Grex Board Meeting Minutes - September 9, 2007
Present: S. Lynne Fremont (slynne) - Board Member, President
Mark Conger (aruba) - Board Member, Treasurer
Jan Wolter (janc) - Board Member, Secretary - Staff
Colleen McGee (cmcgee) - Board Member
Larry Kestenbaum (polygon) - Board Member
Telepresent:
Dan Cross (cross) - Board Member
Absent:
Bruce Howard (bhoward) - Board Member - Staff
Opening Gavel Tap: 7:30 pm
Jan Wolter was initially absent, so Lynne Freemont started taking
minutes.
Treasurer's Report:
Grex took in $193 in August and spent $400, leaving a balance of $6756
in the bank account. There are 56 members, 45 paid through September
15.
The major unusual expense way $222 for the new external 500GB disk,
meant to be used for backups.
Staff Report:
OS UPGRADE
Dan Cross has successfully completed a remote upgrades of the OpenBSD
systems, so Grex is now running on OpenBSD 4.1. Thanks Dan!
NEW HARDWARE
The new backup drive did not work with the old version of OpenBSD, so
I think Dan backed up to various nooks and crannies of the other disk.
The external disk, however, seems to work fine with the new version of
OpenBSD, so we will be able to use it in the future as a backup
device.
Last month we felt that it was time to buy a new computer, and asked
that someone come up with a proposal. Nothing has been done on this
yet, but we'll get back to it.
There have been some attacks on the system. Staff has been working
on this.
Old Business:
ADDITIONAL SUBSTAFF ROLES
Discussion centered on social validation policy. This is a validation
procedure that must be passed to get even basic internet services,
like email. No ID is required, but a certain willingness to interact
with others and behave like a human being is. This was discussed,
though the specific validation procedures will be left to the people
involved to work out. Various names for this group of validators
were discussed, finally arriving at "porters" in the sense of someone
who guards a doorway, rather than in the sense of someone who schelps
and carries. The board would appoint/approve people for this role.
Colleen McGee moves:
That we create a group called "porters" which will perform the
social validation to add users to the community user group. This
is contingent on passage of the member proposal in coop 14 item 39.
Larry Kestenbaum seconds, passes unanimously.
Schedule Next Meeting:
The next board meeting will be on October 14, 2007 at the home of
Larry Kestenbaum. Gather at 7:00pm, gavel at 7:30pm.
New Business:
There was some discussion of meeting bimonthly instead of monthly.
Actually we have mostly been meeting 1.5-monthly, which seems to
work well.
There was some discussion of having Grex's email come through Google.
Grex users would still be able to access their mail from Grex in the
same ways, but it would probably be easier to administer and would
certainly provide better spam filtering. Might be free to
non-profits. We hoped Dan could investigate further.
Closing Gavel Tap: 8:38 pm
9 responses total.
Sorry to be so late to post these minutes.
Next month could you please discuss upgrading the modems with a newer and more reliable set that a modem-using grexer has tested out thoroughly? For some of us this is more important than replacing a working computer, since the old modems keep going down for weeks at a time.
Do they even make dial up modems anymore?
Most likely, but that is not really relevant to the issue because grex has had a set of newer modems for years now, and they are tested working. Dang brought them to another member a while back and he keeps phoning me to ask when grex will be usable again. Someone (forget who) said nobody cared about the modems, which is not true.
When I get a chance, I'll stop by Kiwanis and pick up the modems. I don't know when that will be, though. Maybe this next Saturday. However, I begin to suspect that the problem with the modems is NOT the modems. I've not figured out exactly what the problem is, though. Have they worked at all since the upgrade to the OS?
They stopped working a couple of weeks ago. Just rings and rings. Thanks for working on this problem.
Re #5: "Have they worked at all since the upgrade to the OS?" It appears that they have. The OS was upgraded on Aug. 12, and it appears that the last login via modem was on Sep. 1, shortly after 10:00 a.m.
Unicorn, shut your fucking mouth before I fucking shut it for you.
Here is hoping Chuck takes the high road and says
not
a
word
in response.
You have several choices: