Item 86. Grex Board of Directors Meeting Minutes - March 1999 Jan Wolter (janc) Tue, Mar 23, 1999 (21:14). 213 lines, 28 responses. Cyberspace Communications March 1999 - Board of Director's Meeting March 23, 1999 Minutes Presiding: John Remmers (remmers) Secretary: Jan Wolter (janc) Other Board Members: Mark Conger (aruba) Scott Helmke (scott) STeve Andre (steve) [arrived late] Members of the Public: Valerie Mates (valerie) Arlo Mates (arlo) Mary Remmers (mary) Paul Pickelmann (prp) Charles Mitchell (arthurp) Jim Deigert (jdeigert) Cindi Keesan (keesan) Steve Gibbard (scg) AGENDA ITEM 8: Gavel Banging - John Remmers reminded Jan Wolter that he was secretary, and loaned him pen and paper. - John Remmers confessed to having forgotten to bring a gavel. - Various people speculated on the agenda item numbering scheme, but illumination did not strike. - Since only four board members had remembered to come, quorum was not present, so the meeting was started (not with a bang but with a whimper) as an "informational meeting". AGENDA ITEM 216: Scheduled Treasurer's Report - Mark Conger presented the monthly treasurer's report for February. The full report is available on-line in coop item 80. * February was a darn good month. Total Income: $1336.21 Total Expenses: $919.36 New Members: 4 Renewing Members: 2 * Expenses include $300 for insurance. * Most of the money from the spare parts fund has been transfered to the general fund, with the approval of the donors. Some went to the UPS fund. * There was some discussion of the UPS fund. There is currently $119 there. - Mark Conger presented a preliminary report for March: * So far, March looks like it will probably be break-even: Income to Date: $477.60 Expenses to Date: $516,56 New Members to Date: 0 * Income includes a $140 non-membership donation from a person whose account was reaped before their money arrived. Will send snail-mail. * Auction Status: Open Items 11 Closed, Unpaid Items 36 $467.50 Paid, Undelivered Items 18 $257.51 Delivered Items 184 $1121.75 --- -------- 249 $1846.76 Valerie has been calling some of the people who bought items but haven't paid (aka, "deadbeats") and will continue to do so. A unsuccessful attempt was made to badger Steve Gibbard into buying the NeXTStation. - Mark Conger presented a budget overview report, since the last was six months ago. * Various line graphs, pie-charts and tables were shown and admired by all. * Grex's income has been pretty much flat since 1994, generally hovering between $600 to $700 a month. * Grex's expenses have been growing steadily since its founding, hitting $600 a few months ago. Cutting phone lines seems to have turned this around, so even with the added expense of insurance, we should be OK. However, we probably can't handle any increase in regular expenses. * We haven't bought any hardware recently, so we do have some money reserves that could be spent on one-time expenses. * Costs are about 50% phone lines. AGENDA ITEM 5624: Publicity Committee Report - Misti Tucker, the Publicity Czar, was not present. - Valerie Mates passed around some more mini-flyers for people to leave here and there. NON-AGENDA ITEM: Unscheduled Gavel Banging - STeve Andre arrived, making quorum. - John Remmers would have banged the gavel to call the meeting to order, except he'd forgotten the gavel and, anyway, it would have awakened the baby. AGENDA ITEM 229: Technical Committee Report - Valerie Mates said the disks are generally full. Staff has been cleaning up left and right, and work is in progress to get additional disks (which we have lots of) installed. - Valerie Mates said there have been lots of vandals (as usual). Jan Wolter has written a new "robocop" program which replaces the old "killorphans" program and does some automated catching of fork bombs. STeve Andre thinks it gets about 75% of all fork bomb attacks. - Valerie Mates said that staff had found a site that actually allows people to run eggdrop bots for free (Hobbiton.org). Staff plans to contact people there for permission, and put up some messages advising people who want to run bots to go there. - Valerie Mates said Jan Wolter had installed a new version of Backtalk that allows HTML responses. Debate is in progress in Coop about whether this is a good idea. - STeve Andre said that Grex is now running on 256 megabytes of memory, largely thanks to Charles Mitchell's work in repairing the memory expansion board. Most of the new memory was donated with the 4/690 system, but some was scrounged from various donors by STeve and Charles. - STeve Andre said that he and Charles Mitchell have now scrounged enough memory to put together one of the spare 4/670 systems as a development system. - Jan Wolter said Jerome Tonneson (jerome) has donated a one drive SCSI enclosure. This will probably be used for the development system, or to add a differential drive onto Grex. - Charles Mitchell said he had checked the last two CPU boards that Madhivanan (madhi) had donated, and that they appeared to work. We now have two spare motherboards and four spare CPU boards. - Jan Wolter admitted that he had dropped the ball on selling old Grex hardware. - Scott Helmke said backups were being done again, and another would be done soon. - Scott Helmke said we need a new console for Grex. He will look into building one out of the various old PC bits in the pumpkin. - Scott Helmke said that we have been having occasional busy signals on the dial-in lines, but not very often. Probably number of dial-in lines is good for now. - Steve Andre has been investigating "melonite," a web site that displays Grex's logo and claims to have an affiliation with us. There seems to be no intent to defraud anyone, but we don't want people appropriating our logo and good name, so we will file some complaints. AGENDA ITEM 21: Credit Card Info - Dan Gryniewicz, who was going to report on credit cards, was out sick, so this is post-poned till next month. AGENDA ITEM 554: Stapler Purchase - Mark Conger needs a long reach stapler to staple together Grex Handbooks. - Jim Deigert had modified an old stapler to give it a long enough reach to staple Grex Handbooks. It was tested on an actual Grex Handbook, and found OK, if not fantastic. - In case this doesn't work out, the board authorized money to purchase a stapler, at Mark's discretion. - Motion by Mark Conger: We authorize up to $30 for the purchase of a long stapler. Seconded by Jan Wolter. After some irrelevant discussion about copy machines and rubber restoration compound, John Remmers called a vote. Motion passed 5-0-0. AGENDA ITEM 14412: New Business - We need to have a "Plan the Budget Meeting" * Mark Conger will enter an item in Coop * Jan Wolter and Valerie Mates tentatively offered to host the meeting. * The date of Sunday, April 18 was tentatively suggested. AGENDA ITEM 374720: Gavel Cessation - John Remmers and various over-enthusiastic by-standers banged various objects in lieu of a gavel. 28 responses total. ---------- (86) #1 Mark A. Conger (aruba) Wed, Mar 24, 1999 (00:26). 1 line. Nice minutes Jan! ---------- (86) #2 Dave Lovelace (davel) Wed, Mar 24, 1999 (09:30). 1 line. And *quick*. ---------- (86) #3 ~~Down With the Grapes~~ (hhsrat) Wed, Mar 24, 1999 (11:05). 3 lines. The Gavel banging was on the agenda as throughout. So, it wouldn't have been unscheduled when the gavel (or lack thereof) was banged when STeve arrived. Or am I misinterpreting the agenda? ---------- (86) #4 John H. Remmers (remmers) Wed, Mar 24, 1999 (13:30). 3 lines. Excellent minutes! My gavel bangings are always scheduled but spontaneous. ---------- (86) #5 John H. Remmers (remmers) Wed, Mar 24, 1999 (13:32). 3 lines. (And I should note that the minutes were posted, in final form, about 90 minutes after the meeting adjourned. Jan must've gotten right on it.) ---------- (86) #6 Scott Helmke (scott) Wed, Mar 24, 1999 (15:52). 2 lines. Indeed, as fast as I was ever able to post the minutes, and far more entertaining. ---------- (86) #7 ~~Down With the Grapes~~ (hhsrat) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (11:28). 5 lines. FWIW, hobbiton.org does not allow eggdrops. One of my IRC friends telnetted in and made an account, hoping to host an eggdrop for his channel there. Then, after he was in, there was a message saying they don't allow eggdrops. ---------- (86) #8 Jan Wolter (janc) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (12:31). 4 lines. Interesting. There web page now says eggdrops are not allowed. I think this changed in the past week. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Allowing eggdrops would require lots more resources than they appear to have available. ---------- (86) #9 Scott Helmke (scott) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (13:29). 2 lines. I guess that answers my question of "I wonder how long that [allowing eggdop] will last". ---------- (86) #10 STeve Andre' (steve) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (14:05). 3 lines. Sigh. At the moment, they aren't doing anything at all. They're pingable but thats it. So, back to square one, ie "No, I don't know where you can create a bot". ---------- (86) #11 Paul R Pickelmann (prp) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (17:40). 2 lines. What is a bot? ---------- (86) #12 Richard J. Wallner (richard) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (18:00). 6 lines. Remmers is president and forgot to bring the grex gavel?! this is grounds for impeachment hearings! actually, maybe the grex gavel should be auctioned off in the Auction conf to raise money. of course whoever buys the gavel would agree to loan it back to Remmers for use at the board meetings. ---------- (86) #13 STeve Andre' (steve) Thu, Mar 25, 1999 (23:37). 4 lines. No, they'd have to agree to loan it to the president, not remmmers. He is that now, but can't be after four years. But I don't want to see the gavel get sold at all! ;-) ---------- (86) #14 Scott Helmke (scott) Fri, Mar 26, 1999 (06:56). 2 lines. A bot is the usual slang for a program that pretends to be a use. Bots are most often used in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to keep control of channels. ---------- (86) #15 John H. Remmers (remmers) Fri, Mar 26, 1999 (07:00). 3 lines. (I think Scott meant to type "user", not "use". "Bot" is short for "robot".) ---------- (86) #16 C. Keesan (keesan) Fri, Mar 26, 1999 (13:59). 4 lines. There was also a discussion of getting an actual electric meter and socket. We biked Jim's over to my apartment today. Jim says there is a better socket in the Kiwanis bike dept., but come pick up what we have (behind the apartment on Hiscock St.) while he checks out the other socket. (Why the bike dept?) ---------- (86) #17 Misti Tucker (mta) Sun, Apr 4, 1999 (11:02). 2 lines. Just for the record, I was absent due to illness and had let the rest of the board know by e-mail ahead of time. ---------- (86) #18 Rick Green (rtg) Tue, Apr 6, 1999 (15:58). 8 lines. I re-iterate my offers: I have a used watthour meter which I am willing to donate, so that we can make continuous accurate measure of our usage. I have several working terminals. I believe 2 or three ADM-3As, and one IBM 3101, as well as one TI silent-700 thermal printing terminal. I am willing to donate any or all of these to grex, or to users who wish to connect to grex. Would one of these be suitable as a console for grex? Will the new development machine need a console? ---------- (86) #19 Mark A. Conger (aruba) Tue, Apr 6, 1999 (22:16). 5 lines. I think we ought to accept Rick's offer of the energy meter. Using it does mean that someone has to check it once in a while. If staff would agree to do that, and mail me the numbers (time checked and reading), I'll do the rest. This way we can be sure we're paying what we owe for electricity, and no more. What do the staff think? ---------- (86) #20 Jeff Kaplan (kaplan) Tue, Apr 6, 1999 (22:47). 3 lines. Thermal printing terminal to preserve all console messages is an interesting idea. How much does the paper cost (or how much paper are you offering to donate with the terminal)? ---------- (86) #21 STeve Andre' (steve) Fri, Apr 9, 1999 (17:28). 1 line. I think the meter is a cool idea. Just sent mail to Rick about it. Thanks! ---------- (86) #22 Rick Green (rtg) Sat, Apr 10, 1999 (00:09). 5 lines. I think I've got about a half-dozen rolls of thermal paper in the box nest to the terminal. If I wake up in time to make lunch tomorrow, I'll pick them up on my way into town. Sure I can't interest anyone in a good ADM3a? ---------- (86) #23 STeve Andre' (steve) Sat, Apr 10, 1999 (15:49). 2 lines. Marcus might be interested; he has some stuff that would match with a 3A perfectly. ---------- (86) #24 ~~Down With the Grapes~~ (hhsrat) Sun, Apr 11, 1999 (11:45). 1 line. If I knew what an ADM3A was, I might be interested :) ---------- (86) #25 STeve Andre' (steve) Sun, Apr 11, 1999 (15:42). 3 lines. An old, old 80x24 dumb terminal. It was even offered from the manufacturer as a kit--thats how old it is. Kind of a nice terminal, as dumb 80x24 terminals go. ---------- (86) #26 C. Keesan (keesan) Mon, Apr 12, 1999 (14:15). 1 line. Does that mean a 24 line page 80 columns wide? Were there other sizes? ---------- (86) #27 STeve Andre' (steve) Mon, Apr 12, 1999 (14:51). 4 lines. Yes, and yes. 80x24 was the standard, but some others existed, like 132x40, 96x24 and some others. Once graphical workstations came about the idea of a 'fixed' size went away. But back in the old days is was a fixed environment. ---------- (86) #28 Big Snauf (lilmo) Fri, Apr 16, 1999 (18:55). 3 lines. Belated thanks for the minutes; they look VERY nice. I was duly impressed, Jan. Update on auction deadbeats: The biggest(?) was duly called, and chastened, and is no longer a deadbeat.