Minutes of 2000/11/20 Grex Board Meeting

Nov 21 03:34 UTC 2000

20 November 2000 Grex Board of Directors meeting minutes
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        Attendees (time of arrival):  [* indicates board member] 
        *other (6pm), *STeve (7:20pm), *flem (7:20pm), drew, *mdw
(7:45pm), *janc (7:55pm, phoned by other at 7:45pm and reminded that there
was a meeting tonight)
        Both eeyore and remmers notified other board members in advance
that they would not in attendance at this meeting. 

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        01) "Gavel" Squeaking - other 8:05 pm

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        02) Chairman's Report - other
        The gavel was forgotten (aka "mistakes were made") so a suitable
squeaky toy shall substitute. Also, we received a nice sponsorship packet
from Summer Fest. 

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        03) Treasurer's Report - flem
        Credit card damage from September hit in October $4893.34 in bank. 
125 current members, of which 30-odd are in grace period.  Credit card
account with Charge Solutions cancelled in October.  Cardservice contract
until February (6 mo. increments) will cost us $35/mo.  
        The RSA encryption patent expired, which makes doing our own
secure server slightly more feasible for credit card processing, subject
to further cost decrease in VeriSign certificates.  Cardservice is the
back end, and the problems we had were with the front end account which we
have cancelled.  Some discussion of opening a PayPal account in the
interim. 
  
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        04) Publicity Committee - mta/other
        See Chair's report, part two.  Proposed sponsorship suggestion for
2001:  A Space Odyssey.

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        05) Technical Committee - staff
        We have been having problems with the DSL line.  scg contacted
Voyager, who asked that someone go to the Pumpkin to look at it, and
Voyager got Ameritech involved, who will be sending someone out to look
into it.
        Marcus has been looking into some strangeness with ptys which
seems to coincide with issues with our ssh software.
        Another staff meeting has been proposed, in the abstract, anyway. 

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        06) Backup Drive Closure - all
        The system which STeve has determined to best meet our needs has
significantly dropped in price: $790 from over $1050.  Exabyte name brand
tapes at 7GB uncompressed, $7 each.  For specifications, see
http://www.exabyte.com/
        STeve moves:  The treasurer is authorized to spend up to $1000 to
obtain an Exabyte tape drive and 10 tapes, including shipping.  
        The motion carries 5-0-0. 

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        07) Schedule next meeting - all
        Wednesday 13 December. 

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        08) New Business - all
        Since the last board meeting, STeve, mdw and other went to
Cincinnati with Michael Steinberg, Legal Director of the Michigan ACLU, to
represent Cyberspace Communications, Inc. and observe oral arguments in
the Cyberspace vs. Engler lawsuit (see http://www.cyberspace.org/lawsuit/
for more info). The process was nearly as interesting as the current
debacle in Florida, but it will have a decidedly more interesting outcome. 
A ruling is expected in four to six months.

        There was a letter from Grex's landlords requesting a
renegotiation of our rent, which was contrary to the terms of our lease. 
When presented with this fact, the landlords reconsidered their request,
and the terms of our current lease prevail.  We have four more 1-year
options at a maximum of 5% rent increase per year.

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        09) "Gavel" Cessation - other 8:53 pm


Discuss:

response 2 of 42:

Nov 21 06:31 UTC 2000

Thanks for the speedy minutes.

response 4 of 42:

Nov 21 09:30 UTC 2000

No one saw it alive at this meeting, that's for sure.  Our esteemed
president was unable to confirm or deny any charges that the gavel was
at some pawn shop, but definitely didn't have it with him.  He had,
however, thoughtfully brought along a bright red squeaky toy in its
place.

response 6 of 42:

Nov 21 15:56 UTC 2000

Maybe no one else read this the wrong way like I did first, but we have ~4900
dollars *left*; that's not how much the credit card things hit us for.  :)

response 8 of 42:

Nov 22 00:24 UTC 2000

I like the idea of 2001 - Space Oddessey.

response 10 of 42:

Nov 22 01:53 UTC 2000

The squeaky toy is bright YELLOW. I dunno what board meeting YOU went to... ;)

response 12 of 42:

Nov 22 06:44 UTC 2000

Looked yellow to me.  Doff the rose-colored glasses.

response 14 of 42:

Nov 22 21:31 UTC 2000

best viewed with backtalk to appreciate the difference...  ;)

response 16 of 42:

Nov 25 15:40 UTC 2000

If I were you, I would post it in the MOTD.

response 18 of 42:

Nov 25 20:01 UTC 2000

I'll add the notice.

response 20 of 42:

Nov 26 23:24 UTC 2000

Doesn't look like the backups ever happened... STeve has new hardware to
install, and GRex hasn't been down in almost 20 days.

response 22 of 42:

Nov 28 00:16 UTC 2000

   I didn't put it into the motd because I wasn't yet sure I could do
it.  I don't post things like that 'till I really know I'm able to do
it, because many people seem to alter their behavior on Grex because of
those notices.   I'm figuring out which day this week I can leave work
early enough to make this happen.

response 24 of 42:

Nov 29 00:46 UTC 2000

   Heh.  Yeah, we could install the tape drive when the system's up.
Maybe, we should install more SIMM memory while we're at it, too. ;-)