Grex Board of Directors Meeting Minutes - November 1999

Nov 21 01:50 UTC 1999

                         Cyberspace Communications
                 November 1999 - Board of Director's Meeting
                                   Minutes

Presiding:  John Remmers (remmers)
Recording:  Jan Wolter (janc)
Other Board Members Present:
    Mark Conger (aruba)
    Scott Helmke (scott)
    Dan Gryniewicz (dang)
    Steve Andre (steve) - Arriving Late
    Misti Tucker (mta) - Arriving Late

Members of the Public:
    Eric Bassey (other)
    Steve Gibbard (scg)
    Meg Heberlein (eeyore)
    Valerie Mates (valerie)
    Arlo Mates (arlo)
    Mary Remmers (mary)
    Mark's friend Carol

Board Members Absent:
    none

AGENDA ITEM 1:  Gavel Banging

  - John Remmers began the meeting at 7:08pm.

AGENDA ITEM 2:  Chairman's Report

  "Nope."

AGENDA ITEM 3:  Treasurer's Report

  - Mark Conger presented the treasurer's report for October.  The full
    report is available on-line in coop item 134.

      * September was a good month.

           Total Income:     $725.20
           Total Expenses:   $468.15
           New Members:            3

      * We ended the month with 93 members, 82 of which are fully paid up.

      * Our bank balance ended at $5,453.06.
  
  - Mark Conger presented a preliminary report for November.  Doesn't look
    great, but Novemeber is usually a slow month.  The expenses will be
    higher than usual because they include the credit card application fee
    of $175.

           Income to Date:         $188.02
           Expenses to Date:       $627.75
           New Members to Date:          2

  - Mark sold 8 handbooks to Jim Deigart (jdeigart).

  - The credit card application will be sent out as soon as we find the
    envelope (or at least the address).

  - Mark repaired Grex's copy machine.

  - The auction will be starting soon.

  - Mark will be setting up a money market account, so we can get better
    interest on our savings.

  - Mark is developing an auction handbook.

AGENDA ITEM 4:  Publicity Committee Report

  - Scott Helmke gave a one wallet-card flyer to someone.  Everyone else has
    forgotten that these exist.

AGENDA ITEM 5:  Technical Committee Report

  - Scott Helmke will be taking Grex down for a backup soon.

  - Jan Wolter ran some statistics that suggest that we could cut another
    dial-in without adding many busy tones.

  - The /c drive is still suspect and still needs to be replaced.

  - Our newest staff member, Michelangelo Giansiracusa (mic), has been doing
    useful stuff.  Yeah, mic!

  - An login name formerly belonging to a deceased user (biogal) has been
    retired after someone recreated it and sent tasteless messages.

  - There are still spotty reports about problems on the dial-in modems.  We
    haven't been able to figure out much of a pattern, or reproduce the
    problems.  Scott Helmke continues to monitor things.

  - STeve Andre arrived after the end of the technical committee report but
    added two notes.  He wanted to think whomever recently deposited several
    nice NPI SCSI disk enclosures, a tape drive, some S-Bus SCSI controllers,
    and some 486 motherboards in the pumpkin (Grex's machine room).  Nobody
    knew who had done this.  Apparantly the pumpkin has been visited by the
    disk enclosure fairy.

  - STeve Andre also discussed options of disposing of our old Sun 3 chassis.
    It was suggested that Cindi Keesan, and Jim Deigart might have more
    knowledge about recycling junk computers from their work with Kiwanas.

AGENDA ITEM 6:  Lease Renewal

  - Our lease says we must give 4 months notice if we want to renew our
    lease, which ends in June, so we need to give notice in January.

  - Mark Conger moves

      That we renew our lease under the terms of the current lease
      agreement.

    I forgot who seconded.

    Passed 5-0-0 (STeve and Misti not yet arrived).

AGENDA ITEM 7:  New Business

  - The board will discuss whether or not to cut another dial-in phone line
    at the next meeting, allowing time for further on-line discussion.

  - Nominations for the Y2K Grex board have closed with 7 excellent candidates
    (none of whom have ever served on the board before).

  - There will be a Potluck and Future Planning Meeting at the home of Mark
    Conger on Sunday, November 21.  The potluck will start at 5pm, the meeting
    will start at 6pm.  All are invited.

  - The final Grex board meeting of the millenium will be held on Wednesday,
    December 15 at 7:30pm at Zingermans.

  - There was some discussion of a deal that Arbornet is considering where
    Amazon.com gives non-profits a bit of money on book purchases made by
    people who access Amazon via there site.  Enthusiasm was minimal to
    non-existant.  Seems like it wouldn't bring much money and it smells
    like advertising.  Needs discussion on-line.

AGENDA ITEM 10:  Gavel Cessation

  - John Remmers ended the meeting at 7:54pm (a 46 minute meeting, wow!)

response 2 of 17:

Nov 21 03:21 UTC 1999

As someone who clearly supported getting us into the "credit-card-accepting"
business, I will donate $10 toward the initial fee for doing so.  Anyone else
want to help out on this one-time expense?

response 4 of 17:

Nov 21 10:11 UTC 1999

I wondered when someone would notice.  The tape drive has a broken door
but could be good for parts, or could be sent in to be fixed if this is
thought useful.  I can't explain any 486 motherboards, but I do have the
serial I/O panel that belongs to to the high speed serial interface sbus
card that STeve missed.

response 6 of 17:

Nov 21 22:24 UTC 1999

Just out of curiosity, what would be the technical aspect of retiring "an"
login?

response 8 of 17:

Nov 23 22:39 UTC 1999

Re #5:  Hear, hear!

Re #2:  As soon as it is up!

Re #4:  So, are you the fairy, marcus?

response 10 of 17:

Nov 28 18:11 UTC 1999

I want to post a correction to the minutes, but resp:5 shows that Tim 
observed this first. The millenium has another year to run, so the 
meeting on Dec 15 is probably in 1999, and not the final one of the 
millenium, which is possibly going to happen on Dec 13, 2000, but the 
schedule could change. The meeting coming up will be the last one before 
Y2K, but Y2K is the last year of the current millenium, despite what 
they say on TV and in the papers.

response 12 of 17:

Dec 2 21:28 UTC 1999

We seem to have come to a consensus.  It is time to announce our decision ot
the world.

response 14 of 17:

Dec 5 16:02 UTC 1999

Mostly handling stuff like finding loose disk space to reclaim and handling
similar tasks.  Stuff that most of the rest of staff already burned out on.

response 16 of 17:

Dec 6 21:26 UTC 1999

Are you doing this from Australia?