Minutes of the Grex Board of Directors Meeting of November 10, 2005

Dec 2 18:56 UTC 2005

Attending Board Members:  slynne, polygon, dpc, mary, bhoward (via 
video iChat from Japan and then speakerphone).

Non-Attending Board Member:  gelinas

Attending Non-Board members:  STeve, aruba, Janice Gutfreund

The November 10, 2005 meeting of the Grex Board of Directors was called 
to order at 7:06 p.m. by President slynne at the home of remmers and 
mary, 19 Westbury Ct., Ann Arbor.

Schedule Next Meeting:
Since new Board members will have been elected prior to our next 
bimonthly meeting, the Board decided that this upcoming meeting would 
be scheduled by e-mail after the election.  The results of the election 
will be available on December 16.

New Business:
As Board member vanloons has resigned, the Board discussed filling the 
vacancy created by his resignation.  Dpc said we should stick exactly 
to the bylaws, or else someone could challenge the election.  Article 
4(c) says:  "If an office is vacated before expiration of its term, an 
election to fill the vacancy shall take place within three months."  
Slynne said there was an interesting dilemma with both bhoward and tod 
running, who would be non-local Board members if both were elected.  
Dpc said that this situation should be handled by the normal political 
process.  Polygon asked how we could distinguish a special election 
seat.  He said we could run a separate vacancy-filling election at the 
same time as the regular December election.  Remmers said that if the 
special election is held later, then voters would not have to choose 
which candidate they wanted for which term.  Bhoward said that the 
election should be run separately; that it was simpler.  The Board 
unanimously decided to have a separate vacancy-filling election.

Staff report:
STeve said he had downloaded 90 BSD files from 90 crashes.  Remmers 
said a few months ago Grex started crashing once every 1-2 days.  We 
needed to call Provide.Net to press the reset button, or he would have 
to reset it manually.  There were 40 continuous days us, then 6, 8, 10, 
4, and 2 days; then less than 1 days.  There had been 110 reboots since 
August 22.  He said it was odd that we did not have a problem for a 
long time.  A memory test showed no problems.  There is no evidence of 
disk problems.

STeve said there were 4 reasons for the crashes, 3 due to running 
OpenBSD 3.5.  Part of the problem is due to vandalism.  The system was 
stable for quite a while.  There are no hardware issues, only software. 
 We should upgrade, and bring in a spare Intel Ethernet card.  I want to
 do an upgrade this weekend, he said.  "If it spills over to Monday, 
fuck work."  John said that MiniGrex may help solve some upgrade 
issues.  He said it is all documented.  STeve said that watching the 
system corrode is just painful.  

With regard to the Weasel, STeve said it gives us telepresence.  It's a 
video card.  All the information that would go to the console goes to a 
second machine.  But w need a second machine at Provide.Net.  The 
Weasel would be in this second machine.  That machine could reboot 
Grex.  STeve said Grex has been used to attack other machines.  M-Net 
is turning off mail because there were no many frauds that M-Net was 
afraid of losing its free connection.

STeve said we need a second machine to run squid, which is a firewall.  
He said he had a spare 300 meg machine which we could use.  Bhoward 
asked if we would have to pay for a second IP address.  STeve said not 
necessarily.  Provide.Net may or may not charge us.  Doing this could 
actually reduce the bandwidth we use.  No second phone line is needed.  
This gets rid of 99% of the non-hardware- disaster- related reasons to 
make a personal visit to Grex.  Slynne said she could make personal 
visits, and was very good at following directions.

Dpc said he would like to see the upgrade this weekend, then do another 
iteration for the Weasel.  STeve said he would talk to John at 
Provide.Net.  Slynne said we could authorize up to a certain amount on 
the Weasel project.  Mary suggested $30 per month extra.  Aruba said it 
might be nice for others to kick in on the Weasel.

Mary moved that we will buy the Weasel, and that the anonymous donor 
will reimburse us; that we authorize up to $100 on hardware incidental 
to the second machine, plus an extra $30 per month maximum for 
Provide.Net.  Dpc seconded.  STeve said it would take 12 to 16 hours to 
do the weasel project, some time in December.  Mary's motion was 
carried unanimously.

Treasurer's Report:
Assistant Treasurer aruba said that October was a good month.  The 
report is posted online.  He said that in the years 2000 and 2001, Grex 
could accept credit cards directly.  It was a big boondoggle.  They 
were crooks.  We paid for 6 months of service we did not use.  These 
people are being sued.  The plaintiffs estimate that we will get $8 if 
we participate in the suit.  Aruba may or may not fill in the papers.  
Aruba said he had sent in the old disk drive to Seagate, and he has the 
rebuilt drive on his desk.

Returning to New Business:
STeve said we need to be doing backups.  He said he had an 8 mm tape 
drive.  It is temperamental; we need a DVD writer.  Aruba said we spent 
$700 on a tape drive.  Apparently it was an imprudent decision: we used 
it once and it broke.  STeve said there was more to the issue than 
that.  What is the best way to back up Grex?  Spend $45 for a DVD 
writer.  Or, he could install the spare disk now and use it for 
backups.  He said he wanted to make all user partitions 5 gigs in size 
to accommodate an exact size for the DVD.  Late we can use a cheap DVD 
writer.  Dpc said it should be a staff decision on partition size; 
let's take thee things in stages.  Aruba said he would order the PC 
Weasel.

STeve said he was amazed at the behavior of some sociopathic users.  He 
said Grex was losing a lot of interesting people because of a few 
nutcases.  What are the boundaries of free speech?  we have to control 
these people, or all our efforts will come to naught.  He asked what 
was the sense of the Board on blocking someone who is continuously 
emotionally abusive?  He said it was possible to do intelligent 
blocking.  All the social systems Grex has used have failed.  Other 
systems, such as the Well in San Francisco, don't tolerate assholes.  
Users are paid and verified.  This reminds him of the U of M's Confer 
in the 70s.  Mary asked, how about splitting Grex into Grex 1, and Grex 
2.  Grex 2 would be verified, or read-only.  Dpc said the Board should 
discuss this after the election.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:24 p.m.

response 2 of 35:

Dec 2 19:48 UTC 2005

Perhaps grex should request mental health certifications along with IDs. 
Or maybe it should require academic credentials from those making 
sociopathic diagnoses.

response 4 of 35:

Dec 2 20:09 UTC 2005

Cafe Utne is a nonprofit BBS, I'm pretty sure, and they ban people there.

response 6 of 35:

Dec 2 20:18 UTC 2005

   I'm late for a meetiing so I have to make this short.  A second 
machine is the right way to go, in that it isn't something that is
attackable directly as Grex itself is.  Squid was working on stopping
some of the web exploits that vandals ran here against other sites.
An error caused us to reformat the machine with a newer OS without
saving the previous configuration.

response 8 of 35:

Dec 2 21:13 UTC 2005

How powerful a machine is needed to run the Weasle card? From what I read of
the card, the interface seems to be normal COM ports (RS232). Would an HP100LX
palmtop (DOS machine, 16 MHz) with 2400 baud PCMCIA modem serve? (I think I
also have a 14400 baud PCMCIA modem.)

response 10 of 35:

Dec 3 00:21 UTC 2005

I apologize for that eprom. I dont have any excuse other than it was a 
busy week for me so rather than updating the minutes, I just printed 
out #0 from the agenda item and used that to run the meeting. 

response 12 of 35:

Dec 3 01:51 UTC 2005

Was John Remmers the only person present, and not listed in "Attending
Non-Board members"?

response 14 of 35:

Dec 3 02:56 UTC 2005

I may be going out on a limb that has at least a 50% chance of breaking under
my weight, here, but I would like to suggest that the only user Steve' thinks
is 'sociopathic', a condition he clearly doesn't understand, is... me!

At the very least, I'm sure I serve as at least one example of what Steve'
was talking about.

response 16 of 35:

Dec 3 03:33 UTC 2005

(Also, it should be noted that what I suspect Steve' objects to most happened
not on Grex but on... M-Net!)

response 18 of 35:

Dec 3 04:47 UTC 2005

But Nate, you sort of already do....

response 20 of 35:

Dec 3 05:38 UTC 2005

Support a system that's, well, less than exemplary in its support of
free speech.

response 22 of 35:

Dec 3 14:07 UTC 2005

Okay.

response 24 of 35:

Dec 4 02:08 UTC 2005

 let me get this right: steve wants to ban users but he himself
 along with slynne can't control the amount of food they intake?
 steve is at the point of having strokes because this and yet
 he wants to start to ban users!!!!!!!!!!!! smart!