Grex Board of Directors Meeting Monday, January 16, 2006 Board members in attendance: Mark Conger (aruba), Lynne Fremont (slynne), Joe Gelinas (gelinas), Bruce Howard (bhoward), Larry Kestenbaum (polygon). Non Board members in attendance: Steve Andre (steve), Marcus Watts (mdw) Staff Report: Steve said that he is going to return the memory in exchange for more memory. He wants to put the new memory into grex Steve said that he found a box at home with manuals and everything we need for our new box. The problem with new motherboard is that it has a bad connector between the p/s2 keyboard and motherboard. The PC has USB ports but they are turned off in the BIOS so it currently cannot be booted into single user mode. We can fix this by changing settings in BIOS. Mark says that there is a USB port on the front that is turned on which we may be able to plug a USB keyboard into. This presents a challenge for putting in the memory. However, since this is the only problem with the motherboard, Steve doesnt think we should change the motherboard unless we have crashes after we swap out the memory. Bruce says Robocop has gone live and is packing real ammunition. It is getting rid of unused processes which is good. Spammers have been sending email from grex: Sometimes thousands per account per day. Outbound mail restricted list has been implemented. Bruce has been monitoring mail and has a script that monitors how much mail gets sent so that we can monitor people who send more than a certain number of outgoing messages. There is a restricted list and we need to decide what to do about the list and how people get off of the list. There are a number of options. Bruce would like to have a formal statement from the Board about how we will do this. We can: 1. Put people from certain sites onto the list automatically or put all newusers on it. 2. Require people on the list to enter a capture(figlets) before sending mail 3. Restrict the amount of mail they can send 4. Have accounts move off the list automatically after 48 hours 5. Limit the amount of mail any particular account can send per day to 50 (Bruce recommends) 6. Have two lists: the kind of naughty list and the really bad spammer list and have different restrictions Re: Idle Daemon. Steve says we don t have a pty limitation so that isnt a reason to keep the idle daemon. There is an ok.sh script that people run that keeps people from idling. The people who seem to want not to idle out seem to already be doing that. PC Weasel. Orphaned hardware. We cant buy one because the link is broken. Steve says everyone he has talked to who all say it is great. As a company, they are not well structured. Steve says that the PC Weasel people are good technical people but terrible business people. Steve is going to send mail to get us this item. We need this because we are a running a server on a PC machine. We are running on a PC because an actual server would have cost a lot of money. Election of Officers Mark - Treasurer Larry - President Lynne - Secretary. Vote = Sense of the board is that we will keep mail as open as possible but give staff authority to limit or deny access on an emergency basis which will be reviewed at the next board meeting. All in favor Next Meeting = Feb 23, Thursday. 3255 Cardinal. 7p Another week for nominations Vote = Election starts on 1/23 - all in favor. Discussion of sysadmin performance - Bruce is uncomfortable with a call for review by a single member for a situation that isnt a pattern of review. It might be impractical to have staff reviews every time a user asks for one. Board when into executive session. Re Staff - As a board, we need to identify people who would be potential good staff and actively identify them. Treasurer s Report In November, we took in $219 and paid out $148. In December we took in $263 and paid out $212 Mark renewed domain names and payed personal property tax. He notified Ann Arbor that we have moved so they have removed us from their tax rules. We might have to pay Ypsilanti Twp. We may not because there is often a tax floor. Before the value of Grex s stuff was around $6000 but now it is much less. We currently have 46 members which is less than we have had for a long time. We stayed in the black because we cut expenses. Meeting adjourned59 responses total.
So...Does that mean that the idle daemon is going away? Or is it deemed not necessary to turn it off since you can basically render it impotent? If the latter, then how about removing the 10 hour ``max login time'' limit? Regarding the PC weasel card: Grex is about ready for a hardware upgrade anyway (jump to a new CPU/Motherboard/Ethernet controller; it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a hardware RAID controller and some more disk at the same time, and it's about time to switch to ECC RAM). It occurs to me that there are plenty of motherboards that support serial console operations through the BIOS, ie, without something like a weasel card. Tyan makes a number of these.
How long have we actually been using the latest new hardware? I am happy with its recent performance. Was the board talking about the motherboard currently in use having a bad keyboard port, or about the spare motherboard which had been lost?
It is the current motherboard that has the bad keyboard port
Yup, from my understanding - it's the interface between the keyboard connector and the motherboard connection which is aloof.
What motherboard? The one grex is running on right now?
Yes
If it's defective, why not replace it? Wasn't a replacement motherboard bought when the new grex was bought?
Re #7: Yes, the spare motherboard was in the box STeve found in his house.
I would not mind grex being down for one day next weekend if anyone wanted to replace the motherboard (or get it working with USB keyboard instead).
The problem with the motherboard does not directly affect Grex being up and running. While I agree that it needs to be taken care of, it ain't happening next weekend if STeve has to be involved. My birthday is next Friday and I get first priority over Grex with STeve's time and attention for a change.
Gooo Glenda :)
I'd just as soon see the system pass the milestone of having been up for a month before bouncing it. But maybe I'm being sentimental.
or unlucky
So what's up with the idle daemon?
resp:14 I dont believe that anything was decided about it.
It seems that Steve said he thought it wasn't necessary. Anyone else care to weigh in?
I'll break the scale but thanks
(Report to remedial PT at 1100.)
This recruit has his red striped gray sweater on, sir!
tod's wearing brake shoes
Pork Chop Platoon!
When I was in MOS school in the stumps, we had this one kid who was a real fat body. He got put on weight control and remedial PT, but every time we had a five or ten minute break, he'd rush out to the vending machines in the breezeway and down a snickers or some other equally unhealthy and fattening thing. One time I said to him, ``look, you know that you're a fatbody, you know you're on weight control, and yet *every* time I see you you're digging your grape into some fucking candy or another. What the hell?'' He looked at me, looked at the snicker's he was eating, and said, ``see this here candy bar? This is my ticket out of the United States Marine Corps with an honorable discharge.'' He eventually rocked out and got sent to the grunts. They don't play that shit, so I assume he got shaped up pretty fast. He used to also fall asleep in class. One of our instructors was a retired Master Guns who had done 30 years in the Corps. One day he sees fatbody nod off and shouts, ``Thomas! Wake the fuck up!'' The kid wakes up, and without thinking about it says, ``Aye, Corporal!'' The retired Master Guns says, ``I'm not a fucking Corporal.'' ``Aye, Master Sergeant!'' ``I'm not a goddamned Master Sergeant, neither!'' I almost lost my bearing at that one.
I guess you had to be there.
MOS school...so he graduated boot camp like that?
in the stumps ? digging your grape ? whoa.
re #24 Its possible he took a month off after boot camp and blew back up like a Macy's balloon. I knew this guy who did it by eating Domino's pizza 3 or 4 times a day.
Way to get out of a bad deal. Brilliant. Bring on the chocolate! Might have saved his life.
thankxx but i'll risk being skinny instead - better odds.
Cheaper too
Regarding #27; Not exactly. First of all, that kind of discharge is other than honorable (goose-fat was mistaken that it was an honorable). Second, he didn't get kicked out, he got kicked to the grunts. Last I heard, he was manning a .50 cal on top of an LAV in Iraq. As far as I know, none of his peers from the school he flunked out of have been deployed (though at least one guy volunteered). So, neither brilliant, nor a way to get out of a bad deal. Just a way to make it worse on himself.
He needed to get fatter.
i'm too fat for my own good, but i walked for an hour or so today, and i'm sure that burned several hundred calories!
Hey Dan, can't you be brought up on charges for doing things that render you unfit for duty? Like, say, shooting yourself in the foot. What would it have taken for this guy to see punishment like that?
Regarding #31; No, he just needed to have not enlisted. It's not like anyone forced him, nor like he got drafted. Regarding #33; Yes, that can happen. I've seen people get disciplined for having really bad sunburns. The old joke used to be that they'd get slapped with "Destruction of Government Property" charges (them being the property). However, you've got to be a real idiot for that. I suspect that, had it actually gotten to the point where they were going to kick him out, he would have gotten slapped with some kind of charge. There are people who just legitimately can't lose the weight, because they've got some kind of glandular thing or something like that. Those people they won't OTH or screw with their lives. This kid wasn't one of them.
Actually, the destruction of government property was a valid charge at one time. Here's my bright shining example: You would become exempt from certain NSA/TS clearances if you had any distinguishing features on your person such as visible tattoos. The Corps might train someone for 18 months only to have them lose their required clearance for that MOS by doing something stupid like tattooing their forearm. The Old Man up at the White Elephant would burn your ass for wasting his budget on you. That went same for things like criminal charges which would ruin your clearance. They'd find a way to make you pay for it like bust you down, take your pay, and throw you into something like the 30 second life expectancy type MOS's where you walk around with a big f'in antenna sticking up to make you an easy target. Worse, they might make you part of the masturbation patrol (MP) battalion where you'd be sentenced to saluting officer's vehicles at the gate all day.
What does a tattoo have to do with being trusted with top secrets?
re #36 Ask Aldrich Ames's victims.
Woah! I studied that guy when I did a research report on polygraph for one of my criminology classes. I don't remember anything about tattoos.
I was referring more to the grandiosity, selfish act, and impulsiveness of tattoos. Those are red flags with a polygraph or background check. The fact they didn't kick Ames to the curb for his drunken and boisterous personality was even more suspect. He was a squiggly lil nerd who basically handed over the whole Soviet list of assets thinking he could con the KGB except they picked up on those traits I mentioned and got him to "brag". You don't want forearm tattoo guys handling your sensitive data. That's the weird thing about the Sean Connery James Bond is his forearm tattoo but then again he was always about counter insurgency (assassinations) rather than data collection. Am I biased? Yea, dude. And you with the keys on your pants, you're just as bad.
Regarding #36; Tattoos are also distinguishing marks, that make it easier to be identified. ``Well, he was medium build, medium height, had brown hair and grey eyes, and oh yeah, had a tattoo of Iwo Jima on his left forearm!!'' Kinda makes it hard to be incognito.
Yea, they like you to only have the same shoes when you swap your disguises. 8D
whoa. we should have a marine corps conference, FWed up by tod and cross.
...keys on your pants...?
Keys hanging off your pants = Cliff Clavin
re #0 what good does it do to place people on a "restricted email" list when all they'll do is run newuser and get a new unrestricted login?
Re #45: From the text of #0, it's clear that the list is a whitelist (you have to do something to be able to send email), not a blacklist (a list of users who can't).
Here's one idea. Restrict email for the first thirty days of a login's life. Grex can make it so all new logins must be thirty days old before email access is activated. This might prevent grex from being used as an email address mill.
I notice that the next board meeting is scheduled for Thursday February 23 at 7pm. That isn't actually a very good date for me. I could do it, but I'd have to arrange a baby sitter. For the next month or two, I won't be free on Tuesday or Thursday nights until about 9pm. Would it be possible to reschedule it?
Are your kids old enough to sit quietly through a meeting?
My kids bedtimes take place during the meeting, which is why I can phone in either. Bedtime takes a lot of parent interaction.
Er, that should have been "CAN'T phone in".
you could get your kids to phone in as part of their bedtime routine
We're rescheduling the meeting.
It looks like Monday might work, but we haven't heard back from everyone yet.
i'm free
With no objection to Sunday, February 26, I have scheduled the meeting for that evening, and I'm now posting the agenda.
I have posted the agenda as item 316.
Sunday is better for me too :)
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: