Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2016-01-18 The meeting was called to order at 19:30:22 by vasilvv In attendance were Voting members: andersk, bpchen, dlaw, dzaefn, slz, vasilvv | asuhl, ikdc Associate members: asedeno, glasgall, jhawk, jmorzins, mitchb, rishig, walden Prospectives: boojum, srobin | foner Guests: Administrivia: vasilvv: [Clunk] Welcome to SIPB meeting! Today, we will have election for Laura Baldwin after the regular part of the meeting. Anything for administrivia? Project Reports: dzaefn: SIPB IAP is still going on. Bulk of the sessions have gone by; the remaining is still listed at https://sipb.mit.edu/iap. Please come to the ones you find interesting, and bring your friends! [foner walks in] slz: Mirrors will gain a ParrotSec mirror and MacPorts mirror. Other: '() Other Other: glasgall: Mystery hunt happened! dzaefn: IAP is half over. It's sad. srobin: So we can't say IAP has started? dzaefn: I think that's still true jmorzins: It's sooner than you think! [The Chair determined that there is quorum.] slz: Secretary halt! [asuhl walks in] slz: Secretary unhalt. [ikdc walks in] Membership Election: boojum: I'm Laura Baldwin, username boojum. I used to work in Accounts at IS&T. I am still a Scripts volunteer. I was Class of 1989. mitchb: How do you accidentally avoid being here 4 times? boojum: I'm really bad at meetings. asuhl: What's your favorite Athena bug? boojum: my favorite bug is gobble gobble gobble, back when I was and OLC consultant. When a student typesets their thesis, they find gobble gobble gobble at the start of their thesis. The problem was a \@ preamble macro, which broke the @ signs for the later packages loaded. The solution is to put styles in a different order. glasgall: how do you debug. boojum: the reason I was a OLC consultant was because I was good at LaTeX from Assassins Guild. It took a lot of grepping. glasgall: Is this documented anywhere? boojum: told this on zephyr many times (and the bug in the style got fixed!) dzaefn: explain username? boojum: from Hunting of the Snark, in the middle of the poem. [proceeds to recite portion of the poem] there was someone named snark, but I outlasted them. mitchb: involved with scripts for a while, and thank you for that. What do you about the future of SIPB projects? boojum: still worked at IS&T, would say that it would be nice for IS&*T to take it over. SIPB is more excited about building new tools than user support of those tools, but I don't actually know how to philosophically solve the question of user support. glasgall: what's the strangest Moira feature you have come across? boojum: I just learned a Moira thing two weeks ago, but I can't remember it... I have to say it's when Moira talks to AFS. AFS doesn't check if you're in the AFS group multiple times due to different instances of the username. I'd like to think of Moira as a person; you have to know how to get along with it. jhawk: was it root ticket aliasing? boojum: Yes! You can explain it better. jhawk: I think Mitch can explain it better. glasgall: it's a simple look up table. glasgall: how do you double space Moira? mitchb: it makes sense to ask how to double space in LaTeX. jhawk: The institute has gone though a lot of changes recently. It's dark outside, Bexley has crumbled, the clusters are dwindling, IS&T is going through...I don't know what, perhaps you do, perhaps none of us do... There are also light things, the Institute is building half-a-dozen new buildings on Main St., doubling the number of megawatts at the Central Utilities Plant, etc. What do you see in the future for SIPB, with your years of wisdom and experience? I hope you see this as a open ended question. boojum: When I was first a student, i saw it as a place where brilliant and intimidating people hang out. In many ways SIPB still hasn't changed; I think those binders over there has been there since when I was a student. I think SIPB has a unique place at MIT; it wouldn't work at some other place. I see it as a place mitchb: Had same feeling. You gave me my OLC bits, and that's when I decided th could to contribute to computing at SIPB. What was something you broke as a student and had to go to Accounts? boojum: I don't think I really started breaking things until I got bits. I think my worst crash wasn't entirely my fault. I told someone to give Moira a file name of members to add to a list, and they crashed Moira by feeding it a word file. I think this has since been fixed. boojum: VT100 to xterms, someone showed me how to use xterm (but didn't tell me to use the ampersand until later). I remembered clicking a terminal walden: Is it possible to put emoji as usernames? boojum: username policy has gotten more restricted. I don't think emoji is coming. jmorzins: is it possible to form [The room points out that x_x and x__x are both usernames.] [more jokes on usernames] slz: I would like to certify as the Secretary that SIPB Minutes are now fully UTF-8 compliant. ikdc: Aren't they just ASCII? dzaefn: [to slz] How did you write "alfred" upside down during the last membership meeting? asuhl: coolest latex trick? boojum: Learned from (Jamie Morris] I got something working for RPG characters that calculates their skills. But that's more TeX hacking than LaTeX hacking. I wouldn't be able to tell you how to do it without looking at the code. ikdc: more sillily, what LaTeX macro would you be? boojum: \@gobble vasilvv: I move for Mitch to ask Laura The Question. mitchb: i,i I on principle object to asking the question. [confusion ensues] vasilvv: I move for jhawk to ask the question. jhawk: [deliberately] Laura Baldwin, why do \emph{you} want to be a SIPB Member? boojum: two reasons: when I was a student, it was where the brilliant and intimidating people were and I was scared of talking to them. And I have finally got to a point where I can talk to them. I'd also like to be able to help. [The meeting entered closed session at 19:57.] [boojum elected SIPB Member 10-0-0] [The meeting reopened at 20:06.] vasilvv: Congratulations, boojum, you're now a SIPB member! vasilvv: Is there anything else or any other report at this meeting? The meeting was adjourned at 20:06. Minutes taken and submitted by slz.