Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2014-04-14


The meeting was called to order at 19:30:00 by dvorak42.

In attendance were 
        Voting members: codetaku dvorak42 dwilson iannucci k_sunter
		phurst tboning
        Associate members: jhawk zoz
        Prospectives: asuhl dzaefn kacquah sparrow_ tthoma24 vahle
        Guests: 

Administrivia:
	achernya: vasilvv asked we allocate $20 for a zsr audio cable.
	jhawk: Hopefully it'll be a lot cheaper?
	achernya: I'm repeating verbatinm what he asked for.

	iannucci: Can I ask for $20k to make a cool wireless thing and
		not have to deal with the procurement process?

	codetaku: Has CPW money been allocated?
	tboning: Yeah.

	dvorak42: Membership elections next week for andresr kacquah and mingy

	dvorak42: dove wants to say a thank-you for all the people
		that helped out for CPW. Rush is closer than you
		think.

SIPB Projects Report:
	achernya: SQL is still recovering due to the unexpected power
		event that occurred during the fan
		replacement. primary-key is running a consistency
		check between itself and foreign-key; I expect this to
		finish tomorrow.

	dvorak42: Last week on Wednesday, we replaced the fans on the
		UPSes Alabama Power and Enron. It mostly went OK
		except for the power interruption.
	jhawk: There's no inter-server redundancy?
	achernya: There's no automatic failover; we can rebind the IP,
		but this wasn't done due to communication failure.
	jhawk: There was a three-week outage?
	achernya: There was a 15-minute outage.
	jhawk: I'm trying to get at, why was the backup server not
		sufficient to prevent problems.
	achernya: MySQL doesn't do hot replication; you can't take a
		database and copy it without doing a consistency
		check.
	iannucci: That's remarkable, because it doesn't actually
		represent replication.

	achernya: XVM will be installing the new RAID on Wednesday at
		7PM-ish.

	zoz: I just had a meeting with the Tech, and they're super
		excited to run Ask SIPB columns. We should write
		those. If anybody wants to write them, add yourself to
		ask-sipb@; we have until next term. Ask SIPB is a
		column in the tech where we answer questions, but
		nobody sends us any, so we just imagine questions.
	sparrow_: I can suggest questions from the helpdesk queue.
	dzaefn: Do we actually want to do this?
	dvorak42: We've done it in the past, it seems reasonable to do.
	tboning: Our goal is to help the users of MIT in their
		computing problems, and this is furthering that.
	zoz: Also gives us more visibility on campus.

New Prospective Introductions:
	'()

Other:
	jhawk: It seemed to me that the impression you got if you
		walked by our table was that we're a group interested
		in retro computing and sugary sodas, and that's not
		the impression we want to convey.
	iannucci: Can I have $20K for a future computing exhibit?
	jhawk: Sure, but not from us.
	
	sparrow_: The last time Inessential AFS was updated was May
		10, 1994. In a few weeks, it'll have been 20 years,
		and I suggest this is a good day for a fun night.
	iannucci: When was the last time AFS was updated.	
	achernya: Saturday.
	jhawk: What's out-of-date about it?
	sparrow_: Some. AFS is still shaped like itself, but I think
		users' expectations of 'what is a computer' has
		changed a little bit since the 90s.
	?: If people aren't interested in updating it, we could ask for help.

Other Other:
	phurst: There's a lunar eclipse tonight.
	dwilson: Will it be visible from this coast?
	iannucci: Not exactly. 
	?: NASA's twitter feed is amazing

	sparrow_: Happy Passover.

	achernya: Exclusively Locking the same mutex twice doesn't work out so well.

The meeting was adjourned at 19:41.


        Minutes taken and submitted by phurst.