Item 17. Board Meeting Minutes - Sept. 28, 1994 John H. Remmers (remmers) Sun, Oct 2, 1994 (10:10). 156 lines, 0 responses. Minutes of Cyberspace Communications Board of Directors Meeting, 9-28-94. 0. Initializing Gavel (srw): The meeting was called to order at 7:12 p.m. Board members attending: Steve Weiss (srw) [chair], John Remmers (remmers) [secretary], STeve Andre (steve), Rane Curl (rcurl), Mike Smerza (morel). Board members absent: Meg Geddes (meg), Dan Romanchik (danr). Others attending: Chip Botkin (chip), Bill Hosman (wh), Valerie Mates (popcorn), Kevin Powell (kpowell), Bill Rayl (snark), Mary Remmers (chelsea), Pattie Snyder-Rayl (pegasus). 1. Treasurer's report (danr): As Dan was not present, there was no official treasurer's report. Valerie mentioned that income for August had been $459.13, and that $48.13 profit had been realized on Grex shirts and coffee mugs. 2. 501(c)3 Committee (rcurl): Rane indicated that there was nothing new to report. 3. Computer Rehabilitation Committee (rcurl): Rane has entered an item in Coop explaining the project. He indicated that there is a need for information on potential recipients of the the re- habilitated computers. 4. Publicity Committee (mta): In Misti's absence, no report was presented. 5. Hypertext Committee (srw, carl, robh): Steve W. indicated that there was nothing new to report, and that he plans to remove this as a regular adgenda item and instead bring up hypertext matters under new business as the occasion warrants. 6. JCC Sale (mta): In Misti's absence, STeve A. reported that Steve Siricca has donated on the order of 300 lb. of equipment that could be sale fodder. Valerie indicated that ITI has additional equipment to donate as well. 7. Technical Committee (steve & staff): (a) STeve has obtained new PC Route software that he hopes to install later in the week and that should improve usenet news delivery from ICNet. There was some discussion on whether or not improved news flow would degrade the overall respon- siveness of the link. (b) Staff plans to try a possible solution to the disk problems on /usr/local and /home that would involve adjusting partition boundaries and that would not necessiate a full backup and restore, thus avoiding extended downtime. The result will be a /home partition size of about 600 mb. (c) We now have a 32 mb. memory card. Mechanical details of card design will necessitate re-arranging the other cards in the Sun-3 in order to install it, a process that will involve 2 to 3 hours of downtime. (d) The modem on ttyh2 has apparently failed and will need to be replaced. This is the first modem failure in Grex's 3-year history. The plan is to use the 2400 baud Supra loaned by Meg as the replacement. (e) STeve has compiled a list of 386 motherboards that are known to run Net-BSD correctly. We need to obtain such a board to upgrade the PC route box. (f) Steve W. mentioned that Pnews was one of the files lost due to the recent disk problems, a fact of which STeve A. was un- aware. This and other files lost from /usr/local will be stored from backup soon. (g) Valerie reported on a possible source of donations of used Sun equipment. (h) Marcus has been unable to make progress on fixing the problems with passwd, chfn, etc. due to large demands on his time at work. That situation has apparently stabilized, however; hopefully progress can be made soon. 8. Financial planning: In the treasurer's absence, it was decided to postpone this item to next month's meeting. 9. Dungeon issues (popcorn and others): There's been progress in constructing Grex's new room -- a team consisting of carl, popcorn, scg, srw, worked on this, with meals on wheels support from chelsea. Wiring and other prep work remains to be done -- STeve and Carl tentatively plan to work on it this coming Saturday. The new room will be 6' by 13', a substantial gain in length over the original room. There has been verbal agreement to extend the lease to 3 years, with no "opt-out" clause during this period. A. Staff membership policy (srw): Remmers entered an item in coop to discuss his proposal. But as neither remmers nor srw thought to bring the proposal to the meeting, the wording was not available and it was decided to postpone the matter to the October meeting. B. Reimbursing Greg Cronau for the ALM-II board: Motion (rcurl, srw): To reimburse Greg Cronau $200 for the ALM-II board. Passed unanimously (5-0-0). C. Grex liabilities to individuals: There are a number of hardware items that have been loaned to Grex. Some are actually being used, but many are not. STeve has begun the process of tagging items with their ownership status. D. Ordering mousepads (chelsea): Our supplier requires a minimum order of 30 mousepads, but only 9 people have indicated a definite interest at this point. The concern is whether we should risk an order if we do not know whether they will sell. It was decided to postpone a decision until the next meeting, at which point we will have some data on sales of other Grex paraphernalia items at the JCC sale. E. New business: (a) Pattie raised the issue of installing a separate phone line to handle usenet news traffic. STeve indicated that although it would be premature to do it now, before we've moved and are on Centrex, putting news and mail traffic on a separate line is something that will need to be done eventually. (b) Mike S. reported on a need that the United Way has for some computer expertise and asked whether Grex could help. He will try to get more information on their exact needs. (c) Valerie relayed a concern from Josh Grosse concerning the handling by staff of his situation when his 'jdg' account disappeared due to problems with the account database software. The general feeling was that the situation with Josh's and other lost accounts could have been dealt with much better, and that hopefully we'll be more sensitive in the future as a result of this experience. (d) Mary indicated that in view of our recent growth and in- creased income, we should look into the question of tax liability. This will be an agenda item for the October meeting. (e) Kevin Powell raised the issue of the effect on Grex of changes that Merit might make in its access policies. Changes are currently being considered by Merit. Considerable discussion ensued, although since no immediate actifon would result, it was decided to adjourn the meeting and continue the discussion online. F. Terminating Gavel (srw): The meeting was banged to a close at about 9:30 p.m. Respectfully submitted, John Remmers, secretary