response 26 of 94:

Nov 3 01:26 UTC 2000

Those are the ones who couldn't manage to conform to the "IT Professional's
Dress Code" for this particular photo-op.

response 28 of 94:

Nov 3 20:35 UTC 2000

That's what he said.  Actually, I have my doubts.

response 30 of 94:

Nov 7 02:35 UTC 2000

I'm inclined to think that when attending a court is actually "a good thing"
to dress up a bit.  I actually have a lot of respect for the courts and think
it is nice to show it the only way a person in the audience can show it.  Not
that I think it is "necessary", just "good".

response 32 of 94:

Nov 7 22:27 UTC 2000

I often find it is easier to be regarded as someone of authority when I 
am more nicely dressed.

response 34 of 94:

Nov 7 23:45 UTC 2000

I like putting on a suit and tie once in a while. Reminds me that I really am a
professional--or at least semi-professional. :)

Yesterday, I was on jury duty. The case which my group was called in to be the
jury on was brought by a guy who claimed he was injured at a bar because of the
bar's negligence. 

I wasn't selected to be on the jury, but in my mind, the guy already had one
strike against him because he showed up wearing a red shirt and white or
beigish corduroy pants. I was dressed better than he was!

response 36 of 94:

Nov 15 15:04 UTC 2000

Today, Thursday November 15, is the LAST DAY to place names in
nomination for the Grex Board of Directors.  There are three open
slots, for two-year terms beginning January 1.  Any Grex member
who's paid at least three months dues and who can attend the
monthly board meetings in Ann Arbor is eligible to server.
If you'd like to nominate someone (including yourself), see
Item 207 in the Coop conference (item:coop,207).

So far, four people have accepted nominations.

response 38 of 94:

Nov 15 15:12 UTC 2000

Oops, sorry.  Should've said Wednesday, Nov. 15.  But nominations
end today in any case.

response 40 of 94:

Nov 15 23:48 UTC 2000

*files an appeal to allow nominations to go on indefinitely, pending a hand
count*

response 42 of 94:

Dec 1 11:06 UTC 2000

   I'm about to fall down now, but I felt I should say a few
words here about our new tape drive.  It's in, and I did a
complete backup of all of Grex except for the mail spool, all
on one tape...

   Installation went pretty well, except for the fact that I
had to hunt around for some very small screws to fasten the
unit in with; fortunately, some intelligent staffer put a
bunch of screws in one of our little cabinets, and I was
able to find three of the right kind.  I'm sure the forth is
in the Pumpkin, somewhere.  I of course didn't figure out
what SCSI id to make the tape drive beforehand, so made two
initial guesses which were wrong which meant that the system
didn't work right, but the third attempt and all was well.

   The initial writing to the tape was a failure till I tried
a different device to write too (rst8 instead of rst0) and
then things seemed much better.  Marcus and I played with some
special numbers for the dump program, teaching it about this
7G tape, and I think we succeeded--I'll be testing out the tape
that was written this morning, but I think we really have 
something that can hold 7G of uncompressed data, or up to 
14G of compressed data.

   The backup was uneventful, save for the little "clean me"
light which came on--I think that the drive should have been 
cleaned before the first use, although the manual did not say
that.  So we have to get one of the Exebyte tape cleaners (not
too much money) and clean the head soon.

   I'm not sure how much faster this drive is than our first
drive is.  It took about 4:45 to make the backups.  Scott, our
backup czar will have to tell us if this is faster, or what.

   All in all I'm happy with the drive.  We got Exabyte tapes,
which at $7 makes the media cheaper than our older 2G tapes
which is nice.  I'm going to be calling Exabyte soon to talk
with them about specifics about using SunOS with this drive.
At the moment I am not sure what device you write to to get 
the 14G data compression mode, so we'll ask.

   I actually had a dream about Grex crashing and our not
having any backups about a month ago.  I think I can sleep
a little better at night, now.  Speaking of night I've been
at this all night after working all day, so I am about to 
fall down now.  I trust that I managed to write this in some
dialect of English which you can all understand.  Night...

response 44 of 94:

Dec 1 14:27 UTC 2000

And I've been told by several tech-support geeks that new tapes always leave
the heads exceptionally dirty, whereas old tapes apparently have less excess
oxide to leave behind.

response 46 of 94:

Dec 1 21:09 UTC 2000

OK.

response 48 of 94:

Dec 2 00:13 UTC 2000

(are candidates submitting statements this year?  have they been asked?)