January 2011 Minutes

The January 2011 meeting was a pretty busy one. We had ~15 people there in person, and another attending remotely.

Treasurer's report: We began 2010 with $50.34 in The Hat. We did not have any regularly reoccurring expenses this year since we canceled speaker incentives, but donations were also slim, and we ended the year at net gain of $32.33, ending balance of $82.67 not including the hazmat dollar. A reminder that your donations are requested, The Hat usually resides near the treats.

Following the Treasurer's report was our annual coup attempt (elections). The only nominees were our current officers, so our 2011 officers will remain:
-dictator for life (President) - Tina Wood
-president of vice (Vice President) - Tim Massaro
-keeper of The Hat (Treasurer) - Will Schmidt

PCIG had their first nomination month, they'll again solicit nominations in February before holding their elections in March. The current officers must be pursuing a scorched earth policy, because there was no one crazy enough to risk the anger of the current regime to nominate new blood, and no one liking the current officers enough to re-nominate them.

Our January lunch will be the usual third Thursday, January 20th, at 11:30 pm, Apache Mall food court. Since Carissa Gisi, charged by her employer to create a networking group for IT professionals, was unable to present her case at the technical meeting, she'll be soliciting input at this lunch instead.

Upcoming socials:
-We will be seeing "Revolution OS" as a social in January or February, exact date and time are being worked out. Thanks to Jim Henderson for volunteering access through his NetFlix subscription, and Mark Diez for the laptop. This will be in RCTC's Heintz Center, watch the wiki or your email for more information.
-There's rumor that the movie "Social Network" will be returning to the theaters, as of hearing of the rumor that was not yet the case in Rochester. If anyone sees this movie listed in the Rochester area, or has more concrete details of the potential timing of its return, please let me know.
-After the meeting two additional social requests were made. The first was for dinner+movie, this has been noted and will hopefully be filled in soon, before the weather gets nice enough for more of you to want to go play outside. Requests for movies in the theater worth general K-LUG attention would be appreciated. Also suggestions for decent restaurants that aren't picky about needing reservations for an unknown number of attendees would be welcome.
-The second was for bowling, which I'll also fit in soon, depending on when we schedule the "Revolution OS" viewing for.
-Also remember that if you enjoy socializing with your fellow geeks, there's the K-LUG Activities email list http://lists.k-lug.org/mailman/listinfo/activities . Additional activity invites go out periodically on this list. For example, one will soon be posted there for the Chinese New Year (February 3rd) annual dinner, feel free to subscribe to this list.

Volunteer positions:
Volunteers are requested by two of the area science fairs.
-Saturday February 5th: Reviewers needed for the GATEway science fair, an experience that tries to encourage kids' interest in science/engineering/etc, grades 2-6. Minimum time commitment: 1.5 hours. Other adult and high school aged volunteers are also needed, if you wish to fulfill some other role. It is feasible to be a reviewer if your child/children are in the science fair. http://sites.google.com/site/gatewaysciencefair/home/reviewers
-The Rochester Science Fair Committee needs a volunteer to provide computing support for approximately 10 -20 hours. This group is different from the other science fair in that it's for grades 6-12, and competitive (judges, scores, winners). They also need judges for February 17-18th. We have more details for anyone interested, and the original requester is Tom Grogan, tgrogan@us.ibm.com .

Finally we let Dennis DeLorme present and demo his most recent "piddling around in the basement project", ZigBee Protocol and Xbee wireless communication modules.

We do not yet have a February technical meeting presenter.

Tina