Board Meeting Minutes - Sept. 28, 1994

Oct 2 14:10 UTC 1994

Minutes of Cyberspace Communications Board of Directors Meeting, 9-28-94.

0.  Initializing Gavel (srw):

    The meeting was called to order at 7:12 p.m.

    Board members attending: Steve Weiss (srw) [chair], John Remmers
    (remmers) [secretary], STeve Andre (steve), Rane Curl (rcurl), Mike
    Smerza (morel).

    Board members absent:  Meg Geddes (meg), Dan Romanchik (danr).

    Others attending:  Chip Botkin (chip), Bill Hosman (wh), Valerie
    Mates (popcorn), Kevin Powell (kpowell), Bill Rayl (snark), Mary
    Remmers (chelsea), Pattie Snyder-Rayl (pegasus).

1.  Treasurer's report (danr):  As Dan was not present, there was no
    official treasurer's report.  Valerie mentioned that income for
    August had been $459.13, and that $48.13 profit had been realized
    on Grex shirts and coffee mugs.

2.  501(c)3 Committee (rcurl):  Rane indicated that there was nothing
    new to report.

3.  Computer Rehabilitation Committee (rcurl):  Rane has entered an
    item in Coop explaining the project.  He indicated that there is
    a need for information on potential recipients of the the re-
    habilitated computers.

4.  Publicity Committee (mta):  In Misti's absence, no report was
    presented.

5.  Hypertext Committee (srw, carl, robh):  Steve W. indicated that
    there was nothing new to report, and that he plans to remove this
    as a regular adgenda item and instead bring up hypertext matters
    under new business as the occasion warrants.

6.  JCC Sale (mta):  In Misti's absence, STeve A. reported that Steve
    Siricca has donated on the order of 300 lb. of equipment that
    could be sale fodder.  Valerie indicated that ITI has additional
    equipment to donate as well.

7.  Technical Committee (steve & staff):

      (a) STeve has obtained new PC Route software that he hopes to
      install later in the week and that should improve usenet news
      delivery from ICNet.  There was some discussion on whether
      or not improved news flow would degrade the overall respon-
      siveness of the link.

      (b) Staff plans to try a possible solution to the disk
      problems on /usr/local and /home that would involve adjusting
      partition boundaries and that would not necessiate a full
      backup and restore, thus avoiding extended downtime.  The
      result will be a /home partition size of about 600 mb.

      (c) We now have a 32 mb. memory card.  Mechanical details of
      card design will necessitate re-arranging the other cards in
      the Sun-3 in order to install it, a process that will involve
      2 to 3 hours of downtime.

      (d) The modem on ttyh2 has apparently failed and will need to
      be replaced.  This is the first modem failure in Grex's 3-year
      history.  The plan is to use the 2400 baud Supra loaned by Meg
      as the replacement.

      (e) STeve has compiled a list of 386 motherboards that are
      known to run Net-BSD correctly.  We need to obtain such a board
      to upgrade the PC route box.

      (f) Steve W. mentioned that Pnews was one of the files lost due
      to the recent disk problems, a fact of which STeve A. was un-
      aware.  This and other files lost from /usr/local will be
      stored from backup soon.

      (g) Valerie reported on a possible source of donations of used
      Sun equipment.

      (h) Marcus has been unable to make progress on fixing the
      problems with passwd, chfn, etc. due to large demands on his
      time at work.  That situation has apparently stabilized, however;
      hopefully progress can be made soon.

8.  Financial planning:  In the treasurer's absence, it was decided to
    postpone this item to next month's meeting.

9.  Dungeon issues (popcorn and others):  There's been progress in
    constructing Grex's new room -- a team consisting of carl, popcorn,
    scg, srw, worked on this, with meals on wheels support from chelsea.
    Wiring and other prep work remains to be done -- STeve and Carl
    tentatively plan to work on it this coming Saturday.  The new room
    will be 6' by 13', a substantial gain in length over the original
    room.  There has been verbal agreement to extend the lease to 3
    years, with no "opt-out" clause during this period.

A.  Staff membership policy (srw):  Remmers entered an item in coop to
    discuss his proposal.  But as neither remmers nor srw thought to
    bring the proposal to the meeting, the wording was not available
    and it was decided to postpone the matter to the October meeting.

B.  Reimbursing Greg Cronau for the ALM-II board:

      Motion (rcurl, srw):  To reimburse Greg Cronau $200 for the
      ALM-II board.

        Passed unanimously (5-0-0).

C.  Grex liabilities to individuals:  There are a number of hardware
    items that have been loaned to Grex.  Some are actually being used,
    but many are not.  STeve has begun the process of tagging items
    with their ownership status.

D.  Ordering mousepads (chelsea):  Our supplier requires a minimum order
    of 30 mousepads, but only 9 people have indicated a definite
    interest at this point.  The concern is whether we should risk an
    order if we do not know whether they will sell.  It was decided to
    postpone a decision until the next meeting, at which point we will
    have some data on sales of other Grex paraphernalia items at the
    JCC sale.

E.  New business:

      (a) Pattie raised the issue of installing a separate phone line
      to handle usenet news traffic.  STeve indicated that although it
      would be premature to do it now, before we've moved and are on
      Centrex, putting news and mail traffic on a separate line is
      something that will need to be done eventually.

      (b) Mike S. reported on a need that the United Way has for some
      computer expertise and asked whether Grex could help.  He will
      try to get more information on their exact needs.

      (c) Valerie relayed a concern from Josh Grosse concerning the
      handling by staff of his situation when his 'jdg' account
      disappeared due to problems with the account database software.
      The general feeling was that the situation with Josh's and other
      lost accounts could have been dealt with much better, and that
      hopefully we'll be more sensitive in the future as a result of
      this experience.

      (d) Mary indicated that in view of our recent growth and in-
      creased income, we should look into the question of tax
      liability.  This will be an agenda item for the October
      meeting.

      (e) Kevin Powell raised the issue of the effect on Grex of
      changes that Merit might make in its access policies.  Changes
      are currently being considered by Merit.  Considerable discussion
      ensued, although since no immediate actifon would result, it was
      decided to adjourn the meeting and continue the discussion online.

F.  Terminating Gavel (srw):  The meeting was banged to a close at about
    9:30 p.m.

                                Respectfully submitted,
                                John Remmers, secretary

response 2 of 27:

Oct 2 16:38 UTC 1994

Should be "Steve Sarrica" in number 6 above.

response 4 of 27:

Oct 2 16:57 UTC 1994

You mean, we're not Poised for efficient board meetings?

response 6 of 27:

Oct 2 19:16 UTC 1994

Some corrections:

In #1, I don't know for sure that that was the size of August's income.
That was the size of August's bank deposit; Dan may have (but probably
did not) make others.  Also, the t-shirt figure is the gross t-shirt
income for the month, not the profit.

Re part D: Much to my surprise, we sold very few shirts and mugs at
the JCC sale.  I don't know what this will mean for a mousepad purchase.

response 8 of 27:

Oct 3 02:47 UTC 1994

It honestly wasn't profit.  We paid out $187.83 for t-shirts in
September and only took in $48 or so.  Overall we're doing OK on
t-shirts, but we definitely didn't turn a t-shirt profit in September.

response 10 of 27:

Oct 3 04:14 UTC 1994

(I think the minuteman made a mistake. It's one of those pesky human traits.)

response 12 of 27:

Oct 3 15:28 UTC 1994

<sigh>

(poor minuteman!)

response 14 of 27:

Oct 3 15:54 UTC 1994

where *is* that pesky danr character anyway?

response 16 of 27:

Oct 3 17:25 UTC 1994

Dan should be back any day now.
Saying that we have -$139 of t-shirt income isn't accurate either,
because as of the end of last month we had covered the cost of
the original t-shirts and mugs and had a small amount of income from it.
Also, I think John mentioned in the minutes that I mentioned that I
didn't have complete treasury information, nor even authorization to
give a treasurer's report, but this was the amount of the month's
bank deposit.
I figured preliminary information would be better than no information.
<sigh>

response 18 of 27:

Oct 3 17:58 UTC 1994

Then why are 11 of the first 17 responses devoted to it?

No big deal as far as I'm concerned, y'understand.  :)

response 20 of 27:

Oct 3 21:12 UTC 1994

No big deal as far as I'm concerned, either, y'understand.  :)

response 22 of 27:

Oct 4 13:09 UTC 1994

Re 17: <sigh>  that *is* what I originally said at the meeting

response 24 of 27:

Oct 4 17:36 UTC 1994

Hm, is the secretary allowed to forget the minutes item?  :)