OldNews2007

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"Technical" Meeting: Thursday December 13th, 2007

6 pm. DDR/Wii/other game systems, plus board/card games. You bring it, we'll play it. Held at Brian's house, 948 Byron Ave N in Byron. He says the Mapquest directions will get you there, but it's easier to follow these:
1. Head West on Highway 14 towards Byron - go 8 miles(approx) to 2nd Ave NW/County Road 5(Kwik Trip/2nd stop light)
2. Take right on 2nd Ave NW(Kwik Trip/2nd stop light) - go 9 blocks to 9th Street NW
3. Take right on 9th Street - go 2 blocks to Byron Ave N
4. Take left on Byron Ave N - at the very end on Byron Ave N cul-de-sac is my house a split entry with attached garage

Jointly with PCIG. So that others can see what may be available and Brian knows how many the descending hoard will contain (and therefore need seating), please sign up below.

Name # of self/family/friends game system bringing game system games bringing board/card games bringing food/beverage you will bring what you really wish someone else would bring
Tina 1 NA NA Munchkin pumpernickel bread & spinach dip Anything
Tim M 1 PS3 (need tv) Madden/MotorStorm NA Pop Bomberman
Mike Nelson 1 NA NA NA RoboRally
Phil Medes 1 NA NA RISK (if I remember) I'm thinking a pizza Leisure Suit Larry
Mark Diez 1 NA NA NA Chips and Dip
Aaron Albertson 1 Wii Mario Party 8 RoboRally TBD NA
Jon Tollefson 1 Dreamcast? NA NA cookies RoboRally
Your Name Here x x x x x x


Social: Night at the Planetarium, Tuesday December 4th, 2007

7-8 pm at the Mayo High School Planetarium. This is a Community Ed class so you must pre-register with them, more details available at their website, -> Enrichment -> Adult -> Adults. Or sign up online.
Description:
Explore the nightly environment that is overhead with a visit to the planetarium. A tour of the heavenly sights is planned that will feature special sights specific to the month. Cosponsored with Rochester Astronomy Club. The planetarium is located at Mayo High School.
Code Day/Date Time Sessions Fee
8380.143 T Dec. 4 7-8 PM 1 $5
Location: Mayo-Rm. 1-226
Instructor: Rochester Astronomy Club


Social: Friday November 16th, 2007

Video games, MAME, and whatever board/card games you bring to MJ Thompson's house. Friday, November 16th, 6:30-11 pm. More details on the SocialMeeting page.


Lunch: Thursday November 15th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court sort of near Barnes&Noble.


Technical Meeting: Swap/Sale Thursday November 8th, 2007

Swap meet!! Buy/Sell/Trade - at this annual event, even the general public can bring computer / gadget related gear to sell or trade, or just come to browse for the bargins. Set-up will be at 6 pm, with an estimated swap start time of 6:15 pm. We also plan to have a truck available to recycle old equipment at a price of $0.35 a pound, rounded up to the nearest dollar.

When: Thursday, November 8th, 6pm

Where: UCR Main Campus, East Hall, room 128. Set-up will be at 6 pm, with an estimated swap start time of 6:15 pm.

Attendance will include KLUG, members of PCIG, IBM Ham Radio Club, students from RCTC, and the general public.

We need your help! In order to make this a success, we need all of you to pitch in. How? There's all sorts of ways you can help, please sign up for these tasks below.

-Bring your stuff to sell/swap. Everyone.

-Print and show this revised Sale Flyer to friends. Everyone.

-Bring your computer stuff that needs to go to the recycling ($0.35 per pound, rounded up to the nearest dollar for ease of making change). Everyone.

-Bring a bathroom scale that's accurate at low weight ranges, so we can figure out the appropriate recycling fee to charge. Tim Massaro

-Man the recycling area, do the weighing, cost figuring, and providing of change. -Steve Severson

-Bring your truck and be willing to take a load to the recycling during the recycling center's open hours (Mondays-Saturdays, 8-5). Tim Massaro

-Coordinate the pizza fundraiser, buy pizza and pop plus bring paper plates and disposable cups in quantities sufficient for those who show up. Will be reimbursed out of the profits from the fundraiser (charge is a donation). - Steve Fox

-Making some (Ubuntu?) CDs to give away. - Steve Fox

-Get a location (done) - Tina W.

-Posting. Volunteers are needed to post to many locations. Please sign up to be the poster for the following (suggestions welcome):

-KLUG mailing list and wiki (done) - Tina W.

-IBM calendar, Ham Radio Club and PCIG Website (done) - Tim Massaro

-Mayo classifieds - Eric Amundsen

-Craigslist, Think Bank (done) - Tim Massaro

-Rochester Freecycle (limited to free pick-up of non-swapped items headed for recycling at the end of the swap) - (this probably won't get done due to posting requirements)Volunteer_needed_here

-UCR bulletin boards - in hard copy - Ren

-RCTC bulletin boards - in hard copy - Volunteer_needed_here

-IBM White Building(664) - post hard copy (done)- Steve Severson

-Venture Computer - send email of flyer, request posting (done)- Steve Severson

-Wherever else you can think of. Volunteer_needed_here


Please RSVP for what tasks you can help with. If I haven't heard from anyone on a task, I'll have to start pestering people. This has got to be a group effort to be successful.

Post-swap discussion

Things to remember, and what we could do to be better next year:
-Who ever posts at Heintz Center should bring push pins as well as the fliers

-Additional volunteer job - arrive at UCR at 5:45 pm, post illegal wayfinding ("Tonight!" with arrows in appropriate directions, highlighting of what the event is and the room number, etc) signs on all entry doors, nearby directional corners, and on the room door. Bring masking tape. Also responsible for taking down at the end of the night. Find a door stop so we can prop the room door open. The masking tape and a pen are also useful for posting a sign above the pizza/pop, saying it's available for donation. And for putting a label on a cup as being the donation collection container.

-Convince Dean to come to the swap meet, make sure he forgets to lock his car, and save ourselves the trouble of taking a trip to the recycling center by dropping all of that in his back seat  ;)

-Additional volunteer job - Arrive at UCR before 6 pm, write welcome message on the chalk board, also list upcoming KLUG events and dates, K-LUG website address

-Other places/ways to advertise? Public access? Would we qualify for free advertising on the radio, newspaper, etc?

-We had less sellers and less buyers this year than previously, how do we avoid losing them, or gaining new people? Do we really want to do a swap again next November?

-I can't remember what the context was, but there was a request for cheerleaders. If someone can find some to sell, fine, just duct tape their mouths shut for the duration of the swap. I don't want to have to listen to them spelling the same words at volume over and over again - we know how to spell, thank you.

-Pizza supply list, for future reference: pizza (4 this year), pop (4 2L this year), paper plates, napkins, plastic cups, ice. We had ~1/2 a pizza and ~2L worth of pop left over, but we broke even on the donations, so we're good. The "fancier" pizza flavors were the faster movers, such as supreme went much faster than cheese. And root beer and Mt Dew went much faster than Sprite. Set up a sign indicating that the pizza and pop are in this part of the room, that's it's for donation. Also label a cup as the donation collection container.

-We had some potential buyers present at 6:10, who stuck around until 6:20 pm and then gave up and left before the straggler sellers (who had the most variety and volume of stuff to sell) showed up. Do we need to push back our set-up time? And/or our start time? Or are our sellers just going to be perpetually late and we just have to accept having disappointed people (who cared enough to show up once, which is great, but probably won't show up to one of these events again, bad)? We were entirely done, cleaned up, and out of the parking lot by 8:30 pm, so there's room to push the schedule back if that would work better.

-Have a bigger room

-A location more well known, bigger and with closer in parking might be nice...put up signs earlier, advertise the free linux CDs on our signs, door prizes? (no not a free serial joystick or monitor) We have tried to involve the Ham Radio Club and the Retirees club, but I don't think that has worked...are there other groups who would like to participate in this event (NorLug maybe?, Area 51?, Computer Liquidator on 2nd street?).
In previous years some of the folks higher priced stuff or a lot of stuff have pre-announced their "list of goodies" on the news group or our wiki...that might bring out more customers.

-People could list what they haven't sold and haven't tossed, post-swap.



What did work well?
-After it seemed like everyone was there and set up (~6:45ish?), we went around the room and let each seller advertise their highlights and freebies. Let buyers have a chance to ask if anyone had something in particular that hadn't been mentioned. Advertised the recycling, and the food.

-For the second year in a row, we did not lose money on the food!


Lunch: Thursday October 18th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court sort of near Barnes&Noble.


Slashdot 10yr Anniversary Party: Tuesday October 16th, 2007

October 16, 2007, 8 p.m. - 10 p.m.
West Fire Grill
2043 Superior Drive NW
Rochester, MN, US Host: grungewolf (1164849)


Technical Meeting: Flood Relief...Date Flexible, 2007

Location CompuSwap - (Near Whistle Binkies South)

The current proposal for our Oct meeting is that we dig in and help Steve Severson with a United Way Flood Relief Project. The recent flood in SE Minnesota meant that many victims lost their computers. The United Way Tech Team (and Steve) are coordinating a couple of hardware build parties to ready 200+ CompuSwap systems for deployment to people, nonprofits and schools throughout SE MN. K-Lug helped with this type of event after Katrina and it is actually a lot of fun! A little cleaning, a little installing of diskdrives and memory and a little boot testing.

We plan to volunteer during one or more of these time sessions Wed, Oct 03, 2007 08:00 am to 12:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Wed, Oct 03, 2007 01:00 pm to 05:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Sat, Oct 13, 2007 09:00 am to 01:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Sat, Oct 27, 2007 09:00 am to 01:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]


Social: Thursday October 4th, 2007

RoboRally and whatever other board/card games you wish to bring, so far we're also expecting Puerto Rico, Power Grid, and Munchkin. 6:30 pm, at Steve Fox's house (N 43° 59.263, W 092° 29.033, house number 1538). Consider bringing food/drink to share.


Social: Thursday September 27th, 2007

6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger, or bring a shoe to throw.


Lunch: Thursday September 20th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.


Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday September 13th, 2007

No presenter, no meeting.


Social: Tuesday September 11th, 2007

6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger, or bring a shoe to throw.


Lunch: Thursday August 16th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.


Technical Meeting: Thursday August 9th, 2007

UCR main campus, East Hall, room 119, 6pm

Wii, with PCIG. Hopefully two units will be present so lots of people can play.


Social: Geocaching and potluck, Saturday August 4th, 2007

Geocaching followed by potluck/picnic/ice cream. Come for either or both as your interest level and time allows. Many more details and the sign-up sheet can be found on the Social page.


Lunch: Thursday July 19th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.


"Technical" Meeting: Thursday July 12th, 2007

We're having a picnic and relaxing evening instead. See the Social Meetings page for more details and to sign up.


Social: Thursday June 14th and Tuesday June 26th, 2007

6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger, or throw shoes. We've learned the hard way that shoes are not very aerodynamic.

We're having highly organized events occuring for socials in July and August (paintball and geocaching+picnic, respectively), so we're sticking with low key for June.

Cancelled or rescheduled in the event of lightening or hail.


Lunch: Thursday June 21st, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.


Technical Meeting: Tuesday June 12th, 2007

UCR main campus, East Hall, room 102, 6pm

Steve Fox on LEGO Mindstorms NXT. Also, PCIG will be having their Thursday June 14th meeting on LEGO Mindstorms as well.

Still not back in the RCTC Heintz Center location. Instead we'll be on the UCR main campus, which is south and east of the Heintz Center building. See directions to UCR, the general campus building layout, and the floor plan of East Hall.


Social: Thursday May 17th and 24th, 2007

6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger.


Lunch: Thursday May 17th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.


Technical Meeting: Thursday May 10th, 2007

UCR main campus, East Hall, room 102

Robert Nix (and Pat ___?) on running Linux on a different hardware platform. They will be showing us zVM, then doing a network install of SuSE.

Our meeting cannot be held at the normal RCTC location, due to asbestos removal closing down the whole building. We'll be on the UCR main campus, which is south and east of the Heintz Center building. See directions to UCR, the general campus building layout, and the floor plan of East Hall.



Social: Wednesday April 25th, 2007

6 pm, road clean up with a few members of the Ski Patrol. Oronoco - meet at County 18 and County 12, clean a section going north from there. Recommended items to bring: garbage bags, reflective clothes, work gloves.


Robo Rally will hopefully make an appearance in the future.



Logo Contest: Deciding on a printer and products, 2007

LogoPage The winning logo is Anon #1's green state shaped logo. We need you to look into finding printing locations, prices, and products available to print on. So far we have information on the following:

-local print shop such as Superior Screeners. Probably would require bulk order. More details needed, someone please do some research.

-Printfection, bulk discount information available here. This was the source of the blue K-LUG shirt Tim brought to the Second Life March meeting.

-www.cafepress.com. Probably slightly more expensive, but would not require a bulk order. We've been warned they won't look great. For items that can be printed on, see Cafe Press. Tim has already done some research, see the following pages: 1 , 2.

-Robert Nix has a source for weaving the logo into items such as afghans, pillows, tote bags. 70 x 54 inch woven blankets of the logo for $70 each.

-Nametags??

-Other products or sources you've done some research on?



Lunch: Thursday April 19th, 2007

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it is supposedly an ~15 minute walk.


Technical Meeting: Tuesday April 10th, 2007

UCR main campus, East Hall, room 121

Carl Albing will be presenting on bash. Carl is one of the co-authors of the O'Reilley book bash Cookbook. Topics will include: do we still need command line tools, a rapid fly-by of bash as a programming language, a few power-user features of bash, (time permitting) a short discussion of "so you want to write a technical book".

Our meeting cannot be held at the normal RCTC location, due to asbestos removal closing down the whole building. We'll be on the UCR main campus, which is south and east of the Heintz Center building. See directions to UCR, the general campus building layout, and the floor plan of East Hall.


Social: Bowling, Saturday March 24th, 2007

noon-2 pm. See the Social page for more details.


Technical Meeting: Thursday February 8th, 2007

Plone by Eldon Nelson, Combined meeting with PCIG.

When: Thursday, Feb 8th, 6pm

Where: University Center Rochester, Heinz Center in room HA108

Directions

Building Map


Description of Plone:

Plone is a web based open source content management system (CMS) built off of the Python programming language. What do I need a content management system for? I'm not a book publisher or magazine; even though my glossy finish might make you think that way. The person that needs a content management system is every knowledge worker - which today, is everyone. We all need ways of managing the knowledge we work with and content types that are flexible to match the work we do. In the past, I've loved wiki for filling part of this role, but as I look at what wiki gets you it is not the whole picture. Sometimes, you need a tool chest instead of a hammer - this is where Plone fits in as your own secret tool chest.

What you get with Plone is a scalable, object oriented, pluggable system that handles all of your content management needs. Plone itself is actually a collection of plugins that give you the code to represent the objects that will eventually represent your data. So you might ask, on what is Plone built upon if it is just a collection of plugins? It is actually built off a very complete web framework for the Python scripting language named Zope. So yes, it is a collection of utilities from Python -> Zope -> Plone to get to the tool, but all of that hierarchy gives you a full framework to do everything and hooks and methods ready for your use.

With Plone you get rock solid access control that can be as granular as you want. You can integrate Plone plugins into your site to transform it to include seamlessly complex structures such as: bulletin boards, issue trackers, picture galleries, and more or use out of the box calendaring. Pretty much, Plone quickly, without the need for any coding, turns into your Swiss Army knife of web interactivity – all the while, maintaining a coherent look and feel and security of Plone.

During my Plone presentation I will be doing things a little differently than traditional KLUG or PCIG meetings. I’ll be showing part of my presentation through the use of screencasts to demonstrate activities that I have recorded before and edited into consumable nuggets of interest. I’ll also be using screencasts from the Plone.org website itself, so you may or may not want to watch their intro videos before you come – depending on how entertained you will be by them. I’ll be bringing some popcorn to keep you engaged – so look forward to a treat! Of course, a technical meeting isn’t any good without some hands on, in the dirt, demonstration. For that, I’ll be doing some live manipulation of Plone before your very eyes.

I hope you will enjoy this fun presentation.

Eldon Nelson ( eldon_nelson@ieee.org )

Plone


Technical Meeting: Thursday January 11th, 2007

(Note the Plone meeting has been moved to February)

Paint Shop Pro by Tony Drumm, with PCIG. This is not a truly Linux topic, but given the amount of interest in Robert Nix's GIMP presentation I thought there might be interest in comparing/contrasting. Also,

KLUG officer elections

Please submit your nominations for president, vice president, and treasurer to the email list prior to the day of the election. Self nominations are accepted.