Cyberspace Communications finances for 2005

Jan 2 07:24 UTC 2006

This is a special year-end report on Grex's finances for 2005.

Beginning Balance     $3,226.84

           Average        Total

Credits    $243.75    $2,925.00     Membership dues
            $22.25      $267.00     Miscellaneous donations
            $20.92      $251.00     Insurance refund
             $1.13       $13.56     Interest on our savings account
             $0.17        $2.00     Proceeds from sales of Grex handbooks
           -------    ---------
           $288.22    $3,458.56     

Debits     $100.00    $1,200.00     Colocation fees
            $59.49      $713.90     Phone bills
            $24.17      $290.00     New hard disk
            $22.50      $270.00     DSL line (CoreComm) (Through Feb)
            $10.44      $125.29     Taxes paid
            $10.17      $122.04     Electricity (Through Feb)
             $7.04       $84.43     Rent (Through Feb)
             $4.72       $56.63     Paypal discounts
             $3.17       $38.00     Rental of P.O. Box
             $2.49       $29.90     Fees to maintain our domain names
             $1.67       $20.00     Corporate fees
             $0.01        $0.10     Miscellaeous expenses
           -------    ---------
           $245.87    $2,950.29

Ending Balance        $3,735.11

We added 12 people to the membership rolls in 2005:

acer, ght, muthu, oloryn, pweiss, ric, robfitz, robo, stevem, tfleck, 
vortayne, and vxjester.  Of those, 7 were still paid-up members at the end 
of the year.

At the beginning of 2005 we had 68 paid-up members.  At the end of 2005 we 
had 48 paid-up members.  We had an average of 59 paid-up members during 
the year.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to Grex in 2005:

acer, ajax, arthurp, aruba, atticus, bookie, chanur, charcat, dang, dpc, 
eprom, garrigan, gelinas, ght, gorg, gull, gustitus, i, janc, jared, jep, 
jplatt, kaplan, keesan, khamsun, krj, mbroggy, mbusse, micronix, mnac, 
mooncat, muthu, oloryn, polygon, pweiss, rcurl, remmers, ric, robfitz, 
robh, robo, russ, slynne, srw, stevem, tfleck, tod, trh, vanloons, 
vortayne, vxjester, wh, witling,

and a few more people who asked to remain anonymous.  Thanks all!

response 2 of 16:

Jan 2 18:08 UTC 2006

I hope so.  Notice, though, that Grex was in the black for the year; that's
because we cut expenses so much by moving to colocation.  Compare this
report to ~aruba/reports/2004.txt to see th difference from last year.

response 4 of 16:

Jan 3 06:00 UTC 2006

Yup.

response 6 of 16:

Jan 3 18:10 UTC 2006

re #3
We're "consolidating"!

response 8 of 16:

Jan 3 22:44 UTC 2006

How many dialups were there in each of those years?

response 10 of 16:

Jan 4 00:18 UTC 2006

Just curious if there is a correlation to the drop off in donors.

response 12 of 16:

Jan 4 09:12 UTC 2006

Here is Grex's phone line history:

Jun 91  Grex goes on line with 5 dial-in lines
Feb 93  Increase to 6 lines
May 93  Increase to 7 lines
Jan 95  Move to dungeon, increase to 9 lines
Mar 95  Increase to 12 lines
Nov 95  Increase to 13 lines
Apr 96  Increase to 15 lines
Oct 96  Move to Pumpkin, switch to centrex
Oct 98  Drop to 12 lines
Sep 00  Drop to 10 lines
Mar 01  Drop to 8 lines
Oct 02  Drop to 7 lines
Oct 03  Get rid of centrex, drop to 4 lines
Jan 05  Move to colo, drop to 2 lines

Up until some point (Oct 03?) one of the phone lines was available only to
staff, but after that time, all were available to everyone.

response 14 of 16:

Jan 4 17:39 UTC 2006

1996 sounds about right.  
There was a rising demand for computer communication
yet the World Wide Web was still in its infancy.   Grex got a lot of
users from Gopher listings; there were not a lot of free communication
and email services, and there were not a lot of freely-available 
Unix systems.

Over on M-net, I wrote a long-lost and dimly-recalled essay on how
M-net and Grex were swamped by the capital investment which poured
into the Internet bubble of the late 1990s.

response 16 of 16:

May 17 02:16 UTC 2006

TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE