response 9 of 81:

Oct 5 21:46 UTC 2004

Richard, I would factor out the "Infrastructure fund" from 
September 2001 and 2002.  There was a $1024 donation to that fund,
essentially a capital investment (?), in Sept. 2001; that money
remained in September 2002 but most of it was spent on the 
NextGrex project by the time September 2003 arrived.  
 
The way you've drawn your first sample, you don't account for 
the arrival of that large capital gift, but you do treat
its spending as normal operating costs; I think that substantially
exaggerates the decline.

response 13 of 81:

Oct 6 01:13 UTC 2004

But you would then need to take into consideration those of us that would not
contribute either money, time, or serving as staff or board without it.

response 15 of 81:

Oct 6 04:23 UTC 2004

#12...I don't think that Grex getting rid of its id requirement policy for
membership would bring in more money.  I think there are valid legal reasons
why it, or any organization, should want to validate its members, have proof
of who they are.  Whats the big deal mfp of sending grex something that has
your name on it, which is all they ask.  I don't believe it even has to be
a photo id.  

On the other hand, I do believe that while grex shouldn't change its ID
policy, it should change its policy requiring money for membership. A
mandatory "donation" isn't a donation at all, it is dues.  Grex is a non
profit and does not request dues.  It asks for donations.  It strikes me, and
always has, as exclusionary to "require" a donation to be a voting member of
the community.

response 17 of 81:

Oct 6 12:48 UTC 2004

Richard, I appreciate your paying attention to the finances.  But this
idea of not requiring a payment for membership, which you've proposed a
number of times over the years, makes even less sense to me than Reagan's
trickle-down theory.  Grex needs money to pay its bills, so we ask people
who care about it to help.  That's all there is to it.  I know you say
that you contribute your ideas, and that ought to be good enough.
Everyone's ideas are welcome on Grex, and always have been.  But at the
end of the month, I can't draw on our bank account of ideas to pay the
rent.  That's just reality.

response 19 of 81:

Oct 6 18:06 UTC 2004

Because it's a convenient thing to complain about.

response 21 of 81:

Oct 6 20:40 UTC 2004

Tod- try a new one. That logic doesn't follow. 

response 23 of 81:

Oct 6 21:37 UTC 2004

Well, it *is* necessary, currently, for grex.  Whether it should be necessary
is in the eye of the beholder.  You refuse to acknowledge that, and still
nothing changes.  Let's see tod make a proposal, if he's really serious about
something other than complaining.

response 25 of 81:

Oct 6 23:55 UTC 2004

I kinda like the idea of setting some low bar that folks have to get 
over in order to vote in our elections and telnet out.  They don't 
have to have a degree in computer science, or belong to a church, or 
do volunteer work in their community.  They just have to find a 
checkbook and send in six bucks ($18 to qualify for voting) and some 
sort of ID.  We've even set the type of ID requirement to be so easy 
that if someone wanted to fake it, well, it wouldn't challenge even 
the less bright among us.  But they'd have to make some sort of 
effort to scam the system.  How easy is that?

Besides, you'd all have one less thing to bitch about.  Somehow, it 
feels right, to keep it easy for ya.

response 27 of 81:

Oct 7 02:15 UTC 2004

I think Grex should look for a different location.

HVCN's computer is located in some Washtenaw County Building.  I believe they
pay a merit fee, which is quite modest, but otherwise live there for free.
It's not ideal.  Staff can only access the machine during business hour.  If
HVCN goes down on friday night, it doesn't get a reboot until Monday morning.
But they get much better net connectivity than we do.

The library seems like the better deal than that.  Access would be better,
we could get phone lines, and one of Grex staffers is on their staff.  Yeah,
maybe we couldn't always get in there when we wanted to, but it's not like
we are always right on things now.  We get worse access, but much much better
connectivity and much much lower cost.  That's a bargain in my book.  We'll
be cutting costs and improving services.

To do this, we'd need to sell the idea to the Library board.  One of our
members is on their board.  We could probably get a number of locally
respectable people to speak in our favor.  It would take some work to
accomplish this.  It's not my kind of thing at all.  We need someone to
pick up this torch.

If we can't swing it with the library, then we should look around for other
institutions with good connectivity who would be willing to share some.  The
county and the library can't be the only plausible candidates around.

response 29 of 81:

Oct 7 02:35 UTC 2004

If someone among us wanted to pick up that ball, we'd need some information
first:

What is the reasonable minimum footprint for our equipment, either in shelf
space or floor space?

How many electrical circuits or outlets would we need?

How would we offer to handle running telephone lines or ethernet or power from
wherever it is nearest in the building to where it would have to be to meet
our needs?

What other things should someone know before attempting to move this notion
forward, even informally?

(I ask because I am in a position to speak to some people who might have
influence in this potential decision, and it would be nice to have some
specifics to offer.  I'm not referring to dpc, but other voices which may
carry weight with the Library board.)

response 31 of 81:

Oct 7 03:06 UTC 2004

The nextGrex computer is a full tower case.  I'd guess that is about 8" by
18" footprint, and maybe two feet tall.  It would be very nice if we could
keep a monitor and keyboard hooked to it, but that is not strictly necessary.
We'd probably also want to keep the terminal server.  This is about a foot
square and a few inches high.  Three modems.  That's probably the minimum.

Wouldn't mind tossing in space for Gryps.  That's a standard half tower.

If anyone wants to pursue the retroGrex project, we'd need quite a bit more
space.  Maybe two by three feet of floor space.  Could probably fit the
other two computers on top of it.

Assuming no retroGrex, everything could plug easily into one powerstrip.

At the library, we'd be in their machine room, and running power and network
would be trivial.  Other places - we'd be willing to offer help with wiring,
but no institution in it's right mind is going to let a bunch of unlicensed
amatures work on their wiring.

A more interesting question would be how much bandwidth Grex would consume.
I have no idea.  I'd actually feel most comfortable if they had some mechanism
to cap it.  I don't even know if such mechanisms exist.

The key to selling this, I think, is convincing people that Grex is worthy
of their charity.  That, much more than the technical issues, is going to be
the key.

Actually, I'd much prefer the job of selling HVCN to the library.  Not only
is the list of web sites hosted on HVCN really an impressive who's who of
local charitable and non-profit organizations, but they used to host the
library's web pages and now host the Ypsi library's web pages.  I think the
case for Grex as a valuable community service can be argued, but not as easily
as that.