Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 07/6/98 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by cat. In attendance were Voting members: cat nygren gisele gutnik | yak nathanw magdalen Associate members: jmmikkel jcb jweiss kcr eichin yandros jewell mhpower klmitch | jhawk mwhitson Non-voting members: Prospectives: tb ocschwar | dimdim justom jmercado tivol lgdean lnemzer Guests: Treasurer's Report: '() Chairman's Report: The chairman and treasurer are probably both playing softball. Office Report: jweiss: we have license plates gisele: I want to remind people that if they thought there was useful stuff in the Bags of Stuff, they should get rid of it before next Monday (the 13th) because it will be auctioned off, or something. gisele: there is no bulletin board on that side of the office, which means we have no clock on that side of the office. People wanted to paint something it not bright red before reinstalling. We need a volunteer to do it. tb: I thought we were going to get rid of the bookshelf where the bulletin board would go jweiss: I was supposed to do it, I'll deal eventually gisele: there is space behind the bookcase for the bulletin board jcb: do we want a clock which will sync to the NIST which would cost about $150 and it should come out of auction funds, etc (?) tb: I think it's a winning idea. cat: should give it a week so people will see the suggestion in the minutes, and get hard figures jcb: people send me mail if they think it's a bad idea kcr: silly not to get one with a serial line; if it has a serial line, it's worth the money, because it can be a stratum 1 time source jcb, jweiss: offline comments gisele: Behind the door is a large sheet of aluminum with bent corners. Why is it here? It will go away next week if nobody claims it. gisele: Underneath the back table is stuff which shouldn't stay there: a bunch of racks (unused?), a monitor which belongs to EECS, another monitor, the document rack that was on boockcase before. gisele: Do we need rack of documentation? jhawk: machine room is not storage, we should keep it here yandros: whose rack is under the desk? gisele: someone who knows should tell gisele offline yandros: About the EECS monitor: I asked about it a while ago, and they didn't respond. Will return to MIT property if EECS doesn't respond to a second query. jweiss: second monitor is quiche-lorraine's gisele: do we need the rack? jhawk objects to getting rid of it klmitch: The scanner does not currently work. xiphmont sent mail. mkc's monitor has been jittering, should swap with another and see if anything changes. mkc's keyboard loses its meta key sometimes. nathanw: scanner my fault, will fix in 3 or 4 days tb: The stack of disks being tested block visibility and might fall over. We should keep stuff at about the height of monitors. cat: talk to ghudson, he put them there tb: they should be moved when done testing cat: they'll leave the office when they're done being tested Office Cleaning Report: gisele: There's trash. People should make a point of looking around and picking it up. gisele: Is the carpet being vaccumed regularly? Rose said it would happen after we got the new carpet, is it? jhawk: We should ask the person who empties trash if it's going to happen, maybe they don't vaccum to avoid disturbing us. The whiteboard said it was done on the 28th, we might want to keep up-to-date. MIT Computing Report: jweiss: 8.2 went to early test kcr: ops lost another disk yesterday Computer Services: jweiss: This also affects Office Report and MIT computing: Currently physical plant has a grand total of 4 power shutdowns in the next 2 weeks. Thursday evening and Friday morning of both weeks, to do various things. They are supposed to be an hour long. ASO has been trying to coordinate power in machine room. When we find out what is going on, we will make sure to let sipb know. It could be from rescheduling shutdowns to making them shorter and using a generator, to other things. jhawk: CAC claims the building will not be closed during shutdowns. If server maintainters could stick around after meeting, I want to discuss some things. jhawk: Having encountered interesting lossage with disks, I will be writing up a summary of what I think is the proper way to deal with disks. People who believe they're experts should talk to me. SIPB Backup Report: cat: anything done? nathanw: nothing is currently going cat: we can pessimistically assume nothing was done jhawk: foley was talking about how everything was likely to be done early jcb: Suggest/propose we want to keep most recent backup tapes in Save In Case of Fire Box. It occurred to me that if there was a fire, it would be nice to have the most recent set of backup tapes. jweiss: We have off-site backup of AFS tapes. Probably not the most recent tape, but the one before it. jcb: backups probably one of more valuable things, and they're handy in the office mhpower: Save In Case of Fire Box not terribly useful because it's not waterproof, and there are a lot of sprinklers. jcb: could get a plastic bag jhawk: should send mail to sipb-backup about this sort of thing yandros: we already have a hard time getting people to take the tapes out of the drive and put them away next to the drive Publications Report: tb: we got emacs on athena ref cards, everything else looks fine tb: we have only 2 quickstation cards left tb: and there are NO iCyrillic handouts at all R/O Report: gisele: On the 16th of July (a Thursday), there is going to be a stuffing party by ASA, creating the summer activities mailing. We need someone to go help and bring 1000 copies of our mailing to that meeting. cat: we need two volunteers: someone to get 1000 copies made of already prepared flyer, and someone to go stuff lgdean volunteers for both nathanw: the character of houses may be different this fall after they're forced to either go substance-free or get GRTs nathanw: the date will be the 53rd anniversary of the Trinity Test lgdean: SIPB tours: the first Thursday of classes IAP Report: '() CokeComm Report: tb: low on candy, low on soda cat: CokeComm is out of town, tried to do a run before leaving but had cars punt on her tb: Can we have a run? When does she get back? jhawk: in general, those who purchase get reimbursed, even without prior approval gisele: I remember it being possibly 2 weeks lgdean: it's in /mit/mhbraun/Temp/aac/canoe/people tb: if someone fronts cash, and picks a place, I'll be willing to drive Other: jweiss: a very round number will occur on Thrusday: a 9 and lots of zeros klmitch: set up a mailing list called pzephyr for my perl zephyr client. It's a perl extension to allow direct use of the zephyr library from within perl. klmitch: I'm in a job search -- let me know. Looking for basic unix systems-level programming or system administration. Other Other: mhpower: since the last meeting, a number of sipb members were involved in festivities related to Canada Day tb: I was in Provincetown over the weekend, and amused friends with SPF 50 sunblock. My arms and face are still browned noticeably. jmmikkel: I was an extremely minor performer in the concert on the 4th of July. I rang bells. jhawk: Chris Murphy's wife had a kid. It's a girl. jhawk: Everybody look at Chad and join us for festivities after the meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 19:55. Minutes taken and submitted by jmmikkel.