Meeting Notes for 20030116

Fri Jan 17 00:00:45 PST 2003

Maybe 7-8 people showed up total (not all at once).  I was out of there 
by 15:00, so hopefully no one tried coming by after that.

Good news is that the Ethernet is free, I knew they didn't have any 
control over the infrastructure there.  So, if/when future meetings are 
desired we can reserve rooms in the HUB for 2 hours with out any fee.

Mostly just a bunch of slacking and discussing potential meeting topics:

* Ruby

A few people expressed interest in learning something about Ruby.  It 
sounds like Evan is willing to talk something about it.  Perhaps this 
should be our next official meeting?

* Install Fest

I've had a few people express their ability to help at an install fest. 
  Not enough to keep it fully staffed but it is a start.  Obviously an 
install fest would be most useful to the rest of the campus population 
as (one would presume anyway) that everyone here already has Linux/BSD 
etc installed.  For an install fest to happen we'd  need a room with 
Ethernet and plenty of power for at least 3 hours (ideally 5 or more).  
I've heard rumors that we might be able to get access to the MGH 
colabs.  If this *is* possible we /might/ be able to use the monitors 
there so that no one has to cart around 17-21 inch monitors around 
campus (especially with limited car access to buildings).  Also, I (or 
if someone else wants to organize it) would need to look into drafting 
(or reusing) some waiver before anyone touches a system.  At least I 
don't want anyone to come bitching to me because they lost 5 years of 
quicken data and favorites when their windows partition is accidently 
fdisked.

* Perl DBI

William said that he could discuss DBI a bit if people are interested 
in it.  This would include at least some cursory discussion of SQL and 
databases.

* GDB

I have someone ( a coworker ) that is willing to give a GDB talk, 
however he won't be available until March.

* Wireless AP

I can give a demo of setting up Linux to be a Wireless access point.  I 
realize that some people might not have a lot of use of a demo on a 
soekris board (since not many people have one and they are $200+ for 
just the board, you still need a WiFi card.  If people are interested 
in howto/demo of how to install linux and set it up as a wireless AP + 
captive portal then let me know which would be the preferred format.  
a) on a soekris embedded PC, or b) on a low end PC.

* GSLUG Meetings

So, even before I was president (or what ever I am) of the LUG this 
wasn't a very meeting oriented group.  If people do like the meeting 
format there is the Greater Seattle Linux Users Group.  Perhaps people 
could organize meeting carpools down to GSLUG?  Alternatively if any of 
you have ties to GSLUG and could persuade some of their speakers to 
present to the UW we could consider that as well.