Grex Board of Directors Meeting Minutes - March 1999

Mar 24 02:14 UTC 1999

                         Cyberspace Communications
                   March 1999 - Board of Director's Meeting
                               March 23, 1999
                                   Minutes

Presiding:  John Remmers (remmers)
Secretary:  Jan Wolter (janc)
Other Board Members:
    Mark Conger (aruba)
    Scott Helmke (scott)
    STeve Andre (steve) [arrived late]

Members of the Public:
    Valerie Mates (valerie)
    Arlo Mates (arlo)
    Mary Remmers (mary)
    Paul Pickelmann (prp)
    Charles Mitchell (arthurp)
    Jim Deigert (jdeigert)
    Cindi Keesan (keesan)
    Steve Gibbard (scg)

AGENDA ITEM 8:  Gavel Banging

  - John Remmers reminded Jan Wolter that he was secretary, and loaned him
    pen and paper.

  - John Remmers confessed to having forgotten to bring a gavel.

  - Various people speculated on the agenda item numbering scheme, but
    illumination did not strike.

  - Since only four board members had remembered to come, quorum was not
    present, so the meeting was started (not with a bang but with a whimper)
    as an "informational meeting".

AGENDA ITEM 216:  Scheduled Treasurer's Report

  - Mark Conger presented the monthly treasurer's report for February.  The
    full report is available on-line in coop item 80.

      * February was a darn good month.

           Total Income:    $1336.21
           Total Expenses:   $919.36
           New Members:            4
           Renewing Members:       2

      * Expenses include $300 for insurance.

      * Most of the money from the spare parts fund has been transfered to
        the general fund, with the approval of the donors.  Some went to
        the UPS fund.

      * There was some discussion of the UPS fund.  There is currently
        $119 there.

  - Mark Conger presented a preliminary report for March:

      * So far, March looks like it will probably be break-even:

           Income to Date:      $477.60
           Expenses to Date:    $516,56
           New Members to Date:       0

      * Income includes a $140 non-membership donation from a person whose
        account was reaped before their money arrived.  Will send snail-mail.

      * Auction Status:

           Open Items                11
           Closed, Unpaid Items      36   $467.50
           Paid, Undelivered Items   18   $257.51
           Delivered Items          184  $1121.75
                                    ---  --------
                                    249  $1846.76

        Valerie has been calling some of the people who bought items but
        haven't paid (aka, "deadbeats") and will continue to do so.  A
        unsuccessful attempt was made to badger Steve Gibbard into buying
        the NeXTStation.

  - Mark Conger presented a budget overview report, since the last was six
    months ago.

     * Various line graphs, pie-charts and tables were shown and admired
       by all.

     * Grex's income has been pretty much flat since 1994, generally hovering
       between $600 to $700 a month.

     * Grex's expenses have been growing steadily since its founding, hitting
       $600 a few months ago.  Cutting phone lines seems to have turned this
       around, so even with the added expense of insurance, we should be OK.
       However, we probably can't handle any increase in regular expenses.

     * We haven't bought any hardware recently, so we do have some money
       reserves that could be spent on one-time expenses.

     * Costs are about 50% phone lines.

AGENDA ITEM 5624:  Publicity Committee Report

  - Misti Tucker, the Publicity Czar, was not present.

  - Valerie Mates passed around some more mini-flyers for people to leave
    here and there.

NON-AGENDA ITEM:  Unscheduled Gavel Banging

  - STeve Andre arrived, making quorum.

  - John Remmers would have banged the gavel to call the meeting to order,
    except he'd forgotten the gavel and, anyway, it would have awakened
    the baby.

AGENDA ITEM 229:  Technical Committee Report

  - Valerie Mates said the disks are generally full.  Staff has been cleaning
    up left and right, and work is in progress to get additional disks
    (which we have lots of) installed.

  - Valerie Mates said there have been lots of vandals (as usual).  Jan
    Wolter has written a new "robocop" program which replaces the old
    "killorphans" program and does some automated catching of fork bombs.
    STeve Andre thinks it gets about 75% of all fork bomb attacks.

  - Valerie Mates said that staff had found a site that actually allows
    people to run eggdrop bots for free (Hobbiton.org).  Staff plans to
    contact people there for permission, and put up some messages advising
    people who want to run bots to go there.

  - Valerie Mates said Jan Wolter had installed a new version of Backtalk
    that allows HTML responses.  Debate is in progress in Coop about whether
    this is a good idea.

  - STeve Andre said that Grex is now running on 256 megabytes of memory,
    largely thanks to Charles Mitchell's work in repairing the memory
    expansion board.  Most of the new memory was donated with the 4/690
    system, but some was scrounged from various donors by STeve and Charles.

  - STeve Andre said that he and Charles Mitchell have now scrounged enough
    memory to put together one of the spare 4/670 systems as a development
    system.

  - Jan Wolter said Jerome Tonneson (jerome) has donated a one drive SCSI
    enclosure.  This will probably be used for the development system, or
    to add a differential drive onto Grex.

  - Charles Mitchell said he had checked the last two CPU boards that
    Madhivanan (madhi) had donated, and that they appeared to work.  We
    now have two spare motherboards and four spare CPU boards.

  - Jan Wolter admitted that he had dropped the ball on selling old Grex
    hardware.

  - Scott Helmke said backups were being done again, and another would be
    done soon.

  - Scott Helmke said we need a new console for Grex.  He will look into
    building one out of the various old PC bits in the pumpkin.

  - Scott Helmke said that we have been having occasional busy signals on
    the dial-in lines, but not very often.  Probably number of dial-in lines
    is good for now.

  - Steve Andre has been investigating "melonite," a web site that displays
    Grex's logo and claims to have an affiliation with us.  There seems to
    be no intent to defraud anyone, but we don't want people appropriating
    our logo and good name, so we will file some complaints.

AGENDA ITEM 21:  Credit Card Info

  - Dan Gryniewicz, who was going to report on credit cards, was out sick,
    so this is post-poned till next month.

AGENDA ITEM 554:  Stapler Purchase

  - Mark Conger needs a long reach stapler to staple together Grex Handbooks.

  - Jim Deigert had modified an old stapler to give it a long enough reach
    to staple Grex Handbooks.  It was tested on an actual Grex Handbook,
    and found OK, if not fantastic.

  - In case this doesn't work out, the board authorized money to purchase
    a stapler, at Mark's discretion.

  - Motion by Mark Conger:

        We authorize up to $30 for the purchase of a long stapler.

    Seconded by Jan Wolter.

    After some irrelevant discussion about copy machines and rubber
    restoration compound, John Remmers called a vote.

    Motion passed 5-0-0.

AGENDA ITEM 14412:  New Business

  - We need to have a "Plan the Budget Meeting"

       * Mark Conger will enter an item in Coop

       * Jan Wolter and Valerie Mates tentatively offered to host the meeting.

       * The date of Sunday, April 18 was tentatively suggested.


AGENDA ITEM 374720:  Gavel Cessation

  - John Remmers and various over-enthusiastic by-standers banged various
    objects in lieu of a gavel.

response 2 of 28:

Mar 24 14:30 UTC 1999

And *quick*.

response 4 of 28:

Mar 24 18:30 UTC 1999

Excellent minutes!

My gavel bangings are always scheduled but spontaneous.

response 6 of 28:

Mar 24 20:52 UTC 1999

Indeed, as fast as I was ever able to post the minutes, and far more
entertaining.

response 8 of 28:

Mar 25 17:31 UTC 1999

Interesting.  There web page now says eggdrops are not allowed.  I think
this changed in the past week.  Well, I can't say I'm surprised. 
Allowing eggdrops would require lots more resources than they appear to
have available.

response 10 of 28:

Mar 25 19:05 UTC 1999

  Sigh.  At the moment, they aren't doing anything at all.  They're pingable
but thats it.  So, back to square one, ie "No, I don't know where you can
create a bot".

response 12 of 28:

Mar 25 23:00 UTC 1999

Remmers is president and forgot to bring the grex gavel?! this is
grounds for impeachment hearings! 

actually, maybe the grex gavel should be auctioned off in the Auction
conf to raise money.  of course whoever buys the gavel would agree to
loan it back to Remmers for use at the board meetings.

response 14 of 28:

Mar 26 11:56 UTC 1999

A bot is the usual slang for a program that pretends to be a use.  Bots are
most often used in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to keep control of channels.

response 16 of 28:

Mar 26 18:59 UTC 1999

There was also a discussion of getting an actual electric meter and socket.
We biked Jim's over to my apartment today.  Jim says there is a better socket
in the Kiwanis bike dept., but come pick up what we have (behind the apartment
on Hiscock St.) while he checks out the other socket.  (Why the bike dept?)

response 18 of 28:

Apr 6 19:58 UTC 1999

I re-iterate my offers:
  I have a used watthour meter which I am willing to donate, so that we can
make continuous accurate measure of our usage.
  I have several working terminals.  I believe 2 or three ADM-3As, and one
IBM 3101, as well as one TI silent-700 thermal printing terminal.  I am
willing to donate any or all of these to grex, or to users who wish to
connect to grex. Would one of these be suitable as a console for grex?  Will
the new development machine need a console?

response 20 of 28:

Apr 7 02:47 UTC 1999

Thermal printing terminal to preserve all console messages is an interesting
idea.  How much does the paper cost (or how much paper are you offering to
donate with the terminal)?

response 22 of 28:

Apr 10 04:09 UTC 1999

I think I've got about a half-dozen rolls of thermal paper in the box nest
to the terminal.
  If I wake up in time to make lunch tomorrow, I'll pick them up on my way
into town.
  Sure I can't interest anyone in a good ADM3a?

response 24 of 28:

Apr 11 15:45 UTC 1999

If I knew what an ADM3A was, I might be interested :)