Minutes

02 Oct 1997

present: tim, darren, darron, steve, dennis, ian hey, nobody showed up because we might NOMINATE them? or are they all mudding? who can we nominate? not much on the agenda… – the other day we got a call from jim ridge, in charge of the soapbox derby. he’d heard through the grapevine that we used to run the soapbox derby times, and he says that now they’re going to start doing it again and it needs some timers. If we are available to do the timing and it’s something we’d like to do, he’d appreciate it. - does anyone still know how to use this equipment? darron: we ended up using stopwatches on our watch last time because somebody tried to hook it up to a car battery. then i thought we pawned off what was left to engineering. darren: some thrown away, some gone to ozz, now we have one box that says “timer” on it. darron: the engineering club has done it the last couple of times. steve: this does seem more of an engineering than computer thing, it just happened that we had the equipment at the time and we volunteered. i’ll call and refer him to the ENG folks. next: TON oF SUNS ISSUE

another dept within whirlpool decided “well, don’t get rid of it after all, we can use it.” Steve: I got a call from Bryan and Bryan’s boss, who was apologetic for leading us on this way. So still possibly at some point in the future if they have stuff, we’ll be considered again. Tim: Ken said he might have had room for them… Consensus: Oh well, lessons learned, better luck next time. Steve: VAXStations. Tomorrow I have a meeting with Wayne, who will take the ones currently underneath Yakko’s desk and consolidate them, put the hobbyist licensed OS on them, install XWindows and TCP/IP, and tinker with all of them, including possibly putting up a proxy server so we don’t need to request more IP addresses from WMU. Tim: we still have reserved pinky, brain, lenny, coredump, sagfault [sp]. We could probably change those last three to skippy, slappy and mindy or something like that. If I recall the vax’s don’t need more than 6 characters per name. Steve: So soon we will have five to eight fully loaded systems ready to hook up. Then we face the problem of space. Perhaps since nobody’s using the workbench except to store crap on, we could put two there, maybe one on the desk by the window, and then move the pop out and put in another table maybe two. X windows all the way around the room…so start thinking about where to get table, what to put where. DEADLINE FOR MEMBERSHIP DUES ARE TOMORROW! For the time of tomorrow until the time somebody feels angered or willing to disable accounts, the script has been written…. tim snickers I know this is tim’s favorite part, but a lot of folks have frantically contacted me and said the check’s in the mail, so one week grace period for those who have contacted the club by the deadline. If we don’t get mail or a phone call, account will be disabled. After two weeks if no contact, the account is deleted. Tim: I want to back up just the ones that we disable, that won’t take much space. Steve: Last item. yakko.cs.wmich.com is UP! You can ping it, Ian and I can log in because we have shell accounts. They’re still messing with some sort of adduser script to make it easier on us to establish accounts, directory structure, etc. Tim: Advertisement! I found that 1/8th of page is 125 bucks for a student organization. according to WSA pres, best day to advertise is thursday. Strategies for placement, orientation and content. Next to a SHOWGIRLS! ad? advantages and disadvantages. Tim: Shelly {sp} Wall may be writing a Herald story. If she calls we should make sure we tell her about the return of our webpages. I would rather have someone write an Opinion column than an article. But ideally, all three should be done: OPINION, ARTICLE AND ADVERTISEMENT! We need to have folks write up a bunch of sample opinions, since Opinion will likely be the one we need to work hardest on getting. Steve: Also, replies to Opinions, or editorials. The exposure is the relevant thing, to generate visibility for us, as well as some sort of response. Tim: Should we vote on this? Probably should. 125 bucks on Thursday is my suggestion. Steve: How soon can we whip up a bunch of things before we decide if it’s worth it? I’d like to get a design and see it before we vote, since we all seem to agree that the cost/benefit could swing either way. Is there cost difference for color/Black&White? Tim: Article will probably come out next week, and I’d really like to have the ad the same week as the article…can we have an emergency resolution? Steve: If we come up with something we’ll put it here in the office and invite folks for public comment. This is Club money, should be spent with member’s interests. Tim: I’ll mail and see about having art whipped up. Steve: How about the old guy from the Metallica video trapped in the room, gangly and old and sick looking…get him in a nightcap and a WMU hat (no shirt so you can see how dead he looked). Something like that is what I want to shoot for. Consensus: Caption is the most important part. Big text up top to grab eye, slightly smaller below picture which is more in depth but still short and sweet, which conveys the central issue: we have webpages [back]. Any other issues? Tim: WSA meeting was stupid, I hated it, someone please take responsibility off my hands. If you actually read the article they had another article. All the talk about compensation will now wait a few weeks. Other junk. I talked to Cory Watt and he’s very gung ho, student affairs wants to deal with this, so i think he’s the guy willing to work with us. We’re talking about how to fix WSA, and I hope to have a more positive report next time. Treasurer’s report: We have ~1500 bucks in the Club account. We didn’t make as much on sales as last time. Tim: I’m taking over since Steve is on the phone. Any more business? No? We’re adjourned! another triumph for democracy.

The Computer Club at

Western Michigan University

Minutes