[UFO Chicago] UFO MEETING REPORT! ACHTUNG!

[Peter A. Peterson II]

Tonight's meeting was full of hilarity and aliens in flying saucers.
Well, Hilarity anyway. In fact, here's a full rundown:

At tonight's board meeting, we had 8, count'em EIGHT members!

1. yours truly
2. jack edwards, truly
3. paul suda, with a tad of insincerity (just kidding)
4. nate riffe
5. mike mccune

AND PRESENTING, IN THEIR UFO CHICAGO DEBUT PERFORMANCES:

***Larry Garfield, PRESIDENT of the DePaul LUG[1]***

!!!Roberto Frijoles!!!, aka Robert Bean![2]

--->Elliot!<--- (or is it Eliot, or Eliott, or Elliott, or L.E.Utt)

weu! 

The evening started out really well, with Nate and Larry walking around
the beauteous North Park Campus, watching squirrels perform lewd acts
and noticing that we have rabbits (which scurried off to do what Larry
referred to as "rabbit stuff"[3].) I met them (now joined by Paul Suda,
inventor of the incredible Clockwork Programming Language) outside of
George's, where I attempted to sit on one of those parking things that
look like a big cement french fry. I slipped off and fell right on my
back, like a big dufus. (Shut up.)

We headed into George's, were presented with smart comments from Anna
the wisecracking-but-loveable night waitress at George's. I said hello
to George of George's, and he gave us the obligatory smile and hello.
>From there, my memory becomes fuzzy. I'm not sure in what order Mike,
Jack, and L. E. Utt showed, but it was all pretty close together. We
were shooting the bull about a number of topics, including but not
excluding Microsoft, Debian GNU/Linux, who met whom when etc, where I
should put my copyleft sticker (you guys weren't very helpful on that
very important question), amd probably some other stuff. Nate told us
that he has a hot-swappable IDE drive and that the kernel stuff should
be in the 2.5 tree. That's cool!

It was at about this time that I headed off to do my laundry, get a
potato CD for Paul, and fill my van with gas.

n minutes later I returned, and the gents had been talking about
microwaving compact discs. (Can't I leave you guys alone for 10
minutes?) Just kidding, actually I really want to go nuke a disc right
now (How about DINOSAUR! for MS Windows 3.1) but my roommate is asleep,
and this is probably one of those things that he wishes I wouldn't do.

Then I retold the short version of flynn's recent corporate spinoff
maneuver (into Flynn and Flynn North). I made some hand gestures about
where my apartment was, and the pencilheads at UFO Chicago quickly
pointed out that it should be Flynn EAST not North. So SUE ME!

Just kidding, it's now Flynn East. But we all had a good laugh,
especially later, when the such-and-such <direction> joke was made
again. I can't remember what it was though. But it was funny.

Then we really got into the meat of tonight's discussion, that is,
Wireless Networking, costs, feasibilities, plans, etc. This is what Nate
Riffe's rough numbers look like:

$400 for a unidirectional or omnidirectional station
$700 for a relay

or the handy calculator, now called Nate's Theorem:
$50 + ($350 * n) = [station cost] where n is the number of antenna-card
units required. Smart folks in the crowd will note this adds up to $750
for a relay. So SUE ME. They're rough numbers anyway. We looked at
distances on a sketched map, and discussed possibilities for non-profit
status (i.e., being able to offer buildings a tax write off for letting
us use their antenna space/power) We also discussed how 2.4ghz reflects
off water, so rainy and/or humid days will be sucky for our network. We
also discussed the possibility (slim) of getting donated hardware.
Anyway, I agreed to look into what it would take to start a NFP
organization. Nate did not agree to this, but I'm sure he will keep
thinking and looking up at tall buildings. Next time we hope to bring a
city map and colored push pins. Even if we don't get anywhere, we'll
feel really official.

Finally (all else discussed shall fade into the oblivion of our
imperfect memories), I suggested that we, the members of UFO Chicago,
adopt arbitrary names that sound impressive, since Jack and I sort of
arbitrarily nominated ourselves President and Vice President of UFO
Chicago. So, I am going to formally note that while I still retain the
title of President (should it one day prove useful for any reason), I am
now, officially the CEO of UFO Chicago, and I recommend that all members
and all future members invent their own titles and positions therein and
use them with great ostentatiousness.

This meeting was a great success, and I hope to see you all again the
next time around. I'm going to update the webpage with the next 2nd and
4th Thursday in July, assuming that this is still an acceptable
time/location for y'all. I like to give George the business, but if
you're all tired of the location, I'm not opposed to travelling for
once.

Yours,

Peter A. Peterson II, CEO, UFO Chicago

[1] The DePaul LUG was considering changing their name to some kind of
"Free OS" related name rather than purely a Linux oriented name. (What
kind of crappy UG would do that?) This of course leads to the
questionable acronym: DUFOS. So maybe I should have said "Larry
Garfield, DUFOS President."

[2] Robert Bean may not contain bean.

[3] I think this may have been some veiled sexual joke.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
http://tastytronic.net/ufo/  --------------- Users of Free OS Chicago
http://robotfindskitten.org/ ---------------    Free Software Zen Sim