January 18 BoD Meeting Minutes (finally!)

Feb 9 05:26 UTC 1997

Here are the long awaited minutes for the January 18, 1997 board meeting.

Those in attendance: robh aruba scott scg valerie janc mdw laotzu mta kaplan
chanu steve srw

The meeting was called to order at 7:30 with scott weilding the gavel.
The first order of business was the election of new officers.
        aruba consented to continue as treasurer
        scott and valerie both ran for President.  Valerie won in a 5/2
        contest.
        mta was herded in the office of secretary because no one else wanted
        it either.  ;)

Mark Conger (aruba) gave the December treasurers report, (details are
available in another item in this conference).

Among the points of interest:
        GREX collected $282 in dues for the month of Dec.
        Ameritech sent us a mysterious check for $100 which may be a refund
        on unused service at the dungeon.
        GREX paid both November and December phone bills in December,
including
        part of the installation charges to have the centrex lines installed
        at the pumpkin.

        In January (through the 18th)
        Mark has renewed GREXes P.O.Box rental and D.B.A.
        The phone bill controversy still rages, but service hasn't been cut
        off yet.  (A good sign)

        A lot of local calls (640) have been billed to GREX lines that have
        no phones on them.  It seems that cetrex may be charging itself for
        calls up the trunk when modems are down.

The Computer Rehabilitation Committee report:   dang has been accumulating
things, but hasn't yet picked up the computer scg has for him.

The Technical Committee Report: The technical committee has bought a 4370 from
Property Disposition.  It works!  Rob (Argy?) has bought the parts needed to
turn it into a new SUN 4/6xx.

GREX has been offered an almost free SUN3 4260.  

The Internet link had croaked but Jan Wolter's broher was able to fix it. 
It's now kind of kludged together, but it's "probably as good as ever".

The tape drive 9or something thereabouts) has begun to make wierd noises. 
It may or may not turn out to be a real problem.

Does Micropolis owe GREX a new (thingy)?  The one we bought from them never
worked.  (I missed the details on this.  Can anyone fill them in for me?)

The setup to disable outgoing calls is "going nowhere fast".

The Question of WEB ACCESS:  GREX is working toward a compromise on the
question of unregistered users having read access to GREX, but no one really
likes the compromise.  

The Question of an ISDN line:   Paul Southworth met with Rob Henderson, Marcus
Watts, and Valerie Mates.  He offered an ISDN line from his home.  He says
that less than 10 percent of his line is now being used.  The Conditions of
Use would include: Paul and or CICnet would be welcome to test things on us.
GREX wouold provide a modest amount of publicity to CICnet.  We have a lot
of router options, which we will have to look into to find the best fit.  All
phone and other related expenses will be on GREX.  GREX would be limited to
ISDN bandwidth.  Further dscussion will be help in the Garage Conference (j
garage) The offer Mike O'Leary was discussing with GREX has fallen through,
at least for the time being.

The Question of CFADM Trainees: Many well qualified candidates have
volunteered.  The staff will continue to take volunteers until the next saff
meeting, at which time they will discuss the merits of the volunteers and
decide on recommenendations to make to the Board.

The JCC Sale:   The Board voted on whether GREX should be represented at the
next JCC sale.  Scott motioned and Mark seconded the following proposal:
        The Board authorizes up to $80 to spend on the March JCC sale for
tables to Rob Argy if Rob feels it's worthwhile for GREX to attend."

The maotion passed 7-0-0

New Business:   Valerie Mates welcomes all old and new Board members.

response 2 of 23:

Feb 9 09:50 UTC 1997

Micropolis "thingy" = disk?

response 4 of 23:

Feb 9 13:51 UTC 1997

Micropolis needs to fix our recently-dead but still under warranty 2 Gb disk.
However, they still haven't returned an identical disk (belonging to mdw) from
more than a year ago.

response 6 of 23:

Feb 9 18:32 UTC 1997

  Regarding the Centrex problems, I'd suggest contacting the State
of Michigan's Public Service Commission, 1-800-292-9555.  We've paid
a lot of money for service that Ameritech has refused to provide.
One approach would be to get the PSC's address to file a formal
grievance, and cc: it to Ameritech's director of customer service.
 
  Who has a copy of the five year contract we signed with Ameritech?
I'm curious if it listed what capabilities they were supposed to
provide.  If it does, I expect that they've breached the contract,
which would add a compelling reason for them to resolve the issue.

response 8 of 23:

Feb 9 23:04 UTC 1997

Next time I'll come more prepared for the secretary thing and hopefully I'll
be able to do a better job.

response 10 of 23:

Feb 9 23:51 UTC 1997

I'm sure it's deliberate ...
8-{)] 8-{)]
<takes tongue from cheek & sticks it out at Valerie>

response 12 of 23:

Feb 10 03:59 UTC 1997

We discovered at work that just threatening to call the public service
commission was enough to get things moving.  Unfortunately, getting things
moving meant switching from having them ignore us to having them try to do
the things we were asking for, but screwing them up. :(

response 16 of 23:

Feb 12 03:50 UTC 1997

Misti, you may want to do what I've done and bring a micro-cassette
tape recorder along and tape the meeting.  It makes a wonderful
resource for those gaps in scribbled notes.

response 18 of 23:

Feb 13 05:22 UTC 1997

Great idea!  (depressing perhaps ... but so much better than just trusting
that I'll hear everything while I write.  That only seems to happen when I
basically understand what's being said.)

response 20 of 23:

Feb 15 23:19 UTC 1997

Ive done that, and I know organizations that do that. However it is a
*real pain* to use the tape to correct the minutes after the fact. I
have personal experience. Taped minutes are most useful when someone
questions the minutes as presented for approval. Then one can go directly
to a specific section.