valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:52:49 2004 Valer78 responses total.
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Sadly, there are some hardware purchases we need to think about:
- A mail machine. Doesn't have to be much of a machine. It's main
function would be to smooth out the load as far as mail delivery to
Grex goes. Mail tends to arrive in bursts that can slow Grex to
a crawl. A mail machine would handle the bursts, and feed things
on to Grex at a more steady rate.
- Spare parts for the 670. We need another motherboard and cpu card
as spare parts for the 670. 670 motherboards are moderately hard
to find, so that isn't something we'd want to be looking for in a
big hurry. I don't know what the prices on these look like.
will it be possible for someone to bring an assessment of grex's power consumption to the meeting? it would help with the budget planning... perhaps also an estimate of consumption changes on the 670... i said somewhere else, but since i don't remember where, i'll repeat: the classified ads in the AA News now regularly show 486 boxes for sale for various prices. we could bring some of those ads to assess likely cost of a mail machine. is there a pumkin rent increase likely/possible anytime soon? how about telcom rate changes based on currently pending effects of deregulation? what particular value is centrex to us, and can we get trunk hunt service without it, say on another local carrier, should aforementioned changes necessitate it, or make it worth considering?
I'd like to come to the meeting, but can't be sure yet. I had no idea you and Jan lived behind 402 West Liberty, where some lawyer buddies of mine hang out! Also--do you have the whole house at 406 West Liberty, or should we look for a particular apartment?
I have most of a 486 to donate. I don't know if I have any RAM for the system. I don't have a network card for it. I don't have a case or hard drives. The rest I have.
OK, I'm about to enter a response with a lot of numbers in it, so try not to let your eyes glaze over. I have totalled our income from 1997 and what our expected expenses are in 1998 to get a figure for how much surplus we have to play with. After going over numerous phone bills and trying out things on the spread sheet to find out what gets taxed and what doesn't, I think I have an accurate model for how much we pay in overhead ($20/month), how much per line ($18.74), and how much our ISDN lines cost ($118.11).
1997 Credits, not including fund drives:
---------------------------------------
Membership Dues $6,405.00
Auction Proceeds $1,414.10
Miscellaneous Donations $783.06
Profit from promotional items $240.60
---------
$8,842.76 = $736.90 per month
Expected monthly expenses for 1998:
----------------------------------
Monthly Yearly
------- ------
Rent $60.00 $720.00
Electricity $83.00 $996.00
Centrex overhead $20.00 $240.00
13 dial-in lines @ $18.74 each $243.62 $2,923.44
ISDN lines $118.11 $1,417.32
ICNET phone lines $38.74 $464.88
Staff line $18.74 $224.88
Bank Service Charge (est.) $5.84 $70.02
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$588.05 $7,056.54
One-time 1998 costs already spent:
---------------------------------
Centrex Installation * $73.76
Renewal of cyberspace.org $50.00
Ethernet hub $71.37
P.O. Box renewal $40.00
New disk $216.63
Backup tapes $36.09
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$487.85
* We've been paying off our Centrex installation for the past year,
and we're finally done (yay!)
So, if everything goes as planned, and we take in as much as we did last
year (and keep the same monthly expenses), we'll have a surplus of
$8,842.76
-$7,056.54
-$487.85
----------
$1,298.37
So the meeting, I hope, will focus on what to do with it, and perhaps on ways
we can either increase our income or decrease our expenses, so that we have
more left over for improvements to Grex.
Keep in mind that we can also hold fundraisers to help pay for improvements, but I think we'd better get the new computer running before we try that.
Is there any data available on how often all 13 dial-in lines are in use?
Not to the degree that we had before went moved the modems to the terminal server. However, before that we had full line use for a few minutes every day. Terminal server stats we have now indicate that all 13 lines do get used, but not much beyond that unless we start rebooting the terminal server every day. An issue with line stats, though, is that a number of users still dial 761-5041 out of habit, making it seem like there is more use of certain lines that there might be otherwise. We could move 761-5041 to 2nd line in the trunk hunt to get around that.
I think we ought to at least consider the possibility of dropping a line or two to save money, so it would be good to know what effect that would have on dialers-in (i.e., how many more people would have to wait for a connection, and how long would they have to wait?) If a line costs $18.74 per month and $42 to turn on, we save money by turning it off for 2 months and 8 days or more.
I've also noticed that many of the people who use the dial-ins also have ISP accounts. Since dial-ins cost Grex a lot more than users who telnet in do, we should really be encouraging anybody who can to telnet in rather than dialing in.
I *don't* telnet in at certain times, because I know there will be a long telnet queue wait but modems will be available.
Telnet costs Grex a lot less than dialins, but that is at least partly because we offer a bargain-basement telnet service that is often cumbersome to use. I have the option of either dialing or telnetting. Other things being equal, I would prefer to telnet because then I can do other online activities like reading my email and web browsing at the same time I'm Grexing. The problem is that other things aren't equal: When I telnet, I often have to wait in the queue, and when I do get on, response time is generally slower than with direct dialing. The ISDN line has helped a lot with response time, but direct dialing remains significantly better. These considerations usually tip the balance for me in favor of direct dialing, as I imagine they do for other people who have a choice. I don't think people are going to voluntarily choose telnetting until long queue waits become rare and the response times get better. Achieving that would cost money and make telnetting more expensive for Grex to support. Given the downsides to telnetting, how do we encourage it without incurring additional expense?
(Scott slipped in and made the same point I did in a lot fewer words... :-)
I'd opine that many dial-inners don't have other 'net access, so they're coming to grex to party and maybe bbs. Cutting down dial-in lines would therefore reduce the number of people doing grex-inherent things.
I've looked at the figures Mark posted in #8 and I have a slightly
different take on our financial outlook. I think we will be lucky
to break even in 1998.
Mark says our monthly expenses are $588.05, and so a year's
worth of monthly expenses is $7,056.54. He says our one-time costs
for 1998, already spent, are $487.85. He then deducts $7,056.54
and $487.85 from our 1997 income (which he assumes will stay the same
in 1998), and comes up with a surplus of $1,298.37.
But his scenario assumes that we will have no other "one-time
costs" in 1998. That is bound to be incorrect. For example, we
will certainly have one-time costs of setting up the 670, plus maybe
the suggested new mail machine.
That $487.85 in one-time costs was entirely spent in one month:
January. Just suppose for the sake of argument that we have $487.85
in one-time costs during each of the remaining 11 months in 1998.
Then we would have an extra 11 x $487.85 = $5,336.35 in one-time
costs, transforming that $1,298.37 surplus into a loss of
$5,336.35 - $1,298.37 = $4,067.98.
Now of course we're not going to have nearly $500 of one-time
costs in each month. However, it does seem reasonable to me to
assume that we're probably going to have at least $100 in one-time
costs each month. That would mean that we would only have a surplus
for 1998 of $1,298.37 - (11 x $100.00) = $198.37. Practically zero.
Unfortunately, the way to encourage direct-dial users to migrate to telnet is to make direct-dial less and less convenient by reducing the number of dial-in lines. I use both telnet and direct-dial, depending on where I am (East Lansing or Ann Arbor) and the time of day. One has to have a lot of patience or a lot of dedication to wait in the telnet queue between about 11pm and maybe 6-8 am. <krj feels an urge to climb onto an old hobby-horse...>
I use backtalk exclusively. It's that or telnet for me, since I live outside the local calling area, and since I don't have a modem at work. I've come to really prefer backtalk. There's no waiting in a queue, though I suppose that's compensated for by lags when downloading new items or entering commands. There are limitations, too, such as no e-mail (unless you log in or forward your mail to someplace where you have POP mail), no party, etc. Anyway, I just wanted to point out there is a 3rd connection option for conferencing.
If the direct-dial lines are underutilized, it might make sense to reduce their number. But I'd hope that any resulting savings would be plowed into improving telnet connectivity. Otherwise, there's the danger that instead of encouraging migration to telnet, we'd be encouraging migration away from grex.
Dave, I certainly didn't assume that there would be no more one-time costs - The main point of the budget meeting, I think, is to decide what to do with that $1300 which we expect to take in but haven't allocated yet. In other words, to decide what one-time expenses we should commit to. (But thanks for reading my response - I get the feeling you were the only one. :)) All this anecdotal evidence about modem use is nice, but we need hard statistics before we decide to cut back on a line or to. Maybe it would help to see a list of the one-time expenses we incurred over the last year or two - that might help people to come up with ideas for what we should do in '98.
I think the $1300 should go towards saving Social Security. Seriously, though, don't get hung up on what to do with the surplus. $1300 will go for something. As this is a planning meeting, I'd try to plan how to raise more money, as Valerie has already suggested.
Well, being as this is a "Plan the *budget*" meeting, I think we ought to decide what we want to do with that money, or at least decide what our spending priorities are for the year. It may turn out that we can live comfortably on that $1300, or we may decide we need more, but we should decide one way or another. I've been growing steadily more uncomfortable with allocating hundreds of dollars at a time for hardware purchases, without any strategy for making sure we get the most important things first and don't bankrupt ourselves by trying to get everything. From the beginning to the end of 1997 the general fund dropped by $717.92. $423.20 of that went into stock for the Grex store, but the rest (almost $300) is money that we overspent. This year we expect to have less money to spend, so I'm worried that if we don't plan things out we will spend ourselves into an even deeper hole. Now I don't know jack about our hardware needs, and I'm happy to depend on staff to make recommendations for what we should get. But I wouldn't be doing my job as treasurer if I didn't point out that if we don't get organized, we have the potential to end up in a real mess. I asked for this budget meeting so we can set some priorities. If we want to spend a portion of it brainstorming about how to get more money, that's fine - but I hope we can make some concrete decisions about what to do with it, too. ------- With that in mind, here is what we spent general fund money on in 1997, over and above our normal operating expenses: Item Amount paid from general fund ---- ----------------------------- Centrex Installation (11/12 of it) $806.04 ISDN Installation $634.00 ISDN Routers (with $795.00 from fund drive) $355.93 SIMMs for the new computer $248.00 New Computer (with $1,387.80 from fund drive) $81.80 X-10 CP290 Computer Interface $40.98 Renewal of P.O. Box $40.00 Advertising $37.50 Backup Tapes $28.29 Reservation of Shelter for Grex B-Day Party $24.00 grex.org domain name (with $80 from fund drive) $20.00 Renewal of assumed name "Grex" w/ State of Mich. $10.00 Corporation Info Update to State of Mich. $10.00 (I'm afraid I don't remember what an "X-10 CP290 Computer Interface" is, but that's what it says on the receipt scott gave me. Scott, do you remember?)
I certainly hope we are extremely careful about degrading service (reducing dial-in access and shifting users to slow and limited web access) all the while looking for more donors.
I agree with Mary 100%.
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I've never seen Grex's ISDN connection saturated. When telnetting has been slow, it's been because Grex is slow, not anything to do with the Net connection. It's largely a perception thing, with people thinking that becasue the old modem Net connection was slow, all Net connections are slow. If the telnet queue is considered to be such a big problem, then we need to do something about it. Compared to the tiny fees from long distance carriers people have been complaining about, the amount of money we are wasting on obsolete dial-in lines is huge. Perhaps we should be looking at doing something like M-Net's system, where users from known local IP addresses are given priority over users from IP addresses in other parts of the world. That makes me quite uncomfortable, since it seems discriminatory, but if discrimination towards local users is the justification for spending all that money on the dial-up lines, having telnetd discriminate based on IP address would be a continuation of the same thing. Then again, I've never been convinced by the argument that local users need to be treated so much better than users from other parts of the world, because local users pay more money. It's largely been a chicken or egg situation, where we consistently say that the local users are the important users and spend lots of money on fixing things that inconvenience local users while ignoring problems that primarily affect users from other places, and then everybody acts surprised when it's primarily the local users who donate money. Quite frankly, speaking as somebody who as donated a lot of money and time to Grex but can't dial in easily, I'm getting quite sick of being grouped with the non-local users and being told that telnet access is less important.
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Valerie, the sales tax forms are due February 28th, and no, I haven't filled them out yet. I mean to get to it real soon. I'm frustrated that no one wants to suggest specific uses for our expected $1300 surplus - no one has mentioned any since response 4. I guess I'm partly to blame for bringing up the possibility of dropping dial-in lines. (For the record, I would much rather see those lines full all the time than see us drop them. But if they're almost never full, then maybe we have too many.) Jan gave some ideas for hardware purchases in #2 - are these our top priorities? How much money should we spend on advetising? Should we buy a UPS?
Re: the $1300 Save every dime of it. It provides us with a little, and I do consider it little) buffer.
Emergencies happen.
Mark, I certainly sympathize with the feelings you express in #24. It seems to me I made very similar comments when I was treasurer. Also, I'm sorry if some of my comments seem uninformed. I haven't been reading coop lately, so I'm not up on all the budgetary matters. I didn't mean to suggest earlier that we should just spend the money willy-nillly. Certainly having a plan for hardware upgrades is a better idea than just spending it on impulse buys. Even so, any budget plan should take into account several different things, including a contingency fund for emergencies, publicity expenses, and perhaps increased revenue from a membership drive. I'll try to bone up on things a little bit more and come to the meeting Sunday.
scg, the telnet queue isn't "such a problem". It works for a whole lot of people. But some are here for party and mail and access to UNIX. And, as others have said, not all are well connected through ISPs as you are. I find it kind of scary how you don't see this.
Yikes! According to #24, we paid $2,336.24 of "one-time expenses"
out of the General Fund in 1997. This is $194.71 per month. Plus,
Mark says that we actually *lost* $300 (not counting the store) in
1997. Plus, the just-posted financial report for January says
that we *lost* $635 in January.
People, we do *not* have a surplus. We will always have
one-time expenses, whether we use my estimate of $100/mo for the
rest of 1998 or the $194.71/mo which we spent in 1997.
As to what to do with the money we take in in 1998 over and
above our normal operating expenses, I have two suggestions:
1. Get the 670 up.
2. Don't spend on *anything* else, since if the recent past
is any indication, *all* of our cash will be eaten up in 1998.
Am I the only one who is beginning to feel like a Christian
Scientist with appendicitis?
Thanx for the kind words, Mark. We treasurers-of-Ann-Arbor-
nonprofit-conferencing-systems have to stick together. Shoulder
to shoulder, checkbooks in hand, striving for solvency...8-)
<g> Well, perhaps "surplus" is the wrong word, but I can't think of a better one to describe the $1300 which we expect to take in but which isn't already committed to anything. If you look at that list of "one-time expenses" we spent money on in 1997, you'll see that nearly all of them are things we *chose* to pay for. (That is, for the most part we weren't forced into any of those expenses. Unless you count the fact that the ISDN installation cost a lot more than we expected.) So I think your analysis is misleading, Dave, in that we don't "expect" a certain amount of one-time expenses, we "decide" to have them. Does that make sense? On the other hand, of course, Mary is quite right that accidents happen, and it wouldn't hurt to have a cushion. So maybe we should plan on just saving the money. What I *don't* want to do any more is have people say, at a board meeting, "Oh, by the way, we need a new X45-gizmo; it'll cost about $300. Let's vote to authorize it." At least, I don't want that to be our SOP for making large purchases - if it's an emergency, that's a different story. As I said in the January treasurer's report, we currently have about 4 months of operating expenses in the bank.
Thank you, Mark for keeping us on track on this. I, too, read the numbers. I didn't feel informed enough to comment, though. My usual procedure in these matters is to listen to staff and accounting talk it through and then try to find compromises that take all concerns into account. I was sort of waiting for this discussion to get going and then I planned to have more to say at the meeting where I hoped to get a better grasp on the issues. For the record, I'd like to see us have a 3 month cushion in the bank at all times and make purchase decisions based on a) technological need and b) impact on the remainder of the treasury after the cushion is subtracted. I do feel that occasionally a need may justify dipping into the cushion -- but a want doesn't. So, if you subtract that 3 month cushion from the "working budget" how bad does it look? Or had you already taken that into account?
Since we already have 4 months worth of expenses in the bank, keeping that doesn't affect our budgeting. Unless I misunderstand what you're asking.
I wish people would actually read what I said and think about it before responding negatively to it. I never said that everybody who is dialing in to Grex has Net access elsewhere. I never suggested eliminating all the dial-ups. However, a lot of our users who are using the dial-up lines could be telnetting in, and don't have to be using the dial-up lines. If those people would start telnetting in instead, we could both cut some dial-in lines, and possibly improve our service to the "computer have-nots of Ann Arbor" who do need to use the dial-up lines. Valerie, you are one of the people who said telnetting in was too inconvenient to subject our morally superior local users to it. I'm not sure why you're now asking me what's inconvient about it. I was mainly assuming it must be, since everybody keeps saying it is. If the problem is the queue, I've already pointed out that if people feel so strongly that local users are superior and need better access, it would be easy to have the telnetd exempt them from the queue. We could just have it treat local ISPs the same way it treats things like the terminal server that are on Grex's local network. People here also need to acknowledge that it simply isn't true that all local people can dial up easily. A lot has changed in terms on Internet access and modem access since Grex was started. While there are still some people who don't have and can't afford access to the Internet, there are also a lot of people who do have Internet access but don't have easy dial-up access. I'm getting extremely tired of being told over and over and over again that the local users are the ones who contribute to Grex and are important, and that I'm obviously not a local user. Should I just stop wasting my time here?
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Ok, how about this: what are some improvements to Grex that people would like to see happen in the near future? Or in the far future? If we can answer that, then maybe we can move to the next stage of planning.
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okay here's what i see: Centrex Installation (11/12 of it) $806.04 ISDN Installation $634.00 ISDN Routers (with $795.00 from fund drive) $355.93 SIMMs for the new computer $248.00 New Computer (with $1,387.80 from fund drive) $81.80 X-10 CP290 Computer Interface $40.98 Renewal of P.O. Box $40.00 Advertising $37.50 Backup Tapes $28.29 Reservation of Shelter for Grex B-Day Party $24.00 grex.org domain name (with $80 from fund drive) $20.00 Renewal of assumed name "Grex" w/ State of Mich. $10.00 Corporation Info Update to State of Mich. $10.00 of the above, 5 items comprising roughly $1917 are one-time technological upgrade expenses, and the rest (including SIMMs, we may need more) comprise the remaining roughly $422. the latter portion includes annual expenses we can fairly certainly rely on having. what then is the big scare? can we seriously look forward to another net connection upgrade in 1998? that was the biggest chunk of our one-time expenses this year. i'd like to see a spare motherboard for the 670 as a priority expense, but even with that, I don't see any rationale on the basis of these numbers for dpc's chicken little approach. am i missing something?
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Eric, admittedly most of the one-time expenses won't recur. However,
the pattern I see is that last year we had substantial one-time
expenses; that so far this year we have had nearly $500 in one-
time expenses; that we lost money last year; and that we lost a big
pile of money last month.
The sky is obviously not falling. However, the downward trend
in cash is, IMO, a real concern.
I didn't think I was twisting Valerie's words, but maybe there was something in her "I agree with Mary" in response 27 that I didn't understand. Mary's #25, which Valerie was agreeing with, was one of the many responses in this item which have expressed the viewpoint that any cut in dial-in lines, and having some of our local users telnet in, would be an unthinkable degradation of service. If I misunderstood any of that, perhaps somebody can enlighten me. In fact, I have no idea what the perceived problem with telnetting in is. It's various other people in this item who are saying that we shouldn't cut dial ins back and encourage people who can telnet in to do so. Maybe it's that the old Internet link was slow, so people assume the new one must be too. Maybe it's the queue. Assuming the problem is the queue, I pointed out that there would be a way to exempt local users from it. I said I was uncomfortable with making that distinction, but several people in this item have said that local users should dial in to avoid the queue. If the goal is that local users should avoid the queue, then why not take that to its logical conclusion? It certainly wouldn't be any more discriminatory than what we have now, and it would be a lot cheaper. No, I'm not complaining about my access to Grex. If I can't wait in the queue, I have access to other systems on Grex's network that Grex treats the same way it treats the terminal server, so I can be treated as local even though I don't have a spare local to Ann Arbor phone line to use for my Grexing. What I am upset about is the repeated statements from peopel who really ought to know better, going on and on about how the dial up users are the ones who support us, and how the dial up users should be our first priority. Even if we accept that most support is local, local *does not* equal dial up, and supporters do not equal dial up. When we have board members who wno't acknowledge that, we have a problem.
Oh, one more thing I should have included on the list of non-maintenance expenses from 1997 was local phone calls. I don't have all the phone bills (I loaned some of them to STeve), but it looks to me like we spent about $360 last year on local phone calls. Almost all of those were the link modem calling ICNET, trying to re-establish the connection. I don't know if we can expect to have just as many calls this year or not.
We should probably have many fewer ICNet calls. That router didn't seem to do well under heavy load, and we were part way into the year before we switched to a modern modem for it. I built the machine I'm using for a router at home largely as a clone of gryps (but with a newer version of the OS). It's much less loaded, and therefore very stable. It tends to have to hang up and redial once or twice a week. Last time I looked at Gryps, it was doing about the same.
It looks to me like a lot of the things marked as one time expenses really aren't. I'm assuming the PO Box renewal, the domain name, the assumed name, and maybe the corporate information update are things that have to happen at some interval. Likewise, unless we're going to give up on it, advertizing is not just a one time cost. We might be able to make the argument that each piece of new hardware is a one time cost, but even that gets slippery, since buying new hardware occasionally is a basic fact of life for any organization like Grex. I really don't think we need to look hard for ways to spend our $1300 surplus. Spending money for the sake of spending money is not a good thing. If we keep it around for when we need to buy something, that's probably a much better use of it.
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As of January 31 the Grex Store still leaves the general fund short $273. I expect over time this will drop but stocking the store was and will be for (quite awhile) a general fund expense and should be taken into account.
Steve, you accuse me, specifically, as having said that "any cut in dial-in lines, [...], would be an unthinkable degradation of service." Then you asked to be "enlightened" if you misunderstood any of what was said. We'll, you are being enlightened. What I *said* was, "I certainly hope we are extremely careful about degrading service (reducing dial-in access and shifting users to slow and limited web access) all the while looking for more donors." I am open to hearing your comments on this issue but you really should calm down, drop the defensiveness, and state your case without exaggerating and misrepresenting what others have said.
I agree with what Valerie said (far above somewhere) that we should serve the "computer have-nots" in the AA area. I guess that includes me. I have a Grex account, an M-Net account, and an AOL account. The AOL account doesn't support telnet. I dialin to both Grex and M-Net. So the only way I have to reach Grex is to either telnet from M-Net or dialin. I think a lot of people are in this situation. I don't have a separate ISP which gives me telnet access to Grex. For me, it is *far* better to dialin to Grex when I want to reach Grex than to dialin to M-Net and then telnet to Grex. Dialin service is *much* faster than telnet coming in to Grex.
Re #54: Well, if you don't like the term "one-time expenses" then call them "non-monthly expenses" - whatever. Yes, the PO Box, the domain name, and the two State forms are "regular" expenses. This year we've already paid for the PO Box, we don't have to pay for grex.org, and we have to submit one of the two forms. (The other is a once-every-5-years thing.) So of our $1300, a total of $10 can be expected to come from those expenses you site. Great. We have our first entry on the budget sheet. Do we have any others?
I suggest we give the treasurer a raise.
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(For what it's worth, I'm local. I support Grex a lot. I have local phone lines, and any number of computers to use them. I telnet. I haven't dialed into grex since we got the ISDN. I can see what Steve is getting at. Valerie, in resp:55 you said "The maximum number of local users on Grex in that time was 11 users. The maximum size of the telnet queue was 40 people waiting." I'm assuming here that your "local users" means dialup users, because that's what we were talking about, and because determining "local users" from ip addresses and domain names would be impossible. If that's the case, you were doing exactly what Steve was complaining about, namely associating "local users" with "dialup users." I am certainly the one and not the other. (Now, if I wrong as to what you meant by "local users", I humbly appologize and take it all back.) )
The interface, and the features that you can access, are identical whether you dial in or telnet, but the telnet queue and the susceptibility of telnet connections to laggy response make it distinctly less attractive than direct dialup for a lot of people. We need to offer a better telnet service before we can realistically expect most people who have a choice to choose telnet. The only times that I telnet from home are times when I want or need to be on the internet at the same time that I'm on Grex. Usually, I dial direct. "Tying up dial-in lines" doesn't strike me as a huge problem just now. I seldom get a busy signal when I dial in these days. I do get long queue waits at prime times though. If we want to get those down, we should be encouraging people who can to dial direct.
(#63 slipped in.)
Right, but we're spending a lot of money on dial-up lines, and if people were to stop using them as much and shift to less expensive forms of access, then we could cut the amount of money we are spending on dial-up lines, and increase the number of incoming telneters. However, what has been really bothering me is the dual mischaracterizations that all our support comes from local users, and that all local users are dial-up users. It just isn't true, and I think it's rather damaging as well.
*Most* of our *users* use telnet, and have no choice. I almost never use a dialup to access grex. I'd have to say that I think in some senses, our regular dial-up users are spoiled. I believe it's relatively rare for them to get a busy signal, or to have to wait at all before getting on grex. I can remember that m-net spent *years* in a state where you generally *had* to wait until 1-2am to dial in, if you didn't want to spend hours attack-dialing m-net.
Is there a problem with under-use of the dial-in lines? Or are they working for us pretty well, meaning in use a good chunk of the time, and open enough to facilitate reasonable access? Is there a problem with telnet access being swamped with long queues and slowish response? (I agree with John's #64). Now, assuming it is easier to access Grex by dialup, and telnet is more difficult, I just don't think the way to address the weakest link is to encourage more folks to take that route. Dropping phone lines to make it more difficult for those who don't or can't telnet seems kind of punitive to me, unless you have a clear plan to use the money saved to immediately and quite clearly improve telnet access. Is this the case, Steve? Maybe if I could hear your full plan for how this could be done I'd feel better about the suggestion to possibly eliminate some of the dial-in lines. But mostly, I hope we'd approach any problems with our availability by looking to fix the weak links, not degrade all service to the lowest level.
Here are the notes from the meeting: Grex Budget Meeting 2/8/98 valerie, janc, other, aruba, dpc. Latecomers: scg, mta, STeve. Thanks to Eric (other) for bringing cookies. Aruba wanted meeting because of worries about how we have been spending in the last year. Would like to have budgets fom things like advertising. The money situation: A 3-month cushion would be about $2000. About $7,000/year income (last year $8,800, $6405 from membership dues. We have roughly $1300 beyond currently known expenses (plus another $200 we have in bank over cushion)for 1998. Things to spend money on: Valerie would like an advertising budget, maybe $20-30/month. General agreement on this. New mail machine: most of this js being donated, but may need to purchase a disk drive (maybe a 3 gig disk, possibly SCSI?) 670 spares: janc thinks about $650 for this: ($720 was what we paid for motherboard and CPU modules) Some discussion from other's questions about Centrex benefits, possibility of using another local telco. Possible that we could lose our current ISDN connection, or we may have to move the line some time (assume our cushion will cover this). Advertising can be stopped at any time, so it can be a somewhat higher priority. Mail machine disk: want 2-3 days worth of buffer. May make sense to do it SCSI? STeve says 22MB/day, so an IDE disk is fine. $300 covers all we need for this machine. Spare 670 parts: STeve says he uas seen MBs as cheap as $350. $650 is a good budget. Other items: backup tapes, backup tape cleaner. Spares for mail machine? Spare ISDN router? ISDN surge protector? A UPS? How about budgeting to start saving for a UPS? About 1200VA needed, but could be done w/ 2 smaller units. Scott recently purchased an APC 400VA unit for about $140. STeve is worried about upcoming power deregulation affecting service, while Janc thinks it is too expensive as insurance. What we decided on for priorities: 1. 670 spares ($650) 2. Mail machine parts ($300) 3. Advertising ($360 over 12 months, since it will be spent slowly it can be cut later if there are money problems) Ways to increase income: T-shirts: need to push the Grex Store products a bit more. The Store is going to be administrator, but hasn't gotten the inventory yet. Possible to hawk shirts at things like JCC sale or Art Fair? Old shirts didn't sell well, new shirts look more interesting. (janc) How about T-shirts that are more generic Internet/computer to be used as fundraising to non-Grexers? Auctions: 1997 brought in $1700 in income from two auctions. Aruba willing to do (keep track of bids and deliveries) 2 auctions in 1998. (mta) Poignant Plecostemus benefit: still possible, had trouble finding a venue to do it in last year. Getting party people helping out on publicity? Maybe things like posting flyers, car washes, etc.? Janc thinks this should be a social activity where groups are involved, so that it will be fun to do. 501c(3): the usual arguments for and against. Possibility of getting grants? Some discussion, possible ways of getting grant money, concerns about it. (This is where I had to leave the meeting)
Thanks for taking notes, Scott.
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No problem. I'll wait the usual 30 days then put them in /usr/local/grexdoc/archives/budget/. I'll also go back and try to find the last plan the budget meeting and if there were notes, enter those. Was there any type of consensus raised about some minimum amount of money which should be considered "untouchable" unless Grex was going to be down and out, as in off-line? I think sometimes having such a figure would come in handy next time someone wants to buy a widget and it looks like that $200 isn't really that important. I mean, if it's $200 out of a $1500 balance it seems easier than if it's the last $200 of discretionary money left.
I'm wondering if the telnet/direct dial discussion needs its own item, since it goes in a lot of tangents which are not directly related to the budgetary business at hand in this item. ???
re#73: Mary, it seems that the "cushion" amount of $2000 is pretty much the answer to your query. It is a little over three months' planned expenses and is to be considered essentially an emergency fund to cover expenses if revenues fail to materialize or if some catastrophic event necessitates immediate large expense in order to assure Grex's continued operation. That is kind of vague, but you can't plan for everything, especially not *absolutely* everything, right, Rane? <g>
It was also suggested, jokingly, that there are some pieces of hardware (such as a UPS) which would be nice but not essential, which it would be very silly to use as a hat.
I think the most important decision was *not* to spend on anything which reduces our cash to below $2000 unless it's an emergency.
Other than adjusting the dollar figure from time to time, I think that's been SOP from the time we first *had* a cushion to protect. I remember danr promoting the idea long, long ago in the deepest mists of time.
You have several choices: