Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2.17.03


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

In attendance were
	Voting members: rax jenselby golem tibbetts | arolfe
	Associate members: alex_c int18 ingolia
	Prospectives: perlner harrisct
	Guests:

Treasurer's Report:
	tibbetts: It's treasurer's report so I get to talk. We have as
		much money as we want, pretty much. IS doesn't really have
		budgets; they have forecasts. Our forecast has like $10000 left
		in it; I don't have solid numbers and no one cares. Last year
		we came out at the end of the year with a couple thousand
		dollars extra and this made IS kind of mad at us. We should
		tell them ahead of time if we are going to come out with extra
		money this year. Ideally they want some idea of what we are
		going to spend our money on now or next month so they do not
		think it is like last year. So I want to get an idea of what
		people are interested in spending money on between now and June
		1st.
	golem: If these are projections and not budgets, does anything
		bad happen if we go over?
	tibbetts: It's not clear. We have $40000 or so and that is a
		very small portion of IS's budget, less than half of a fulltime
		employee. If we go over by 25% they would probably not notice
		but I haven't asked an accounting weenie. Certainly other parts
		of IS are over budget. If we come out with lowered projections
		this year, will they reduce our budget next year? I plan to
		look into this but I suspect it will be not a big problem.
	rax: Do we upgrade office machines from this budget?
	tibbetts: Yes. There are two budgets: machine room and office.
		The machine room is even more funny money; as much money as we
		want to spend in the machine room we get to spend as long as it
		is sane. We share a half-million dollar budget with ops. We
		kind of have to spend it all yearly. We make those projections
		in June and they are usually pretty accurate. They are not
		happy if this is not the case.
	golem: We should look at recurring costs like chairs. They
		could probably be fixed via warranty.
	tibbetts: The warranty on the chairs is somewhat effective but
		it does not get them fully replaced and new chairs are nicer.
		People were interested in workstations and LCD monitors. I will
		talk online and report later at another meeting.
	arolfe: How many new office heads have we proposed?
	tibbetts: Right now our budget guy has us down for one $3700
		workstation replacement. But he made some stuff up.I think he
		did it to scare me. How many? As many as we want to. How many
		are we thinking of? One, off hand. There is a running problem
		where the linux boxes aren't shitty enough.
	arolfe: We could replace granola and quiche.
	golem: How much would it cost to put 2 GB of RAM in each
		machine?
	tibbetts: A bunch. You are welcome to investigate this further.
		It's not clear this is actually worth anything.
	golem: Memory seems like the only limiting factor on the
		machines.
	tibbetts: Most of our linux machines have laughable processor
		speeds. No one cares, which is also interesting.
	golem: I only notice slowdown when I hit swap.

Chairman's Report:
	rax: We were lame about the membership election, it will be
		next week.

Office Report:
	tibbetts: There are a bunch of chairs that are kind of sad. The
		Herman-Miller people deal well. You have to call them during
		business hours. I haven't been able to figure out how to deal
		with the Steelcase chairs though. They may have exceeded their
		warranty.

Office Cleaning Report:
	rax: There were tacks sitting upturned on the desks. I put my
		hand on one. You people suck.

MIT Computing Report:

Computer Services:

SIPB Backup Report:

Publications Report:

Orientation Report:

IAP Report:

CokeComm Report:

Other:

Other Other:
	golem: The weather outside is frightful.

	tibbetts: Sucks report?

Sucks:
	tibbetts: Channeling jtu: Saferide.

The meeting was adjourned at 19:40.


	Minutes taken and submitted by rax.