popcorn
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response 44 of 62:
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Jan 8 14:54 UTC 1995 |
<sigh> I'm really not a big fan of Amer's. I chose it because I thought
other people liked the place.
Here are the results of yesterday's meeting. It was attended by: carl, mju,
popcorn (me), scg, srw, and STeve.
Floor layout for the dungeon (not perfectly to scale):
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| tape | |SCSI modem-shelves |
door | drive| cpu | |
+------| | console ?? PC-route |
| +-----------------------|
+ +-----+ (chair) | the new
| ----- | stairway
| | is here
| |
| plumbing |
|---------------------------+ "snake" |
| other shelves | access |
-+------------------------------------------------------------------+-------
| outside wall | window
-+------------------------------------------------------------------+-------
The ?? means that our notes don't say clearly what went there, but
*something* did.
The SCSI, console, ??, and PC Route box will all be on a table that
srw is donating. The modem shelves will be attached to the wall above
the table. I talked to Gregc yesterday; he volunteered to deal with
the modem shelves.
We don't yet know which way the door will swing -- there is no door in
the door frame yet.
The plumbing access is for a plumber to come by and snake out the house's
plumbing. Steve Weiss said that people come by and do this at his home two
and three times a year. We were kinda sad to see this in Grex's room, as
it doesn't seem to be a very computer-compatible kind of thing. We tried
to keep things away from it, so there's space for a plumber to reach it,
and space for it to burp a little without soaking Grex. Yucch.
We talked about putting Grex in the space where the "other shelves" are,
but since that's an outer wall we think it's more likely to have wetness
problems.
The phone wiring seems to come into the building where the window is.
Gregc will do the wiring, inside the room, where it's easily accessible
if it needs any maintenance or changes. In case of flooding, etc.,
the phone wiring will go along the wall fairly high off the floor.
Carl will collect some pallets. We will use these to try to keep everything
in the room off the floor, in case of flooding. The dungeon doesn't have a
history of flooding, but it's better to plan for it just to be safe.
Here is the To Do list from the meeting. I've contacted most the people on
this list who have things to do. I'll enter a separate item to ask for the
things we need donated.
* Before putting up drywall today, we need to mark on the floor the locations
of the wall studs.
* We need a garbage can donated.
* Did Greg order a van? (I contacted him, and he's got it taken care of.)
As backup, in case there's a van disaster, carl and scg will try to have
their large vehicles on call.
* Does Dan have a guarantee from Ameritech that phone service will be ready
on the right day? Someone suggested that since we're not going with
Centrex, we should be able to get dual service, so that for a few days the
phones will ring at both CE and the dungeon at the same time.
* Carl will buy paint, primer, and polyurethane.
* We will ask on-line for loans (donations?) of paintbrushes, rollers, and
trays. We'll be using latex paint, so stuff should wash fairly clean.
* Carl and STeve will collect pallets one weekday this week.
* We will ask on-line for loans of people's skunky old blankets that we can
use to wrap things in, for protection in transit. (Everybody has one or
two skunky old blankets, right?)
* Gregc will deal with the phone wiring. Carl can help, if Greg wants
assistance.
* We probably need a Dungeon Key Policy. Suggestions included making this
match Grex's "root policy", or having a "key keeper" who keeps track of all
keys and their locations, and gets them back when people leave town or stop
needing access to the Grex hardware. This is a lower priority item than
the move itself; it can wait for the next board meeting, whenever that is.
* We had some questions for Ian, and it's been a while since we touched
base with him. I talked to his answering machine last night; will call him
again this morning. Questions are: What's the status of putting in Grex's
fan? (We think it may need to be installed before the drywall goes up.)
We should tell him our planned move-in schedule, just so he's in the loop.
In case he gets an early start on the drywalling, we should tell him we
want to mark the studs on the floor. We have questions about drainage (do
the walls block a water path from the snake access to a basement drain?)
and would just like to check in about the snake access.
* Greg/Marc/Steve will order punchdown equipment (telephone stuff, to put a
bunch of phone jacks on a plywood thing on the wall).
* I *need* *to* get with Nick and Beth to sign that automatic lease renewal
until 1997. It keeps getting put off, but it's IMPORTANT.
* If we have a volunteer muralist who could paint the dungeon interestingly
(STeve has some interesting ideas), please speak up?
* When srw and I went over to the dungeon to take measurements, the dog
barked a lot. I'll ask Beth if there's a problem with late night dog noises,
that is, if we should avoid being there at 3am to avoid upsetting the dog.
I reached her and asked: she says barking is what the dog is there for, and
don't worry about it. She also asked us to park in U of M parking rather
than in the parking for the dungeon building. I'll e-mail this request to
all dungeon/moving/etc volunteers. Also, I'll talk to Beth today to ask if
it's OK if we do park at the dungeon on the day when we move in to it.
* We could use a donation of one of those plastic things with a bunch of
little drawers. (Do you know what I'm talking about? Do these things have
a name?) This would be a place to store assorted little pieces of
hardware, tape labels, etc.
* If we don't already have a tape rack, we could use one. Do we have one?
Can you donate one?
* We need modem shelves. We were going to ask Carl about this, but Gregc
volunteered.
* Backups are going to take FOREVER if we don't have Grex's new backup
system in place before the move. Everyone at the meeting will make a
concerted effort to sit on whoever is necessary to get the new tape drive
operational before the move. (We're talking about the difference between
maybe a 15-20 hour backup with the old eqiupment vs a 2-3 hour backup
with the new equipment).
* Just in case we don't have our own new backup in time for the move, we
will ask around to see if we can borrow someone else's backup system for
the weekend.
* I'll talk to Ken to verify that CE will be open that day. I talked to
him and he tentatively said it'll be open, but I should get a definite
answer.
* Note that the start time for the move has changed from noon to 8am.
This gives us many more hours of move time when CE is likely to be open.
* I'll buy labels, so we can label each cable as we disconnect it.
* We could use volunteers to bring in food a few times during the day.
Maybe one person with warm beverages and breakfasty munchies first thing in
the morning, a second one to bring food and stuff at lunchtime, and
possibly a third one at dinnertime, though hopefully we'll be finished with
the move before dinnertime.
Here's the schedule for moving day (January 22nd).
1) Some time after the paint from the 15th is dry, but well before the
move, srw will move his table into the dungeon.
2) Carl will collect pallets before the move. He needs to pick them up on
a weekday, but it's OK if he leaves them in his truck until the 22nd.
3) Greg or Valerie will be sure the van will be available at 88am on th
22nd. If Greg's sleep schedule allows, he will drive the van over to CE.
If not, Valerie will collect the van from Greg the night before.
4) 8am on the 22nd at CE: shut down Grex. Remove big components that
aren't needed for the backup. Bring Grex back up in single user mode, to
do a backup. While the backup is in progress, people will dismantle the
big components that were removed, labeling each cable as it is disconnected.
5) Move big components to the Dungeon while the backup progresses.
6) When the backup is finished and the truck is back at CE from the
Dungeon, dismantle the rest of Grex, again labeling each cable as it is
disconnected. Move that to the Dungeon.
7) Reassemble everything.
8) Power up, test, and re-reassemble everything.
Initially we wanted to make a list of which components to move in what
sequence, so that they would fit neatly into the dungeon. Actually, it
looks like as long as the table is there ahead of time, the actual sequence
in which components arrive in the dungeon doesn't matter: it will all fit.
While I was entering this response, Ian called. I told him what our
schedule is. He says he'll have the drywall ready for priming in time for
our priming day. I told him we'd like to mark the studs on the floor
before we cover them up. No problem. I asked about the snake access (he
says it's called a cleanout access). This is actually a secondary cleanout
access for the building, not a primary one. In emergencies, a plumber
would need to deal with the primary one. If they needed access to our
cleanout access, they would be able to give us a few days notice: it
wouldn't be an emergency. (I still think we should leave a copy of our
keys with Beth). It will never spew liquid or need access to a drain: a
cleanout access is covered by a cast-iron cover that is screwed on very
tightly so that fatal sewage gasses don't leak out into the house. I
didn't ask him if it could get messy if a plumber needed access to it, but
at yesterday's meeting srw seemed to think this was a possibility.
About the fan: Ian will put up the outside ventillation stuff today (1/8),
before drywalling the ceiling.
So, overall, things sound good! There are a bazillion little details to
follow up on, but it feels like we've got a good handle on the moving
process. I'm really glad we had this meeting. Many thanks to everybody
involved!
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