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Minutes of Meetings
First Half of 2004


June 21, 2004

 President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:08 pm. Attendance: 6, 7 later on.
Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the May meeting.

Discussion

o Kevin Cook asked if anyone has had an experience with a DVD player being locked up on account of a disk.
o Dale Roethig demonstrated Activision's Call of Duty.
o Dale Roethig then showed the 3DMark benchmark program running on his new Athlon 64 system.
o Dale Roethig finally showed us his new TV card.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 pm.

May 17, 2004

 President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:17 pm. Attendance: 5, 6 later on.
Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the April meeting.

Discussion

o Dale Roethig showed some of the pictures taken at GameFest, some of them coming to a website near you...
o There was discussion of the SCO lawsuit and UCITA.
o The topic of Chinese counterfeit pens came up.
o Dale Roethig showed Far Cry, a game from Crytek.
o We then looked at a few games from Kevin Cook's CD-ROM, in particular Frogapult.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 pm.

April 19, 2004

 President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:06 pm. Attendance: 7, 6 later on.
Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the March meeting.

Discussion

o Dale Roethig reported on OddyseyCon (yes, it's really spelled that way). He described how a video was taken with John Schwarzmeier's digital camera, and edited with MovieMaker. Unfortunately only that program can play that codec. We watched it anyway. Among the highlights were interviews and readings by David Weber, author of the Honor Harrington novels.
o We then watched several miscellaneous videos.
o We finished with a discussion of codecs, the structure of VCD's and DVD's, and authoring programs.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:51 pm.

March 15, 2004

 President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:18 pm. Attendance: 6, 5 later on.
Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the February meeting.

Discussion

o Before the meeting started a number of astronomical topics were discussed.
o Dale Roethig spoke about the plans for this year's Odyssey Con.
o Elections were held. All current officers were retained by acclamation.
o We then had a look at the Knights of the Old Republic Game.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:44 pm.

February 16, 2004

 President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:15 pm. Attendance: 6, 7 later on.
Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the January meeting.

Discussion

o After a few hiccups we got a DVD playing on Speedmeier.
o Phil Maughmer gave an annual treasurer's report. The balance is currently $353.17. We hope to pull in more funds through this year's conventions.
o There was discussion of elections scheduled for March.
o In reference to recent legal actions, Gary Köhler mentioned the Consolidated Court Automation Programs (CCAP) Wisconsin Circuit Court Access web site, wcca.wicourts.gov.
o Kevin Cook showed how to use the DVD Shrink suite of programs.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:38 pm.

January 19, 2004

 President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:16 pm. Attendance: 6, 7 later on. Dale noted that our rental has since doubled, and mentioned two upcoming conventions in April.
Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the December meeting.

Discussion

o Kevin Cook described problems he was having while playing DVD-RWs in several different consumer DVD players.
o Dale Roethig elaborated on April's conventions, one a sci-fi convention in Madison, the other a gaming convention in Rosemont, IL.
o There was discussion of USB.
o Kevin Cook demonstrated Control Panel 2.8 by Mike Lin, a startup editor for regaining control over which services and programs start on your machine.
o Dennis Drewek showed off PHLAK, the Professional Hacker's Linux Assault Kit. This is a Linux distribution on a bootable CD-ROM with the emphasis on setup tools.
o Randy Jaeckel showed us his new video cam. We were unable to get it to work here.
o Words of wisdom from Kevin Cook: "You can't run a race without a driver".
o While demonstrating a boot customization program John Schwarzmeier's machine Speedmeier started to turn into another Quagmeier. It is thought that there is some spyware program on the machine.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:33 pm.



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Updated: 09/11/04
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