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Minutes of Meetings
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December 17, 2008 |
Secretary Gary Köhler called the meeting to order at 7:07 pm. Attendance: 5. Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the November meeting. Treasurer Gary Köhler reported the balance at $849.05. Discussion
Discussion started with the recent gaming conference at Adventures in Gaming.
Gary Köhler asked about the condition of the newsletters after passage through the mail.
Gary Köhler shared a blog by Ken Starks concerning a teacher in Austin, TX who confiscated Linux live CD-ROMs from a student (later returned).
Gary Köhler had a story about a networking printer nightmare where the admin, as some perverse joke, probably routed output from a user through most of the servers at a corporation before finally arriving at the printer in the user's office. This led to some printer talk.
Discussion then strayed off into discussions of Schrödinger's Cat, Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Zappa and a bit of politics.
Getting back to computers, Scott Brunkow discussed his current decompiler project.
Gary Köhler discussed his efforts at programming a Solar System simulator.The meeting adjourned at 8:39 pm. |
November 19, 2008
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Secretary Gary Köhler called the meeting to order at 7:07 pm. Attendance: 5. Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the October meeting. Treasurer Gary Köhler reported the balance at $849.05. Discussion
Kevin Cook asked about the possibility of having the meeting on a different night.
(Update) Scott Brunkow explained that SACD's have an extra layer that is CD compatible.
Dennis Drewek looked at Kevin Cook's computer. Discussion turned to "esthetic" cases and the problems they sometimes cause.
Dennis Drewek showed an ad for a digital DVR, described how it works.
Dennis Drewek announced that he has downloaded the Windows 7 beta, has not installed it yet.
Kevin Cook described some problems he had been having with wireless, various suggestions were made.
Discussion turned to digital TV.
Gary Köhler reported on current efforts to get faster boot-up times in modern operating systems.The meeting adjourned at 8:35 pm. |
October 15, 2008
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President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:22 pm. Attendance: 5, 4 later on. Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the September meeting. Treasurer Gary Köhler reported the balance at $819.05. Discussion
First there was a discussion of dues which ended inconclusively.
Dale Roethig showed off his new gaming computer as described in the article.
Dennis Drewek showed some pictures of his efforts at repairing a computer. However, now two of the laptops no longer work.
Gary Köhler had some questions about SACD's and the recording of custom audio CDs.
Dennis Drewek described his problems with ConvertX2DVD.The meeting adjourned at 8:35 pm. |
September 15, 2008 |
Secretary Gary Köhler called the meeting to order at 7:21 pm. Attendance: 4, 5 later on. Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the August meeting. Treasurer Gary Köhler reported the balance at $819.05. Discussion
Gary Köhler asked where the mushrooms were. It seems that the summer was so dry that the recent rains could not bring up any mushrooms.
Discussion then wandered off into politics and nuclear energy.
Then we spoke of the recent Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld commercials for Microsoft.
Gary Köhler asked about problems with the Google cache not working, brought on by wanting to get to the bottom of the Clarion Fund's recent distribution of a DVD about radical Islam without actually visiting the sites listed.
Discussion turned back to mushrooms, the genus Coprinus in particular.
Somehow discussion returned to computing with the discussion of batteries and battery packs.
Lastly we looked at some of the Google Earth views of John Schwarzmeier's house and this part of southeastern Wisconsin in general.The meeting adjourned at 8:38 pm. |
August 18, 2008 |
Secretary Gary Köhler called the meeting to order at 7:16 pm. Attendance: 5, 6 later on. Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the July meeting. Treasurer Gary Köhler reported the balance at $803. Discussion
Gary Köhler asked John Schwarzmeier about the number of ports we can support for network gaming.
Gary Köhler noted that this issue was put together without any articles from the Status Register.
President Dale Roethig arrived. Gary Köhler updated him about the treasury.
An incredibly bright LED flashlight was demonstrated.
Dennis Drewek has been busy in his workshop. Not only did he repair a camera for Kevin Cook, he also repaired Dale's Thinkpad by soldering in 4 barely visible and hard to reach pins hidden in the corner where the memory module is plugged in.
Dennis Drewek has been having problems with FireWire. His system detects the device and then just stops there.
Dale Roethig reported that Best Buy has advertised a 500 gigabyte drive in a 2.5" form factor.
Discussion turned to multiple GPUs in computer systems, each responsible for drawing different parts of the screen, for example, alternate scan lines.
A program called Memtest-86 v3.1 was running on Dale Roethig's recently repaired laptop in order to verify that the memory module was working. After the software completed multiple runs successfully, the machine failed to boot Windows because it does not seem to be able to find any hard drives in the system. Stay tuned!
NAS, Network ? Server was discussed.
Dennis Drewek spoke about Ghost and its uses.
Finally, we had a discussion of Converter Box Bingo!The meeting adjourned at 8:55 pm. |
July 21, 2008 |
President Dale Roethig called the meeting to order at 7:18 pm. Attendance: 6. Secretary Gary Köhler read the minutes of the June meeting. Treasurer Gary Köhler reported the balance at $740, expected to be at $803 by next meeting. Will have new, up-to-date checks with our correct P.O. Box number made. Asked about a "wish list" for this year's RockCon. Discussion
Kevin Cook asked about an anchor for a heat-sink for an obscure Intel CPU.
Discussion turned to the laptop currently on sale at Aldi's. One question concerned whether the video had dedicated memory or shared system RAM.
Dennis Drewek spoke about wiring his TV and computer together at home.
Gary Köhler reported a problem with Slashdot (slashdot.org) causing his browser to go bye-bye without so much as an error message. (Update) Whatever Slashdot was doing, they stopped doing it.
Dale Roethig reported that Josh Wheeden has put together four episodes of Dr. Horrible's Web Log.
Kevin Cook noted that a Texas Chainsaw Musical was in the works. Gary Köhler asked if Texas Chainsaw Musical -- On Ice wasn't far behind.
Dale Roethig reported that the Game SIG has been having fun with Sky Fleet Command.
Dennis Drewek described an "ultimate arcade game" capable of running about 100 classic games -- for the amazing low price of $5500! Dennis also had a few words about a new slide converter. Requires USB 2.0 and Windows XP (not Vista!).
Discussion turned to Beijing's efforts to curb air pollution for the upcoming Olympics.
This led to discussion of the Smart Car again, plus other small vehicles such as mopeds, scooters, and a strange four-wheeled motorcycle Dennis Drewek saw.
The discussion turned ecological with windfarms and mills as topics.
Finally, for good measure, there were the usual complaints about TV and cable.The meeting adjourned at 8:46 pm. |