Item 159. Board of Directors Meeting Minutes- December 11, 2002 Meeting Anne Perry (mooncat) Fri, Dec 13, 2002 (14:09). 114 lines, 3 responses. Attendees: Board: Mary, Aruba, Mooncat, Steve, MDW, Other, Flem Others: Bhelliom, Drew, Remmers, Jdeigert, Keesan 102(a)- Meeting commenced at 7:37 pm 102(b)- Other states that he is eligible to participate in the meeting because he paid off the treasurer. 108- Aruba reports that we were in the black for the second straight month- we took in $587 and paid $481. Part of the money paid out included the winter personal property tax. Aruba also called SBC regarding the phone line that we requested dropped, that initially had the request cancelled somehow, and they reported that the line was dropped, Aruba called the number and got the appropriate 'this line has been disconnected' message. As far as billing- he will check the next SBC bill to make sure that they indeed stopped billing us for that line. In checking on our savings account, the interest rate has dropped to 0.86%. Aruba would like to know if there is some way we can get a better return, without too much hassle. There were 3 new members in November- ah3133, falcon76 and mynxcat, along with one returning member- keesan. The auction item/conference have been opened and we are currently accepting donations- however more are needed! Aruba also sent in some State forms so that we stay in good standing, money not reported on November's statement, but will be added to December. The cost was $30, for three years worth of forms, apparently even after Aruba sent a change of address in to the State they persisted in mailing the forms to his old address. After telling them again to change the address, we hope this indeed has been accomplished. For the phones, we currently are at the 7 line minimum required by our Centrex contract. Still trying to figure out what exactly the contract says- however, the contract is up in July so we may want to start thinking about whether or not we want to sign another Centrex contract and in the meantime find out what other options we may have. 105- Musical Registrars: Still in the position where we need more information. MDW was to attend the SemiSlug meeting (last night) and was going to talk to the people there about their experiences and find out what registrars were recommended. More of an update at the next meeting. 108- The publicity committee had nothing to report at this time. 126- Technical Committee- MDW reports that we had two exciting problems crop up recently. 1- someone opened up a grex account for the purposes of sending commercial spam, and sent numerous people at a Pittsburgh university this spam. MDW killed the account that was sending it and informed the ISP the user came from as well as the university. The mail to the ISP was not received and the University didn't seem to really care all that much or think they needed to do anything (the possibility seems to be that the spammer was indeed a student at said university). 2- Is rather a continuing problem- that being that sometimes mail to Grex is slow, or doesn't arrive at all. MDW investigated this and it would appear that there is a poorly written firewall that is affecting the handshake between Grex and another server. The result is that many connections are only half-opened, thus filling up slots, but aren't actually sending other information- then when other machines try to send mail to Grex they find the slots full and the message may bounce. MDW is looking into ways of solving this problem so that mail to Grex is not hampered by this other firewall. In terms of mail itself, the discssion came up of whether or not it would be a good idea for Grex to have a server that solely handled mail- thus speeding up other aspects of Grex itself. The basic sentiment seemed to be that while this is actually a really good idea, and probably something that will have to be implemented in the long run- moving too hastily would turn it into a bad plan, and that careful plotting and configuring would make this a very good, very viable plan. So this is now being considered and pondered upon. Costs involved- the number mentioned was $2,000- for a great machine that would be pretty powerful and able to deal with spam. Things people would do, in terms of abuses, would be different, they would still happen though. Also it was stated that it is easier to bounce spam back rather than to accepts it and try to return it. It was also proposed as an idea to, when an old account gets reaped, add them to a list so that newusers can't take that name unless that account name has not received spam for 6 months- this will help prevent the newuser from getting spam 'intended' for the former user. It was pointed out that with the New Grex system a change could be made so that the etc/password file isn't grabbable by spammers (who do so now in order t get a list of user ids to send spam mail to), that would stop many spammers right there. Combined Staff/Board Meeting- it was mentioned that it would be best to plan for this meeting to be a special meeting, not an official board or staff meeting. Date: Friday January 31st at Other's home. A potluck will begin at 7 and the meeting will start at 8 pm. 104- The next Board of Directors Meeting has been tentatively scheduled for Wednesday Janaury 8, 2003 at 7:30 in the Kid's Room of Zingermans Next Door. Date dependent on the incoming board members availability. 121- new business: STeve is concerend about the power availability of our current UPS battery. This battery helps to keep grex running during occasional power blips. Aruba moved to allocate up to $120 for a new battery, Other seconded. Votes: 7 in favor, 0 against, 0 abstained. 109- Meeting closed at 8:37 pm 3 responses total. ---------- (159) #1 Sindi Keesan (keesan) Fri, Dec 13, 2002 (15:29). 2 lines. Thanks for a well written and informative meeting summary. I was there and did not quite understand some of these points until I read what you wrote. ---------- (159) #2 Mark A. Conger (aruba) Fri, Dec 13, 2002 (18:43). 1 line. Thanks Anne! ---------- (159) #3 Steve Gibbard (scg) Thu, Dec 19, 2002 (01:45). 2 lines.