mooncat
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Board of Directors Meeting Minutes- December 11, 2002 Meeting
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Dec 13 19:09 UTC 2002 |
Attendees: Board: Mary, Aruba, Mooncat, Steve, MDW, Other, Flem
Others: Bhelliom, Drew, Remmers, Jdeigert, Keesan
102(a)- Meeting commenced at 7:37 pm
102(b)- Other states that he is eligible to participate in the meeting
because he paid off the treasurer.
108- Aruba reports that we were in the black for the second straight
month- we took in $587 and paid $481. Part of the money paid out
included the winter personal property tax.
Aruba also called SBC regarding the phone line that we requested
dropped, that initially had the request cancelled somehow, and they
reported that the line was dropped, Aruba called the number and got the
appropriate 'this line has been disconnected' message. As far as
billing- he will check the next SBC bill to make sure that they indeed
stopped billing us for that line.
In checking on our savings account, the interest rate has dropped to
0.86%. Aruba would like to know if there is some way we can get a
better return, without too much hassle.
There were 3 new members in November- ah3133, falcon76 and mynxcat,
along with one returning member- keesan.
The auction item/conference have been opened and we are currently
accepting donations- however more are needed!
Aruba also sent in some State forms so that we stay in good standing,
money not reported on November's statement, but will be added to
December. The cost was $30, for three years worth of forms, apparently
even after Aruba sent a change of address in to the State they
persisted in mailing the forms to his old address. After telling them
again to change the address, we hope this indeed has been accomplished.
For the phones, we currently are at the 7 line minimum required by our
Centrex contract. Still trying to figure out what exactly the contract
says- however, the contract is up in July so we may want to start
thinking about whether or not we want to sign another Centrex contract
and in the meantime find out what other options we may have.
105- Musical Registrars: Still in the position where we need more
information. MDW was to attend the SemiSlug meeting (last night) and
was going to talk to the people there about their experiences and find
out what registrars were recommended. More of an update at the next
meeting.
108- The publicity committee had nothing to report at this time.
126- Technical Committee- MDW reports that we had two exciting problems
crop up recently.
1- someone opened up a grex account for the purposes of sending
commercial spam, and sent numerous people at a Pittsburgh university
this spam. MDW killed the account that was sending it and informed the
ISP the user came from as well as the university. The mail to the ISP
was not received and the University didn't seem to really care all that
much or think they needed to do anything (the possibility seems to be
that the spammer was indeed a student at said university).
2- Is rather a continuing problem- that being that sometimes mail to
Grex is slow, or doesn't arrive at all. MDW investigated this and it
would appear that there is a poorly written firewall that is affecting
the handshake between Grex and another server. The result is that many
connections are only half-opened, thus filling up slots, but aren't
actually sending other information- then when other machines try to
send mail to Grex they find the slots full and the message may bounce.
MDW is looking into ways of solving this problem so that mail to Grex
is not hampered by this other firewall.
In terms of mail itself, the discssion came up of whether or not it
would be a good idea for Grex to have a server that solely handled mail-
thus speeding up other aspects of Grex itself. The basic sentiment
seemed to be that while this is actually a really good idea, and
probably something that will have to be implemented in the long run-
moving too hastily would turn it into a bad plan, and that careful
plotting and configuring would make this a very good, very viable plan.
So this is now being considered and pondered upon.
Costs involved- the number mentioned was $2,000- for a great machine
that would be pretty powerful and able to deal with spam. Things people
would do, in terms of abuses, would be different, they would still
happen though.
Also it was stated that it is easier to bounce spam back rather than to
accepts it and try to return it. It was also proposed as an idea to,
when an old account gets reaped, add them to a list so that newusers
can't take that name unless that account name has not received spam for
6 months- this will help prevent the newuser from getting
spam 'intended' for the former user.
It was pointed out that with the New Grex system a change could be made
so that the etc/password file isn't grabbable by spammers (who do so
now in order t get a list of user ids to send spam mail to), that would
stop many spammers right there.
Combined Staff/Board Meeting- it was mentioned that it would be best to
plan for this meeting to be a special meeting, not an official board or
staff meeting.
Date: Friday January 31st at Other's home. A potluck will begin at 7
and the meeting will start at 8 pm.
104- The next Board of Directors Meeting has been tentatively scheduled
for Wednesday Janaury 8, 2003 at 7:30 in the Kid's Room of Zingermans
Next Door. Date dependent on the incoming board members availability.
121- new business: STeve is concerend about the power availability of
our current UPS battery. This battery helps to keep grex running during
occasional power blips.
Aruba moved to allocate up to $120 for a new battery, Other seconded.
Votes: 7 in favor, 0 against, 0 abstained.
109- Meeting closed at 8:37 pm
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