Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 08/11/97 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by kretch. In attendance were Voting members: kretch katyking amsmith jmorzins | nygren Associate members: ghudson yandros jemorris eichin tlyu jtkohl rjbarbal mhpower rshah kcr yandros mycroft | svalente jweiss gamadrid srz yoav Non-voting members: Prospectives: justom Martin Peck | kiev jhbrown Guests: pocky zacheiss jrpelavn Treasurer's Report: kretch: The treasurer isn't here. Chairman's Report: kretch: Sam sent mail today saying he was officially resigning as secretary. We'll deal with when we're closer to term. Office Report: ghudson: I move to deallocate desk space for the second monitor on bobbi-harlow. [Seconded.] jemorris: If the space would actually be used for table space, I would agree, but I think we would wind up putting another head (and cpu) there, which is really annoying. kcr: Traditionally, people have only temporarily set up machines there. I Don't think that's a bad thing. ghudson: I think it's well-understood that that's a laptop slot and we won't allocate head space there permanently. yandros: jhawk likes it and he isn't here. jemorris: I don't think he has strong feelings. [White ballot.] rjbarbal: For what may be ensuing discussion I suggest that we stay on one topic at a time and not mix topics. Also, I volunteer to contact the safety office to make sure we won't overlook causes of the air problem. mycroft: I move to allocate up to $60 to buy a small rack to hold newspapers and other periodicals and for a paper towel holder so that we have visible places to put these things. [Seconded.] kretch: Where would we put this? mycroft: I hadn't decided. [Suggestion of the short shelf.] yandros: Isn't that shelf due to be replaced? kretch: Yes, I was planning on doing that. mhpower: Given that some people feel that we don't want excess paper in the office at all, making a place for it might be bad. amsmith: I'm not convinced that it would be used properly, given our record. mycroft: It's standard office procedure to look around all the office for paper towels; not having a place for things makes it harder to keep the office clean. kiev: Cleaner houses I've seen had rules for where things go and rules that you could throw things out. mhpower: I think the designated place for paper towels is in the mens or womens room, and the designated place for newspapers is in the garbage if they aren't being read. rshah: Do we have any subscriptions? kretch: No, but some members get magazines delivered here, and there's The Tech, etc. ghudson: Having half the office population believe that we should have these things around and the other half think not is poor; things will get scattered around. We need buy-in one way or another. yandros: I think we may be interested in voting on these things separately. We might also be able to get a paper towel rack from building services. mycroft: Motion withdrawn. I move to allocate up to $30 to buy some sort of rack for newspapers and other periodicals. I separately move to allocate up to $30 to get a paper towel rack (possibly for free). amsmith: There is already a designated place for paper cups and stuff (the second black drawer in back), and that would be a reasonable place for paper towels. tlyu: What kind of rack would this be? mycroft: I didn't specify because there would be protracted discussion about where it should go, and that affects what kind of rack it should be. tlyu: Maybe we should work on getting more table space first. rjbarbal: We could get something like the Athena document holders for periodicals. [Newspaper rack passes 9-3-5.] [Paper towel rack passes 8-7-4.] mycroft will deal. tlyu: I move that we do something about the stack of dead disks. jweiss: Two of those are part of the mac and will be auctioned off. yandros: Most of part of the hardware Karl and I were hoping to deal with using the rack. kcr: It's not clear that SIPB needs a bunch of 1GB disks. mycroft: One of those disks is an AFS server disk that should be looked at and possibly go back on the server eventually. ghudson: Some of those are enclosures with fan problems; they should get thrown out after possibly being deactivated. Some of them are perfectly good 1GB disks we aren't using. [Looks like three of them.] One of them is a perfectly good AFS server disk which wants a replacement enclosure bought for it before it gets put back on the AFS server. kretch: Sounds like the pile will dwindle on it's own for a bit. amsmith: I'd like some small group of people to solicit opinions on food in the office and make recommendations in an organized fashion so we can do something. kcr: That's sort of what sipb-discussion is for. Probably there will be some sort of consensus. kretch: This is something that came up very recently; we probably need some time to hash things out first. mycroft: I don't think it's necessary to have motions for discussion. ghudson: Waiting a while is probably good; I'm not sure the list will work well for determining what the consensus is, though. yandros: We should probably just wait a week. tlyu: Move to allocate up to $100 to replace to the enclosure on the exabyte drive; the fan is having trouble. [Seconded.] mycroft: Fans are not hard to replace. tlyu: I don't have much time to deal with this; someone else should. [Motion passes many-1-1.] kretch will deal kcr: It's been said that the short bookcase is slated to be replaced at some point. Has the replacement actually been ordered? kretch: No, I wanted to wait until we had the new carpet, but the carpet may be hard. amsmith: there was talk about replacing the RJ45 connectors on the laptop drops. What happened? kretch: I think you were supposed to do it. eichin: There was a coupler that was taped on, but it didn't work and it's gone now. amsmith: will deal kiev: There are now some shelves to go with that rack if we want to use it. mycroft: In the vein of eliminating cruft from the office, I move that the PDP-11 drawer be emptied and the contents given away to someone unspecified, probably to someone who has an interest in PDP-11s. kretch: What's in this drawer? mycroft: Manuals and floppy disks and a flip chip for PDP-11 machines. This clearly no longer FTGOS. yandros: I mentioned emptying out a bunch of old drawers in recent mail. I don't think we need to bring up motions about this. jweiss: Maybe sipb-members should get mail about it in case one of them has an interest. kretch: A motion is ok, but note that we're sort of short on membership right now with summer + IETF. [Motion passes 9-3-4.] kretch: Mail should get sent. yandros volunteers to deal. svalente: Our HP probably needs to be reinstalled because of the power hit. mhpower: I was told that the problem started before the power hit. MIT Computing Report: kcr: Athena was switched off for a period of time Thursday night. Computer Services: jweiss: People should note that we are now more than a month into the fiscal year and server maintainers should think about what hardware they want to buy for their services this year. I'll be sending mail to star-maintainers about it. SIPB Backup Report: kretch: We got AFS to work. We're going to try it again. Apparently the drive was very dusty. jweiss: charon was finally backed up. Publications Report: kretch: We're out of Inessential LaTeX. yandros: Maybe we should update it first? jweiss: A lot of frosh are going to arrive soon. jweiss: Move to allocate up to $100 to get 100 copies of it. [White ballot.] R/O Report: jweiss: Rush begins on August 22. IAP Report: '() CokeComm Report: jweiss: People should take non-redeemable bottles downstairs behind Bexley on Tuesday nights. I can tell people how to do it but I'm rarely in the office on Tuesday nights. amsmith: Second warnings: as soon as I start my thesis I'm going to cease dealing with CokeComm. If no one takes it over it will get dumped back on SIPB. kcr: Would CokeComm object if there were an aggressive fridge cleaning soon? amsmith: CokeComm would probably help. Other: mhpower: Yesterday I found an operational problem with the root DNS servers, and got it fixed within an hour. mhpower: Some people are Munich this week. yandros: Monty will be in town soon and would like a place to stay. He's willing to pay rent. Talk to him. rjbarbal: There was a big power outage last week. jweiss: mumble mumble lynx mumble mumble infoagents [etc.] kretch: In the infoagents locker there is now a lynx-beta which does certificates a la sit. Other Other: jtkohl: Mary Chung's will be closed for vacation August 19-26. yoav: Yay! [Others hiss.] amsmith: Apparently the Helicobacterpylori genome was sequenced and is featured in a centerfold in _Nature_. kretch: Wow, look at the cytosines on that one. jweiss: Move to dismember Yoav so that he will be unable to vote multiple times? yandros: In the vein of getting rid of cruft in the SIPB office, I move we get rid of Yoav. amsmith: Move to determine whether "dismember" means "chop up" or "kick out of SIPB." jweiss: Now that you've been through the meeting and have lots of stress to work off, you should come play post-meeting ultimate. rjbarbal: There is a really good meteor shower tonight. Unfortunately, it's probably going to be rainy, so you probably won't get to see anything. It might still be around tomorrow. The meeting was adjourned at 20:04. Minutes taken and submitted by ghudson.