus, I built a very small one to rest against my shoulder, not on it. After Xan's shoulder moped, after my own shoulder chopper, let me present the shoulder unicycle:

Of course, we'll again be at


We, that are f_u_r_v_a_n, Kayjay, lynard_, mendra, tioh, zefirodragon and me for this FC. And we are going to drive this again:



Two of it, even.

How could I resist jumping on the bandwagon:

EF 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15
MMC 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
FC 2005,2006,2007,2008,2009
AC 2007
Megaplex 2009

Thats... 30 conventions!

Not counting furmeets like Herbstcon, Herbstcon Sproing, Nighty's New Years Party, etc... Because I lost track of those.

Plans for next year: FC, Confuzzled, MMC (unsure), AC, EF.

(via bradhound, yappyfox)

I don't know if I'll ever write a convention report for EF 15, for now just a few things that come to mind, in no particular order:

The Good

• Excellent atmosphere, apparently the attendees had a lot of fun.
• And me, too...
• Talked to some people I only knew from online conversation before.
• Eurofurence staff is a great team, you guys rock!
• Great press coverage in the Freies Wort Suhl again, even with a pre-convention report.
• The Ringberg Hotel staff is beyond amazing.
• The pawpet play was very well-received, despite the unusual genre.
• An outstanding performance by Alexander James Adams.
• Lots of fursuit fun.
• A perfectly tuned PA.
• The staff buffet.

The Bad

• Eurofurence has become too large for the Ringberg Hotel.
• One staff member lying down with mononucleosis even before the convention started, three staff member hospitalized for several hours due con-crud (a main puppeteer among them, on the day of the play), one attendee still in hospital with a raptured gastric ulcer. Ouch.
• Several transmitters and headsets, and one receiver, of the wireless microphone system breaking during performances.
• The trunked radio link badly disturbing stage video and EF Prime again.
• EF15 is over now.

By the way, no offense to our Swiss friends, but having raclette with extremely stinking cheese at the bar in the basement was a terrible idea. It completely killed the dead dog party for the rest of us. Don't do that again, please.

( ...snip... )

I guess driving > 3500 mi per year in the US (and actually reading the driving tips of the travel guides) does pay off.

...an excellent concert by Anne Clark. Wow, what an experience! Even the compulsory chain-smoker on one side and the drunk old-time fans who never even remotely grasped the meaning of the lyrics on the other couldn't destroy the atmosphere.

I'm so happy I was able to make it after returning from my vacation, by pure luck it was the last concert of this year's Bardentreffen.

I boarded the flight to Nürnberg, sat down in my seat, and fell asleep even before take off, only to wake up again during landing. So I guess it was a smooth flight. Washing machine is running, there's tea in the cup, I'm home.

The flights so far were on time, US-Airways staff lovely (even the ground crew), and technically no issues. Except that during the transatlantic flight I suddenly felt nauseous. I barely kept my lunch in the stomach and was cold-sweating for quite a while. It eventually got better, with the stomach still being a bit upset. Eating something sweet helped a lot, apparently I was experiencing some kind of hypoglycemia, even though my blood sugar level is usually normal. Either way, I didn't get much sleep on the flight. I just hope that the flight to Nuremberg will be as smooth as the previous flights.

Breakfast at 7Eleven, a short stop at Siesta Key, Sarasota, and then: Myakka River State Park. Originally I didn't have it on my list, but I'm extremely glad I visited it. It is very scenic and has a couple of short hikes. It is probably best visited by canoe, unfortunately I've never done that before thus I didn't dare to try it traveling alone...

The canopy walkway through the top of the trees (approx. 5 m high) is very interesting, however that thing is swinging quite a bit and a small challenge for people with acrophobia like me. Even worse was the 20 m high wooden tower at the end of it, even though it isn't swinging too noticeable. 15 m were the most I could do. But the view was great.

Also, I met this surprisingly large guy:



As far as I can tell it's an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus), the largest species of rattlesnake, and the most venemous in North America, according to Wikipedia

I also saw a lot of lizards, wading birds and vultures. A lovely park and a lot of great wildlife!

Afterwards, I drove back to Orlando, taking the quite scenic route via Arcadia (FL72, FL70, US17) instead of the Interstate. It was certainly worth the detour, no non-descriptive urban sprawl like on the Atlantic side, no one fenced-neighbourhood-with-a-golf-course next to each other like on the Gulf side. It reminded me of East Friesia at times, though.

Now, one day later, I'm at a Best Western hotel in Orlando, they gave me a suite for the regular weekday rate, yay! Flight's scheduled for 2:40 pm, which means I have some time left. Perhaps I could do some shopping at Aldi a few blocks away, their salted cashews are great!

The Everglades look quite a bit like the moors in Northern Germany. For me who grew up near such places the Everglades probably aren't as scenic as for others. One interesting aspect is that the vegetation is quite different from what I've seen in relatively old documentations, as the swamp is slowly drying out.

Of course, the value of such places does not lie in the beauty of the landscape. It's mostly highly specialized plants and insects which makes it mandatory to preserve. Thus, one cannot actually do much while visiting the national park for just one day. The hikes are short (and interesting), you can book a boat tour at Flamingo and Everglades City, or a tour with one of those dreaded air boats. But for the real experience a ranger lead tour would be necessary, for which I didn't have time.

However, it was worth the trip. I saw an adult alligator relaxing in the sun, only three meters from the trail. These animals sure can grow quite large. Or some really large locusts. Even, despite the time of day, many birds.

What I really don't like is the climate. Too hot, too humid for me. I cannot drink water as fast as I sweat it. At least the mosquitos are bearable, though they caught me on my back quite heavily where I wasn't able to apply the repellent.

The gulf coast is more of my liking. Nice, tidy, well-maintained. A small detour through Downtown Naples, which has nice upper-quality shops and restaurants, brought me to the beach. While a thunderstorm was building up over the sea, two dolphins swam by. Unfortunately, there was not enough light anymore to photograph them, but just watching wild dolphins was a nice and totally unexpected experience.

The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is located North of the John F. Kennedy Space Center and is a large marsh area. I watched Manatees, got some photos on Scrub Trail as well on Palm Hammock Trail and got quite wet on Oak Hammock Trail. The hammock trails are quite interesting with a very distinct tropical vegetation. The Wildlife Drive is also very interesting, though in the afternoon there were not many birds to see. The bald eagle was nowhere to be seen, the osprey sat at the highway instead, but I saw some birds at least. I forgot the bird guide and have to look up at home what exactly I saw...

Playalinda Beach is nice, but only if you want to go swimming. Otherwise it isn't worth the $3 entrance fee, in my opinion.

It wasn't that hot, but quite humid with a soft breeze. I was sweating like hell, no way to put on sun screen without it getting washed off right again. Of course this lead to a heavy sunburn, curiously mainly on my left side even though I had the sun from right when I was outside. Apparently the windows of the car don't block UV like they should be. Also, I wasn't able to purchase insect repellant before driving to Homestead. The mosquitos weren't a concern, but I had to outrun those annoying small biting flies.

I took the US 1 down to Miami for the greatest part, but got annoyed by all the traffic lights. It's not a scenic route either, so I used the I 95 in the end, which indeed has some scenic stretches. Driving through Miami was interesting. At last some city, not just urban sprawl. It's certainly on my list of locations to check out next time.

Fursuit bowling after Megaplex started one hour late, but was very entertaining. Unfortunately, it also ended late, so we didn't get to visit a theme park. Instead, BBF, Yappy, Kwisa and me chatted a bit and afterwards drove to Downtown Kissimmee. At night, we had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's at Downtown Disney with more than 10 people. The Macadamia Chicken was excellent.

The next morning I drove BBF to the airport and went shopping. No new cowboy hat, but a couple of jeans and some groceries. For the rest of the day I drove to New Smyrna, hit the beach and talked to a nice old lady. The night was spent at a motel without WLAN.

The concert of Matthew Ebel was great. He needs a band, though. He's a hell of a piano player, and his voice is excellent. But the pre-recorded drums and bass don't sound right.

I saw JR at Anthrocon two years (IIRC) ago. He showed some potential back then. Not anymore, with this year's performance he showed a lot of skill. A very entertaining show and an interesting style. I'd really love to see more in the future.

BBF's dance was great fun. I switched between filming and dancing all the time, and to be honest, I neglected my duties as a camera man in favour of dancing. Even though I was very tired, I stayed to the very end at 5 am. I just couldn't go to bed.

Sunday was Pawpet Funday. I was invited on stage with Harald the German Sheep for a short appearance. I almost blew it as I hardly understand anything over the PA, let alone who was talking. A sound monitor would be great to have on stage. At least the song parodies worked well. And the coyote dressed as "Günther" (played by Uncle Kage, of course) shooing me from stage was priceless. ;-)

The rest of the day was spent dining and chatting with friends. Small conventions have the advantage to actually have time to talk to people. That's what made the long journey worth it.

I have to say, Megaplex was a lot of fun, very relaxing and inspiring. I'm looking forward to return in the future.