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Grex > Coop11 > #87: Spring '99 Plan the Budget Meeting | |
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aruba
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Spring '99 Plan the Budget Meeting
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Mar 24 05:35 UTC 1999 |
I think we should have a plan the budget meeting, to decide what our spending
priorities are, for that portion of our income which is in excess of our
regular operating expenses. Over the last year, we have accumulated about
$1800 in such income, though that number is relatively volatile; if I had
given the same statistic in December, it would have been a negative number.
Still, it's reasonable to expect that our income will average somewhat more
than our operating expenses for the forseeable future, so it would be good
to decide what we'd like to spend it on.
At the board meeting tonight, the date of April 18th (a Sunday) was
tentatively suggested. Both (remmers & mary) and (janc & valerie) offered
their houses. Jan & Valerie's house has the advantage (at least some people
think it's an advantage) of being cat-free.
Use this item to suggest things you think we should be spending money on.
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| 28 responses total. |
mary
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response 1 of 28:
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Mar 24 12:30 UTC 1999 |
The meeting should be held at a cat-free location. We have
two. Thanks, Jan!
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janc
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response 2 of 28:
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Mar 25 20:48 UTC 1999 |
The problem with the "Plan the Budget" concept is that it presupposes
that we have any vision for where Grex is going.
From a hardware point of view, we don't.
Eventually we are going to outgrow the 4/670. What happens then?
We could do what we've done in the past, and just get a newer, faster
computer. But the 4/670 is the end of the line if we want to stay with
SunOS. It was the last server Sun made that runs SunOS 4.1, and if we
want to go to any faster computer, then we need to leave SunOS and
transistion to a different version of Unix - Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD,
whatever.
The other direction to consider is going toward multiple servers instead
of a single server. Maybe a separate mail server and a separate http
server. Maybe dividing users over multiple symmetric servers. Maybe
running AFS. Maybe running kerberos. Maybe not.
Currently, there is no plan for Grex's technical future that all the
staff is signed on to. Marcus has some ideas and is rumored to be doing
some development, but the rest of the staff knows little about it and
certainly hasn't signed onto his program, whatever it is.
Because of this, it's hard to make plans for buying new hardware. The
UPS would be a good idea, but aside from that, I think there isn't much
to do except save up the money for when we are finally ready to do
something.
What we really need more than a discussion on how to spend our money, is
a discussion on Grex's technical future. Whichever way we go, we've got
to do some significant new development work. Without a plan, it's not
going to happen.
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scott
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response 3 of 28:
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Mar 25 21:31 UTC 1999 |
But that's OK. We might just decide to spend $x on a UPS, and leave the rest
in savings. Certainly we've got such a stable system right now that we can
afford to budget nearly nothing for near-term hardware purchases.
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janc
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response 4 of 28:
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Mar 25 23:27 UTC 1999 |
Right - the short-term plan is easy.
But we still need a long-term plan.
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remmers
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response 5 of 28:
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Mar 26 12:09 UTC 1999 |
I'm not sure we need a meeting just to discuss short-term plans. Do
folks think it would be reasonable to morph the plan-the-budget meeting
into more of a "plan-the-future" meeting, focusing on long-term hardware
and software goals? For this to work, the staff members who specialize
in those issues would need to attend.
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mdw
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response 6 of 28:
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Mar 27 02:43 UTC 1999 |
Actually, it's possible to run SunOS 4.1.4 on a Sparcstation 20 - I've
even seen one that's apparently successfully running dual processors.
So it's actually not true that the 670 was the last machine sun made
that could run sunos 4.1 -- it's just the last VME bus machine, and
possibly one of the last machines designed to run sunos 4.1 instead of
solaris 2.
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devnull
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response 7 of 28:
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Mar 27 05:26 UTC 1999 |
I really doubt you want to seperate the http server from the main login
server. It looks like you might want to seperate the mail functionality,
but AFAIK you probalby aren't planning to buy a new piece of hardware to make
that happen.
A bit of a surplus is certainly a good thing. I don't want to see grex
end up with the constant fundraising that m-net has.
If there's consistently a lot of surplus money, the obvious thing to do is
buy a faster connection to the internet. But I don't think that there's
such excess of money.
I suspect that it will be easier to acquire better, faster computers than
it will be to get a faster net connection.
I don't think it's really a problem if there's no grand vision for the future.
grex has been doing good things, and it can continue to do those things.
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mdw
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response 8 of 28:
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Mar 28 05:50 UTC 1999 |
I think I "should" enter my ideas for a grand master hardware plan...
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remmers
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response 9 of 28:
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Mar 28 13:42 UTC 1999 |
Yes, please do. That'll get the ball rolling on discussion.
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richard
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response 10 of 28:
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Apr 1 00:13 UTC 1999 |
In the meantime, maybe grex should invest that $1800 in mutual funds.
Open of a non-profit mutual fund account through a broker/dealer, and
invest in some shares of a few lowrisk funds. Grex could compile a small
portfolio and probably bring in at least a few dollars more in interest
every month than it makes keeping the extra money in the bank. And
potentially, in the long run, grex could see some real profits in its
investments.
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keesan
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response 11 of 28:
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Apr 1 00:47 UTC 1999 |
Mark is about to invest in a mutual fund, see the item on changing banks.
A very low-risk money market fund (the shares are almost guaranteed not to
change in value, interest varies and is a bit lower than riskier funds).
Estimated interest is about 4-5%, or over $100/year.
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aruba
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response 12 of 28:
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Apr 1 00:56 UTC 1999 |
]:
(Money markets and mutual funds are disjoint categories, I believe.)
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keesan
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response 13 of 28:
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Apr 1 01:01 UTC 1999 |
I thought a mutual fund was anything that lots of people invested in jointly,
thereby sharing the profits and the risks. Anyone know for sure?
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toking
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response 14 of 28:
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Apr 1 11:15 UTC 1999 |
O.K. I'm sorry for putting this here...but either I"m going crazy or
somehow all of the responces I've read today have be transformed into
some bizarre sort of old english where "the" is "ye" and "Your" (if I
remember right... your ) is "thy"
this hurts...I'm sorry
...I'll shut up
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davel
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response 15 of 28:
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Apr 1 11:23 UTC 1999 |
You haven't noticed what day it is yet, have you, Joe?
Set your pager to something else & you'll see things as they are. (My pager
isn't doing the stuff you're seeing ... though I'm still somehow seeing the
bizarre rseps, such as "Rane Curl Ringworld Rane" and "Jan Wolter Jedi Jan".)
Or wait until tomorrow, and do "read since 4/1" to reread everything in a more
normal fashion.
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toking
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response 16 of 28:
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Apr 1 12:29 UTC 1999 |
I realized what wa sup shortly after I posted that...felt like a moron
even :) (nd you can change your pager in backtalk)
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keesan
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response 17 of 28:
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Apr 2 23:44 UTC 1999 |
How did the jokers manage to program this one? There did not seem to be any
way to correctly select thou and thy for the different 'you's, but they did
a pretty good job with verbs. It should be dost thou not do thou, like art
thou. Clever. Except it might possibly have offended a retired friend that
we were introducing to grex that day to see people called Ancient. I
explained it was just an April Fool's joke.
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davel
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response 18 of 28:
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Apr 3 14:29 UTC 1999 |
April 1 is *definitely* not the day to introduce most people to Grex. (I
remember the one where responses trailed out into "blah blah blah" after 3
or 4 lines.)
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remmers
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response 19 of 28:
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Apr 4 12:45 UTC 1999 |
Heh. The first couple of years Grex was in operation, I did the April
Fool stunts. The first one -- the infamous "Mary Poppins Filter" --
seemed genuinely traumatizing to a couple of people, although I didn't
intend it that way.
Getting back to the topic of this item -- any further thoughts on budget
planning?
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hhsrat
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response 20 of 28:
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Apr 4 18:12 UTC 1999 |
(just for a relative newbie, what was the infamous "Mary Poppins
Filter"?)
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remmers
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response 21 of 28:
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Apr 5 09:42 UTC 1999 |
(Should we tell him? ;-)
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davel
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response 22 of 28:
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Apr 6 01:11 UTC 1999 |
(Yes, please. I don't know either, & I've been around a while.)
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remmers
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response 23 of 28:
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Apr 6 17:05 UTC 1999 |
The Mary Poppins filter was a little program that I wrote and
installed as the default pager in Agora on April 1, 1992. When-
ever the name "Mary Poppins" showed up in a response, it would
replace it by the name of the person reading the response. So
if a response contained the sentence "Mary Poppins sprinkles
pepper on her tea", then John Smith would see "John Smith sprinkles
pepper on her tea" and Sue Brown would see "Sue Brown sprinkles
pepper on her tea". A lot of folks got the impression they were
being talked about when they really weren't. Good for instilling
paranoia.
I'd first tried out this filter on M-Net, several years before
Grex existed. It was inspired by a a conversation between myself
and Brian Howard (then bdh, now bdh1) at a Picofest. I forget which
of us first suggested the idea.
Hm, what a digression. Maybe we should get back to planning the
meeting to plan the budget?
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lilmo
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response 24 of 28:
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Apr 16 23:02 UTC 1999 |
Wasn't marcus going to enter his ideas for the software/hardware future of
Grex? What are others' thoughts? (I'm thinking here esp. of the staff who
would be implementing said ideas...)
MM funds can be "Money Market Mutual Funds", if I recall correctly...
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