Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 03/2/98 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by elliot. In attendance were Voting members: hartmans, elliot, harrisj, kretch, cat, foley, kcr, gutnik, amu, amsmith, pipa, jered, nygren, svalente, jdaniel | yandros, nygren Associate members: marc, mycroft, mhpower, jemorris, jewell, danw, jhawk, shabby, srz, tlyu, sgw, ghudson | warlord Non-voting members: Prospectives: yak, dmaze, rfrankel, lockhart, pocky, hobbit,lnemzer, jmercado | shapere, sly, jrpelavn Guests: Treasurer's Report: ghudson: When did we spend $9k on a computer? mkc and a PC server. jweiss: Check to make sure the tape drive didn't get in the wrong budget. Chairman's Report: Election for yak. pipa: Preference: coke or diet coke. yak: coke. jered: What have you done? yak: I have helped users with quota. I'm working on some software; an enhanced zwrite. Working on a sound editing program. foley: A user wants to convert a Filemaker Pro file on the Mac; their disk has a virus. yak: Download disinfectant; disinfect files. jered: MIT has a sight license for something better. kcr: You write software that is useful and install it in the sipb locker. What do you do next? yak: Send mail to sipb-office. ghudson: sofa is the right place to send mail.. danw: Name two sipb services maintained out of the machine room and one out of the office. yak: Milo net and scanner are in the office. charon and www in the machine room. [Random discussion about whether milo-net is actually a service.] kcr: Point out the former SIPB chairman. [yak points to kretch] srz was also around. jered: Give an example of a word that causes the Webster server to core dump. jweiss: number amsmith: User wants voice recognition software for Athena. yak: I don't know of any; ask the office. kretch: One of the computers says "yes". amsmith: ATIC has a solution for this. jhawk: The power goes out. What do *you* do? jhawk: Try calling 3-1300 before calling Physplant. Also try calling the zone; probably paging people is a bad idea. You should find people to shut down SIPB services; our UPSes are not as good as ops. kcr: Fire alarm happens. yak: Grab fire box and shut the door and get out. jhawk: Make sure everyone else leaves. jewell: Suggest things we should get. yak: The NT box is a good idea. kretch: Pick a SIPB member and ask them a question. yak: Jered, what species is Apple's mascot? What is his name? jered: Mumble. Discussion happens. It's a dog cow named Clarus. kcr: What is the procedure for closing the office? yak: Turn off stereo; turn off lights; make sure people are out; leave. kretch: I move that SIPB ask the question. yak: I want a key. The only thing that would affect me is getting a key and a slightly better chance of getting space for things. 18-0-3 passed. elliot: We membered yak and we discussed what we can do about prospectives. kcr: I'm collecting a list of things people should be told when they become prospectives. If you have something to add, send kcr mail. danw: Move to postpone until next week. [second] jhawk: I object. many-2-4 passes. We will discuss prospectives next week. sgw: I move to nominate xela. [kcr seconded.] sgw: I rephrase to nominate contingent on acceptance. [kcr seconds again] Has been very active and very helpful. Answers and asks many questions. jemorris: He brings us food. 9-0-3 passes. After the meeting, xela accepted; election is next week. Office Report: marc: It's 888888888 seconds past the epoch. hartmans: The phone is broken; we haven't called 3help. kcr: I'm calling. mycroft: The office is much more pleasant while wearing ear plugs. elliot: We had a bit of discussion about the carpet. How is Monday during spring break to put it in? [That's March 23] cat: Are we doing the moving? kretch: CAC will move large things, but we move computers and books. q elliot: At least five people will be around. jhawk: Are we expected to empty shelves and stuff? kretch: yes. kcr: I move to allocate $2500 to replace the SIPB carpet. [second] ghudson: I believe it is within our means although getting additional equipment may be difficult. kretch: I believe we had $5000 left last time I checked. 18-1-3+sgw passes. kretch: We have the room next door for 48 hours (we decide when). mycroft: We originally talked about having the office painted. kretch: The general consensus is that we could just get some cans of paint and do it or we could not deal. n cat: I think painting is a bad idea. Discussion about problems painting before and after carpet. jweiss: Painting after the carpet would cause us to have painted carpet. kcr: Move to allocate $100 to paint the office. [second] jhawk: Who is willing to actually paint? cat: Add drop cloths, rollers, etc. [accepted] amsmith: I think that painting at the time that you put in a rug is bad in terms of habitability. srz: It's spring break; this may be a reasonable time for the office to be uninhabitable. rfrankel: We should wash the walls, not paint. jhawk: The walls are very dusty. jweiss: I don't think they need painting. Perhaps we should just wash them. There are many other dusty things in the office. jhawk: I made the assumption that all the dusty objects would get cleaned. The walls should either be cleaned or painted. jweiss: Cleaning is reasonable. I do not expect the ceiling to be leaving the room while carpeting, so it won't get cleaned. Straw poll: who would come paint? 7 people. nygren: Doing something to walls would be reasonable. kcr: Amend myself to $200 4-10-11 fails with strong apathy.. jhawk: I move to allocate $50 to get cleaning supplies and to clean the office. [second white ballot] Kcr will organize. elliot: I move to allocate $100 for temporary and permanent storage containers. [second by kretch] These are to store things moved out of the office. jweiss: We could raid clusters for old paper boxes. marc: We got Rent a Crates for the Cygnus move. They were cool. jhawk: Friendly amendment to make allocation provisional on necessity. [second] kcr: Please don't buy paper products for permanent storage. 13-1-6+sgw passes. sgw: There was talk about getting an exabyte stacker. It is for a full-height drive. If people are interested in trying to make it work, I can bring it buy. mycroft: Given the excessive number of keyboards that have been coked recently, I move that people not be allowed to eat in front of keyboards until after we get plastic covers. kretch: Was it people eating and computing or just people eating but not computing. I.E. would covers help? mycroft: I propose to get permanent covers. jhawk: I find permanent covers on keyboards to be annoying. People who spill things on keyboards should report it. mycroft: First, covers can be annoying. I disagree that the cost of replacing keyboards is minimal. I think it is unreasonable to continue to just trash equipment. It's fine to say people should be more responsible, but how can you expect people to be more responsible? cat: The proper response is not to call hotline, but to ask people and clean the keyboard. sly: I have RSI and tried to use permanent keyboard covers. They hurt. nygren: I think that people should eat food in a way that reduces the chances of lossage. I think that if we have a policy then those who are irresponsible enough not to report keyboard lossage will ignore the policy. kcr: Remind people to be more careful. If you see people who continue not to be careful, report them to me. elliot: Don't avoid reporting breaking equipment. Kcr broke lots of stuff and it got fixed. kretch: The general problem is general carelessness. tlyu: The amount of free desk space has been decreasing. I see a correlation between this and problems. jhawk: You should clean keyboards instead of getting them replaced. I call the question. mycroft: I withdraw the motion. Office Cleaning Report: Cleaning happened. jhawk: You all suck, the cabinet has loads of dust still. MIT Computing Report: hartmans: There is another two character Athena username--tb. jhawk: W91 has a scheduled electrical shutdown Thursday; you shouldn't notice if everything works. jweiss: There is discussion of a campus-wide cooling shutdown this weekend. Computer Services: () SIPB Backup Report: foley: I'm still getting soft errors on the exabyte. kretch: I got thingies to hold exabyte tapes. Publications Report: sepherke got iLaTeX. jhawk: Move to allocate $50 for 50 copies of iMatlab. [second white ballot] jrpelavn will deal. R/O Report: () IAP Report: () CokeComm Report: () Other: () Other Other: warlord: This is can #1776. kretch: People should check their pilots at the door to avoid PDA. The meeting was adjourned at 21:19. Minutes taken and submitted by hartmans.