Present: aruba*, bhoward* (via phone), drew, gelinas*, kip, mary*,
polygon*, remmers, slynne*
[* denotes current board member]
1. Opening Gavel Tap: 19:16 EST (7:16 PM)
2. Election of Officers:
President: Nominations: slynne, mary
1st Round: tie.
2nd Round: mary withdraws, slynne is elected by acclamation
Treasurer: Nominations: aruba
Elected by acclamation
Secretary: Nominations: mooncat
Elected by acclamation
3. Treasurer's Report:
$809.68 in, $468.38 out in December
See Item 64 for December 2003 monthly report
See Item 65 for 2003 anmual report
$66 in January, so far.
Monthly costs for power are going to go up. scott and aruba used
an inductive ammeter to measure the power usage; it appears to have
gone from approximately 5.5 amps to 13.25 amps. kip will borrow
a power meter from the Ann Arbor Distrct Library as soon as one
becomes available. Installing it will require powering down all
of the equipment in the room. Uninstalling it, after a period
of measurement, will also requiring powering down the equipment.
The next telephone bill should be $13, with credits for reductions
and refunded installation fees. After that, the bill will go
back up to approximately $90, which will be approximately $60
less than it was before we reduced the number of lines.
We successfully switched from Verisign to Dotster for the
registrar of both domains, cyberspace.org and grex.org (one
was switched a year ago).
4. Staff Report:
Met on Thursday, 15 Jan 2004.
Reset root passwords for grex, gryps and the new machine.
Discussed adding staff members: consensus among those present
to recommend bhoward and glenda; names to be presented
to those absent by e-mail.
New Grex:
Discussed things yet to be done: Disk Quotas, Fork Bomb
Killer, Login program's error messages, Mail Modifications,
Robocop, Newuser/Webnewuser, Picospan, Menu Shell,
Zapuser/Lockuser
"Keeper of the Keys": agreed that we should be
able to trust the Treasurer to hold them without trying
to break root.
DNS: We 'fell out' of puck.nether.net's configuration again,
at just about the time we switched from Verisign to
Dotster, and at the same time the mail disk failed.
We have since added three other name servers, all in
the San Francisco area. The name server in the Detroit
area has been renamed. Including grex.cyberspace.org,
we have five name servers without puck.nether.net.
We should change the list of name servers at Dotster to
list these five and remove puck.nether.net.
janc and kip managed to resurrect the mail disk, recovering all of
the mail that would have been lost.
5. New Grex Update:
See Staff Report, above.
janc made progress on zapuser and lockuser while working on the
mail recovery.
bhoward is working on robocop
gelinas has configured and enabled quotas on the new machine.
janc has mostly finished newuser/webuser
still waiting for picospan
6. Adding New Staff:
At the recommendation of the staff, gelinas moved that bhoward be
added as root staff, supported by polygon. Motion passed 5-0,
with bhoward abstaining and mooncat absent
At the recommendation of the staff, gelinas moved that glenda be
added as root staff, supported by polygon. Motion passed 6-0,
with mooncat absent
7. Membership Vote Procedure Questions:
Should the pending members' proposals be voted sequentially or in
parallel? Consensus of the discussion in coop is for running
the votes in parallell. The "vote" program can handle several
proposals at the same time, even if all don't open for voting
at the same time.
8. Renewing Grex's Lease;
polygon moved that grex's lease be extended for a year, supported
by gelinas. Discussion noted that this is the last year we
can extend without renegotiating. Insurance is becoming
too expensive; we may not be able to afford it next year,
which means we may not be able to renegotiate a lease for our
current space. Therefore, we will need to explore co-location,
with an eye to moving at the expiration of the lease at the
end of June, 2005. Motion passed 6-0, with mooncat absent.
9. Schedule Next Meeting:
Friday, 5 March 2003, at 19:00 EST (7:00 PM), place to be
determined.
10. New Business:
Need to re-establish trust with/of staff. Perhaps the pending
proposals will help.
Should we reopen the CafePress account? aruba will enter an
item in coop for discussion.
11. Closing Gavel Tap: 20:36 EST (8:36 PM)
35 responses total.
The five authoritative name servers will be
grex.cyberspace.org
dns.dtw.gibbard.org
dns.oak.gibbard.org
dns.sfo.gibbard.org
babcom.argusarray.com
In addition to the typos in the header, I also messed up the date of the next meeting: it should be 5 March 2004 not 2003.
Nice minutes, Joe. Thanks!
Very nice, and promptly posted too!
Great job, Joe.
One additional DNS suggestion: If you're going to list Grex as a DNS server, list it as dns.cyberspace.org or something of the sort, rather than grex.cyberspace.org. It's really hard to change an IP address of a DNS server in a hurry, and changing Grex's IP address in a hurry is a useful ability to have.
I'd suggest we measure the power draw of everything, then the power draw of Old Grex seperately. That way when we take Old Grex out of service, we can just subtract the numbers instead of having to borrow the meter again.
Good point, Steve. I'll update the NS and SOA records later today.
I've now updated and published the NS and SOA records, to use dns.cyberspace.org instead of grex.cyberspace.org.
Thanks Joe. Do I need to do anything to our dotster account? If so, send me email.
Yes, we need to update the name servers registered through dotster. I've sent you a message with the particulars. Thank you, Mark.
The letter to our landlord's leasing agent was mailed today. Now, all we have to do is collectively cross our fingers that when the next liability insurance bill comes due, around Juneish, we can actually pay it. ;-)
Is there any way of knowing ahead of time approximately or exactly what that bill is likely to be?
Not really; insurance companies tell you your premium when it's time to renew.
THANKS mark
It wouldn't hurt to call the agent and ask. When making some changes to my car insurance yesterday, my insurance agent was able to tell me what my car insurance premium was going to be when it renews three months from now.
(query: is mooncat OK with continuing as secretary? I noticed that she wasn't present to remove her name from consideration.)
Yes, she had sent mail to the board warning us she wouldn't be able to make the meeting and in it she said she'd be willing to serve another term as secretary.
(ah. that probably should have been included in the minutes, although I guess it is now.) ;)
(I apologise for the oversight. :( )
Has it been concluded that shopping for a new insurance company offering better rates is less feasible than moving? There must be plenty of insurance companies out there...
Richard - It wouldn't be a bad idea to get quotes from insurance companies, I agree. But the last time we tried to switch we nearly got screwed, if you recall. So We've been reluctant to try again. Mary can say more.
The insurance companies do not seem to be jumping for new business in un-tested waters. Still, it could be worthwhile to explore the possibilites, but it should be done well before the current policy expires.
Insurance for an organization like Grex is very very hard to find. Most companies have policies for non-profits but the minimum coverage is more than we can afford. Other companies, including Hastings Mutual, who is insuring Grex, are getting out of covering organizations such as ours. We've been warned that should we drop our policy, with Hastings, it probably wouldn't be available as a "new write". I'm not going to be the person calling agents and encouraging a switch this time around. My personal opinion is we should be looking at co-location. If folks want, I'd be willing to contact our lease agent to see if we could negotiate a slightly higher rent payment in exchange for written release from our insurance obligation. But I really doubt that would be acceptable.
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I strongly agree with Mary that co-location might be a really good option for grex.
I think most of us do. The problem has been finding an affordable co-location solution. Of course, as the cost of our current location goes up, the costs of co-location become more affordable. When co-location becomes cheaper than our current solution, we'll move. If our revenues increase sufficiently, perhaps we will move sooner.
Re #25: Our insurance renews in August.
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I sent mail to board@grex.org adn was informed the mail box is full. Don't you guys ever read your mail?
Could you take another look at the rejection notice, bru? It probably applies to just one board member, so 'twould be useful to know which one.
Joe is right. It's only Anne's mailbox that is full. The board, baff, and auction aliases all get tons of Spam - I get on the order of 80 spams a day. And with all the viruses flaoting around (at 30K a pop), Grex mailboxes fill up quickly these days.
Yep. "board@grex.org" is a mailing list, not a single mailbox.
Hmm, sorry about that. I seem to have a problem with the place that I'm having my mail forwarded too. I was wondering why I wasn't getting any board e-mail. Unfortunately I can't access mail from work (no telnet), will see what I can do about this tonight.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: