2009.07.20 Meeting Notes

Location

Thanks to the Information Center for the Environment for letting us use the room.

Project Reports

• Installfests — None scheduled. Alex has been talking to the Math Dept. at UC Davis about using their facilities. They do not have access to the building after hours (e.g., on weekends), but Alex has suggested the possibility of occasionally holding 'office hours' Installfests (e.g., on a Friday afternoon).
• LERT — No offical news, but Richard Harke recently spent a few hours helping someone with an ATI graphics driver issue. (It was someone who Richard had helped via LERT, 4 or 5 years ago, who contacted him directly.)
• Library — No news. Henry still has most of the books, including all those that CSU Bakersfield had asked for.

Other Business

• Multi-LUG booth at OSCON - Space opened up for a multi-LUG booth in the .ORG Pavillion at this week's OSCON (O'Reilly's Open Source Convention) in San Jose. It was very short notice, but many people who had originally offered to help have confirmed that they can still do so. Two folks from SF-LUG took over organizing the event. In the meantime, a LUG flyer had been produced and duplicates made by O'Reilly, and a number of other booths had already offered to place them at their tables. Alex Mandel and Bill Kendrick are carpooling to SJ on Wednesday, with room for one more person. The SJ Amtrak station is nearby, with free shuttles to the convention center, as well.
• Becoming a UC Davis "Campus Affiliate Group" - Alex Mandel discovered that LUGOD could become an 'affiliate group' of UC Davis, which may provide us the ability to book rooms (without going through an existing group or faculty). We'd need 10 UC Davis employees, students, alumni and/or spouses of employees or students. It costs $35/yr. Room access may be limited to 1 hour per room per week. Full details are still being figured out.
• Meeting Venue - LUGOD met with Explorit, and they have offered us space at their 5th Street facility (which has room for 30 people), starting in August. Our plan is to meet there until the Public Library is available again.
• News — Regexp talk at BALUG tomorrow. "Where'd my Files go?" talk at PenLUG on Thursday. SysAdmin Appreciation Party in San Francisco next Wednesday (free). Microsoft submitted 22,000 lines of code to the Linux Kernel (for running Linux on MS's Hypervisor). "Picn*x", the Linux anniversary picnic and BBQ, takes place on August 15th in Sunnyvale (see: linuxpicnic.org).
• New Bank Account — Our previous treasurer cut a check, made out to LUGOD, for the balance of our current bank account. Our new treasurer, Greg Fitzgerald, has been looking into a new bank where we can set up a checking out. Most banks require a minimum $1000 (which is more than our current balance) to get free checking.
  
  Members of the group suggested a local credit union, and Greg and Bill K. looked at Yolo County Federal and Golden 1. YCF required $10 for setup, and min. $200 in a savings account. They have one location in Davis, and one in West Sac. Golden 1 required min. $100 in either savings or checking (setup fee unknown, but assuming it's similar to YCF). They have one location in Davis, and more locations in general.
  
  Greg made a motion to open an account at Golden 1. Brian Lavender seconded. 12 votes for, none against, 3 abstain.
• New PO Box — At an unknown point in the past few years, our previous treasurer allowed our PO Box at the US Post Office to expire, and updated the LUGOD website to show his office address as our official correspondence. Our new treasurer, Greg, felt it was very important that we re-establish a PO Box, and make sure that the IRS has our current address. (If they had tried to contact us before, using the PO Box address they have on file, it would have not been delivered!)
  
  USPS offices are located at 3rd Street downtown, and at 5th and Pole Line. Box sizes Greg looked into included: 3"x5.5" ($60/yr), 5"x5.5" ($96/yr) and 11"x5.5" ($176/yr). A debate took place over whether we could manage with the smallest size, and whether we could use a commercial facility that supplies PO Boxes (such as Mailboxes Etc.). Since some felt commercial locations cost more than USPS, may not be open 24hrs, and setting up the PO Box is an urgent matter, we simply took a vote on what size box to use.
  
  Greg made a motion to open a PO Box with USPS using the small (3"x5.5") size, which costs $60/yr. Bill seconded. 10 votes for, 1 against, 6 abstain. (Note: More people had arrived since the previous vote.)
  
  Consensus was that the location (3rd or 5th Street) be at Greg's discretion.
• Financial Report — $19.75 in voluntary dues were collected. Our total balance appears to be $963.88. Bill Kendrick is owed $6.55 for (the remainder of) a purchase of 1000 LUGOD business cards. That will be deposited into a Golden 1 account (minus any setup fee), and a Post Office Box will be established (for $60 for one year). Bill Kendrick needs to contact Dos Coyotes to find out where our fund raiser donations are.

Presentation

• Mark Smallwood, Marketing Communications Manager at click2try, talked about the service and technology behind it.
• Photos of this meeting
• Presentation slides

Attendance

• Bill Kendrick
• Greg FitzGerald
• Al Lenaburg
• Brian Lavender
• Doug Barbieri
• Gil Levy
• Tahar Lemseffer
• Andrew Roach
• Bruce Wolk
• Alex Mandel
• Richard Harke
• Mark Smallwood
• Gary McGlinn
• Lance Geroso
• Tony Cratz
• Rodney Mineer
• ... and one other