OldNews2008

Lunch: Thursday December 18th, 2008

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.

December "Technical Meeting" aka Game Night & End of Year Party: Thursday December 11th

Our annual December gaming night out.
Location: Pwned
212 N Broadway (near Nelson Cheese).
Cost: $5 for 3 Hrs (extra time can be used later) or $10 for 6-midnight.
9 xbox 360s and 9 gaming pcs
Not into computer games? They have tables available and open space, so some people can just play board games if they like, bring your favorites. Also, plan to buy your beverages there, but volunteers to bring snacks would be appreciated.
http://www.pwedgamecenter.com 507-206-4747

Social: Monday November 24th, 2008

6:30 pm, walking off some of that extra holiday sluggishness. Meet at Panera South (next to Hy-Vee. The walk is ~1.25 hours, along the Zumbro River walking/biking trail. Bring boots if it's snowed. We walk rain/snow/shine, the only weather cancelation would be if it was hailing or lightening.

Lunch: Thursday November 20th, 2008

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N. Tina won't be present, you'll need to find some other "landmark" to home in on.

Get Ready, It's our Annual Swap/Sale: Thursday November 13th

New this year, Vintage PC, Video Game & Electronics Show! - Prizes awarded for crowd favorites Set up at 6 pm
Sale/swap starts at 6:30 pm
RCTC main campus, East Hall, Room 244 (2nd floor)
Come if you want to Sell Stuff!
Come if you want to show off Stuff! (prizes awarded for crowd favorites)
Come if you want to Buy Stuff! (K-Lug Tee shirts available too)
Come if you want to eat Stuff! (Pizza and Pop available for a donation)

We need volunteers for creating advertising, putting up signs, running the recycling station, and of course everyone should bring their stuff to sell/swap.
We'll make use of volunteer labor and/or elevators to help get everything up to the second floor, no worries.

Job list - volunteers needed!
-Bring your stuff to sell/swap. Everyone.
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.

-Bring your stuff to show off in the Vintage Electronics show, and a “hat” if you want to submit an item for viewers choice award. Everyone

-Come up with a Vintage Electronics viewers choice award, be in charge of distributing 1 ticket per customer, tally and award at end of night. Eldon N (and Joel K?)

-Create an advertising Sale Flyer (pdf) that all the people responsible for posting can download and print. Include who, when, where, and what (sale, swap, recycling, vintage, pizza, free CDs). Steve S

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

-Bring your computer stuff that needs to go to the recycling ($0.10 per pound, rounded up to the nearest dollar for ease of making change). Everyone.

-Help others bring their stuff up to the room, down to their cars, via stairs or elevator. Tina W, Aaron A., _____________

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

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

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

-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). 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. Jose' dL

-Making some (Ubuntu?) CDs to give away. Jon T (5)

-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 - Tim M
-IBM Beehive- Tim M
-Ham Radio Club _____________
-PCIG Website - Tim M
-Mayo classifieds _____________
-Craigslist, Think Bank _____________
-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) _____________
-UCR bulletin boards - in hard copy _____________
-RCTC bulletin boards - in hard copy, bring your own push pins _____________
-IBM Building 107 - post hard copy Steve S
-IBM White Building(664) - post hard copy Steve S
-Other IBM buildings - post hard copy _____________
-Venture Computer - send email of flyer, request posting Steve S
-NorLug? Tim M
-Area 51? _____________
-Computer Liquidator on 2nd street? _____________
-p0wned? _____________
-Other places/ways to advertise? Public access? Would we qualify for free advertising on the radio, newspaper, etc?
-Wherever else you can think of. _____________

-Create illegal wayfinding “Tonight!” signs for posting at UCR on the evening of. ("Tonight!" with arrows in appropriate directions, highlighting of what the event is and the room number, advertise the free linux CDs on our signs, etc) ________________

-Arrive at UCR at 5:45 pm, post illegal wayfinding 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. _____________

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

-People could list what they haven't sold and haven't tossed, post-swap. http://www.k-lug.org/ForSaleorWanted . _____________

-After it seemed like everyone was there and set up (~6:30-6:45 pm), 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.

Planned Social: October TBD, 2008

Election judge experiences. Election judges needed. Will be held at a date and time convenient to the election judge(s), probably at a place that serves dinner and adult beverages. Have a preference? Tell Tina.

Social: Sunday October 12th, 2008, 1 pm

Wander the corn maze at Northwoods Orchard, just outside of Douglas. $5 for the adults and "older" kids for the larger corn maze, $3.25 for "younger" kids in the little corn maze (1 adult can follow the kid around for free), and coming back from the adult corn maze you can often grab a short tractor ride for free ($1 for the full farm tour). You can also purchase apples, gourds, pumpkins, etc, if you needed some fall supplies, and there's a small animal farm to entertain the kids with too. Yes, bring your friends and family. The kids maze takes ~15 minutes, the adults maze ~1 hour.

Technical Meeting: Thursday October 9th, 2008

Note switch to regular 2nd Thursday nights

Brent Vrieze on the Asterisk phone system. Bring a laptop if you want to connect with a softphone to the Asterisk server (if wired, bring own cable).

Description: Free telephone system for your home or office. Asterisk is an open source PBX telephony solution. The presentation will consist of some simple background into telephony explaining some terms. From there I will show the set up files (.conf) and how to add users and program a simple dial plan also showing the Asterisk GUI. Then I will crank up an Asterisk server and we will connect some soft and hard phones to it and see if we can make some phone calls so bring your laptop. If time permits there is a ready to go ISO installer called Trixbox that makes setting up Asterisk extremely easy with a nice web based GUI.

The usual place and time: RCTC's Heintz Center , Room HA107 , 6 pm.

A copy of Brent's slides can be found at the PCIG website.

Other agenda items will include: -October socials: Inside - election judges. Outside - corn maze.
-Possible mini-presentation by Robert Bleimeyer on the need for FIRST Robotics League mentors for the 2008-2009 school year.
-Lunch
-Google calendar
-Hardware project update
-November swap meet and vintage electronics show
-December game night
-January technical meeting - speaker, elections

If there's something that you think should be on this month's agenda and you don't see it here, please email Tina.

Social: Saturday September 27th, 2008

Canoeing/kayaking and geocaching event happening on the Cannon River, from Cannon Falls to the Miesville Ravine landing, approximately 6.5 miles of paddling and geocaching. All of the details are on their webpage.

Anyone wishing to carpool should be at the Walmart North parking lot (near Gander Mountain, same place as for the Science Museum carpooling) at 8:45 am. Friends and family are welcome. If you have a geocaching.com account, please log your own attendance and dish to share. If you don't, tell Tina and she'll post for you.

Lunch: Thursday September 18th, 2008

Note location change
11:30 am, Buffalo Wild Wings
At the September technical meeting the desire to vary our lunch location was again expressed. To that end, we will road trip this month to a destination that is friendly for a variable number of attendees. Because there are not a wide variety of selections (ie a food court), we're not considering this for a full time destination change. For those coming from downtown, it is on the bus route. The 12D departs downtown at 11:15 and arrives at Walmart North at 11:35 am. Or if you're running late, the 12D also leaves downtown at 11:35, arriving at 11:55. Returning to downtown can be accomplished on the 12:20 (12:45) or 12:40 (1:00 pm) buses. Not being familiar with the layout of BWW or where the IBM crew usually sits, if anyone wants to attend who is not familiar with our members by face, please speak up and we'll try to make ourselves easier to spot.

Technical Meeting: Thursday September 11th, 2008

Tim Massaro will give us a demo of Flock. Stolen from the PCIG newsletter: "Flock is a Firefox based webbrowser, customized specifically for social networking users. Flock makes it easy to share videos and URLS. Tim Massaro will show you how to keep up with your Facebook friends and more using Flock."

Also, Steve Fox will talk about a new hardware project for a future meeting or social activity. The project turns a normal keyboard into an illuminated keyboard. For video preview, see Illuminate Your Keyboard Hack on the Reddit website http://www.reddit.com/r/KLUG/

The usual place and time: RCTC's Heintz Center , Room HA107 , 6 pm.

Lunch: Thursday August 21st, 2008

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N

Social: Potluck picnic, Thursday August 14, 2008

The picnic will be held at 6PM at the park near Steve Fox's house and Jon Tollefson's house (same place we had the picnic last July). See the Social Meetings page for directions and a sign-up form.

Technical Meeting: Tuesday August 12th, 2008

Kevin Arhelger will give us a report on his trip to Defcon 16. The usual place and time: RCTC's Heintz Center , Room HA107 , 6 pm.

Lunch: Thursday July 17th, 2008

11:30 am. Location options are up for discussion. Please contribute to the discussion on the email list.

Social: Friday July 11th, 2008

Star Wars at the Science Museum! Half or full day trip, departing at 8 am or 1 pm. See the Social page for details, how to purchase your tickets (recommended to purchase in advance) and to sign up for carpooling. Some of us would like to make a full day of it, what else would you like to do while we're up there?

Technical Meeting: Thursday July 10th, 2008, Wacom Bamboo Tablet

When: Thursday, July 10th, 7:30pm Note special start time If you show up at the normal 6 pm start time, just wander across the road to East Park to play frisbee golf with us.

Where: RCTC [Center]. Room HA107. See this [map]

You've seen the Wacom drivers every time you boot or install Linux, come see what that device is about in person. Jon Tollefson will demonstrate the entry level drawing tablet from http://Wacom.com/bamboo called Bamboo (running on Linux even).

Express yourself more clearly when preparing slide presentations, sketching out new ideas and editing documents. Bamboo gives you intuitive pen-point precision when working with Mac, PC or Linux.

Lunch: Thursday June 19th, 2008

11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near the B&N.

Technical Meeting: Tuesday June 10th, 2008

Intro to reddit.com and social bookmarking in general, and the KLUG reddits in particular, by Eldon Nelson. 6 pm in RCTC's Heintz Center room HA107, see here. Jointly with PCIG.

Do you have hundreds of bookmarks in your webbrowser? Are those bookmarks unreachable, impossible to organize, and scroll beyond your screen? Do you wish that your bookmarks would travel with you - regardless of what computer you are using. Or, do you want to find uniquely entertaining articles and ideas that will expand your knowledge? Social Bookmarking is for you!

Social Bookmarking has exploded in the past few years with a variety of services that each cater to different needs of their users. This presentation will introduce you to three popular, and very different, social bookmarking sites "reddit.com", "digg.com", and "del.icio.us". You will learn what you can do at each free service and how to apply it to your own internet use. The community surrounding these services and plugins for your webbrowser to make them more accessible will be covered.

Social: Tuesday June 3rd, 2008

Frisbee golf at East Park, 6:30 pm. Bring your discs or bring your shoes. And don't forget to bring some compact, heavy object for helping you remove that disc from the trees after a poor throw.

Lunch: Thursday May 15th, 2008

11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.

Technical Meeting: Thursday May 8th, 2008

For May, we visit Rochester's Studio Academy School and visit their FIRST league robot. The Rochester Public School Robot Team will demo as well. This will be a field trip, meet at Studio Academy, and we're currently planning on providing pizza and pop for a donation or fixed fee (e.g. $1/slice), so RSVPs will be requested - email Steve Fox or write on the wiki here.

Studio Academy is the former First Baptist Church, here is a [|map to the location]

Here is a peek at their machine, and a look at the competition:

Social: Sunday May 4th, 2008

Frisbee golf, 1:30 pm at Bear Cave Park, Stewartville. If you're late because of church, etc, feel free to arrive when you can. Anyone interested in spending more time outside is welcome to join Tina for some geocaching afterwards.

Directions to Bear Cave Park: Take Hwy 63 south to Stewartville. Turn right (west) onto 10th Street NW, this is the 2nd possible right after the I-90 interchange. The park will be on your left (south), find some place to park - in March we parked at the snow dumping ground on the west end of the park. If you get to 11th Ave NW, you've gone too far.

Social: Friday April 18th, 2008

Arcade and video games at Mike Migliacio's and Lisa Walkosz's.
6-10 pm
See the Social page for details.

Lunch: Thursday April 17th, 2008

11:30 am, Apache Mall food court near Barnes & Nobel.

Technical Meeting: Tuesday April 8th, 2008

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project will be presented on by Jose' de Leon. OLPC website and pictures.
HA 107, 6 pm. Directions to the Heintz Center building and HA107 in particular.

Sat Apr 5 23:26:02 EDT 2008 - derek

The main K-LUG webserver, miskatonic, has been upgraded to FreeBSD 7.0. Please hop on IRC if you notice any problems. - derek

Lunch: Thursday March 20th, 2008

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

Technical Meeting: Thursday March 13th, 2008

Tim Massaro and Jon Tollefson on building a home arcade.
This session is based on the book Project Arcade by John St. Clair. We'll discuss what is involved in building a computer based video arcade machine More details on the book can be found here
http://www.projectarcade.com/about.html
6 pm, HA107. Jointly with PCIG. Need directions?. This map may help you find the specific room.

A review of the book is available here, while slides from this presentation are available here.

Social: Saturday March 1st, 2008

1-4 pm
Winter geocaching in Bear Cave Park, Stewartville
Many more details, including what you need to bring, directions, exact caches (for those of you with www.geocaching.com accounts), sign-up, etc, are at the Social Meeting page.

Lunch: Thursday February 21st, 2008

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

Social: Sunday February 17th, 2008

Ice skating at the Rec Center, North rink
6-9 pm
See the Social Meeting page for more details.

Technical Meeting: Tuesday February 12th, 2008

Bob Nix on cloning Linux images on a mainframe. Heintz Center HA 107, 6 pm. Many other agenda items for discussion as well, including:
-The search for March and April presenters
-Frequency of technical meetings
-Reward future presenters?
-Food and drink provided by volunteers?
-Passing the hat for donations at each (technical?) meeting?
-Helping IEEE with a presentation - Steve Fox + Eldon, any others? Input?
-Possibility of moving the location of future lunches
-Upcoming socials
-Use social networking for communication? For example...share interesting links with the group via Del.icio.us ...Norlug does this by posting links to:
http://del.icio.us/tag/norlug
Then automatically posts results to website, keeping it more dynamic.
-Other items you wish to discuss?

Social: Saturday February 2nd, 2008

1-3 pm
Intro to curling, Owatonna
See the Social Meeting page. There need to be at least 3 people besides Tina signed up by Thursday January 31st, otherwise we'll cancel due to lack of interest.

Lunch: Thursday January 17th, 2008

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

Technical Meeting: Thursday January 10th, 2008, 6pm

We have a meeting room! RCTC Heintz Center, room HA107

Topic: Freemind - Mind Mapping Software - Mo Holahan

Our January meeting will feature "mind mapping" software and a product called Freemind. Freemind is especially good at "fast" brainstorming, with graphical forking or branching to new ideas. With Freemind it's easy to move information around and re-associate it, assign attributes, etc. There is a linux version available and there are several other "brands" of mind mapping software. Mo Holahan will be doing this demo for us.

Also on the agenda:
-KLUG officer elections
-Planning the January social
-Planning the February social?