OldNews2016
Technical Meeting / Social: Friday December 9th, 6:00 pm-midnight
In December we do something like board or card games, video games, etc because it's just too close to Thanksgiving and Christmas to fit in a social and a speaker.
Tollefoto is hosting a gaming night at his house. Email him or Tina if you need address and/or directions. Start time is 6:00 pm. Note that this is NOT our usual second Thursday, we pushed it back one night so people don't have to deal with getting to work in the morning.
Dinner will be pulled chicken, barbecue sauces, and buns, water, and lemonade.
We play whatever you bring. Please consider bringing board games to play, snacks and/or drinks. RSVP's of the types of stuff you're bringing would be appreciated so we don't have overstocks of some items (such as everyone bringing chips).
Sign up
| Name | # of self/family/friends | Electronic games | Board/card games | Food/beverage contributions | Other | Dinner |
| Tollefoto | 2 + 3 | 50" tv, Wii with __ remotes, AppleTv | None | pulled chicken, barbecue sauces, and buns, water, lemonade | Paper napkins, cups, plates | ??? |
| Tina | 2 players + 2 distractors | . | Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, Great Dalmuti, Fluxx, EcoFluxx, Candy Land, many others - feel free to make requests | Fruit salad and pasta salad, 1 2-L of Squirt | TBD | Yes please |
| Will | 2 + 1/2 | dunno | dunno | dunno | dunno | yes ? |
| Erik & Dee | 2 | x | Catch Phrase, The Game of Things, Wizard, Bellz | Cornbread and cookies | ? | Yes! |
| Aaron | 1 distractee | None | TBD | Was cookies, changed to Chips, will still BMOB | x | Yes please |
| Your name here | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Informal Social: Friday November 18th 2016
The Activities email list is coordinating a viewing of the Dr. Strange movie. Join that email list for the current plan for date/time/location for this movie viewing.
Technical Meeting: November 10th
Cancelled, no speaker.
Social: Saturday October 22nd, 10 am
Pumpkin tossing by trebuchet and catapult, at the Boy Scout's GameHaven. We're spectating, not participating. If in future years you want to participate, it sounds like community adults are allowed, chat about it on the email list.
The full advertising flier for the event, there's more than just flying pumpkins this year. There will be lumberjack games and other things happening, including a pancake+sausages breakfast, a MN DNR forestry talk, a raptor program, small animals to watch/learn/pet, flying apples to go with the flying pumpkins, etc.
You won't be able to gather around Tina for this one, sorry.
Technical Meeting: October 13th
Arhelger on MongoDB.
Kevin Arhelger has been a Technical Services Engineer at MongoDB since January. His presentation will cover the basics of MongoDB and good/bad use cases. He’ll have stickers and a few coffee mugs to give away. Here’s a chance to play stump the expert.
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6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Tina know.
Planned Social: September 2016, TBD
Ideas can be found here or invent your own. What would you like to do? Tell Tina.
Technical Meeting: Thursday September 8th
Robert Nix, on how to put together an iOS application in Xcode in Swift.
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Swift has been a trending topic, and now that it has been open-sourced, the language becomes more relevant for platforms outside of Apple. Join us as we look at Swift 3 and XCode 8, and how to put together an iOS app from start to running on the iPhone.
Robert has been programming in one language or another since 1973, and has gained experience and insight over the years that has allowed him to adopt and adapt to new languages in a quickly changing industry. Swift is the latest in what has been a 43 year educational trek.
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The completed Swift XCode project started during the meeting can be found at
https://github.com/rpural/TimeTraveler
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6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Tina know.
Social #3: Wednesday August 24th
6:15 pm - Minigolf at Skyline Raceway. Cash only!
Social #2: Sunday August 21st
Kite flying and ice cream social.
12:30 pm
Location: That park by Steve Fox's house, officially known as Pine Ridge Estates Park, on Redwood Lane SW.
This park has a nice playground for the littles, picnic tables, and room to fly kites, as well as usually being unpopulated. The lack of trees and being on top of a hill mean it's pretty bug free even when there's not enough breeze to fly the kites.
Please bring your family and friends who might want to hang out. Bring your own kites. If you don't want to sit at the picnic tables or on the playground equipment, bring your own folding chair. And bring your own beverage. Tina will bring the ice cream.
Social #1: Tuesday August 16th
Disc golfing at Slatterly, 6:15 pm. Park here. Change in time and location due to threat of rain.
Stewartville's Bear Cave Park, 6:30 pm.
Map of Bear Cave Park parking.
Technical Meeting: Thursday August 11th
Kevin on DEF CON 2016.
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DEF CON is the worlds largest hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas. Kevin has been attending since 2008 and has presented on almost every one. This is the latest installment in that series and covers DEF CON 24
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6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Tina know.
Planned Social: July 2016, TBD
Ideas can be found here or invent your own. What would you like to do? Tell Tina.
Probably yard games + ice cream at Tina's house, but if you have other requests/ideas please let Tina know. Possibly also a locked room puzzle event, The Norwegian Job because that one is handicapped accessible.
Technical Meeting: Thursday July 14th
Robert Nix, on Red Hat Summit. He will talk about what goes on there and what things are announced.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Tina know.
Downtown lunch: Thursday July 14th
This is the special IBM day at Thursdays on First (a replacement for an IBM day at the Olmsted County Fair this year), so we should meet for lunch. 11:30 am, East on Historic 3rd Avenue off the corner of the Tap House (formerly Bilotti's), we'll try to find a table in the shade.
Planned Social: June 2016, TBD
I'm going to host a yard games + ice cream event, but it'll probably end up in July, May/June has just been too busy (and our lawn mower is currently in the shop waiting to be repaired, so our yard is a field).
RochesterFest lunch: Thursday June 23rd
June downtown lunch at RochesterFest (Soldier's Field track oval), Thursday June 23rd, 11:30 am, weather permitting (rain date TBD). For those of you downtown who aren't up to walking that far (or your schedule doesn't permit the extra time), they are doing free trolley rides again 11-2 from in front of the Marriott Hotel. Hopefully they will publish some coupons for food vendors again this year, if so I'll add a link later.
Technical Meeting Social: Thursday June 9th
Disc golf at Slatterly, 6 pm. Park here.
Technical Meeting: Thursday May 12th
Social: Tuesday May 10th
We did not get any speaker volunteers. 6 pm. Plan B is to go play disc golf at Bear Cave Park. (rained out) Plan C is to enjoy dinner together at the Stewartville Pizza Ranch. If you can find one of the half-page coupon books that either arrived in your mail or is at many free stands downtown, there's a coupon for BOGO50% off (adults). Pricing and food ideas for those who haven't been there before.
If you have never joined us before and this will be your first event, you're looking for a family of four (F long hair and glasses, M short curly hair and glasses, 4 year old, 1 year old) sitting with an unknown quantity of other geeks, or use the email list to tell us how to spot you.
Social: Thursday April 21st, 2016
Our April social will be the Litter Bit Better park clean up.
That's 6 pm on Thursday April 21st, at Cascade Lake Park.
Parking is approximately here (or slightly further west, closer to the corner/park). Geocachers get CITO credit.
Bags and trash are provided, you need to provide your own gloves and a sense of civic duty. If anyone has some waterproof boots for cleaning the marshy stream edge, that'd be great too.
Technical Meeting: Disc golf social: Thursday April 14th
We did not get any speaker volunteers. Go play disc golf at East Park again.
6 pm
Social: Tuesday March 15th 29th
Disc golf at East Park
6 pm
Note the change from the original date, due to rain/mud.
Technical Meeting: Thursday March 10th
Marc Thomas, from NORLUG, on setting up and maintaining your own media server.
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Everything you need to know to set up your own media server, as ethically and legally as possible. From video codecs and containers, compression algorithms, DRM decryption and circumvention, transcoding, storage, organization, consumption, and all the tools that make this possible, all under Linux!
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Also on the agenda for the technical meeting:
-PCIG elections
-Discussions of the K-LUG email list
-Choice of a March social event. Possibly a locked room escape?
-Requests for an April speaker
-Consumption of semi-homemade Pi Day pie (peach, raspberry, strawberry; I cheated and bought crusts). Please bring your donation for the "hat".
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Jon G or Tina know.
Downtown Lunch: Thursday March 10th
11:30 am, 1st Avenue food court downtown, at the bigger tables near the entrance. The Mexican place has closed, an Indian restaurant will replace it "soon". Mango Thai has opened.
Lunch: Thursday February 18th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
"January" Social: Fridays February 12th, 19th, plus others
We're going to try a map-based (eg armchair) road rally, http://home.earthlink.net/~oldmaltese/Massacre.html . Due to there having been a start-up cost for this event, I will be asking for contributions (say $5-10/family?) for those who come participate. Anyone bringing an additional "11x15 100-page-plus 2016 Rand McNally Road Atlas" (this same large scale copy MSRP $20, Amazon has for $15) will have their fee waived for their assistance uncrowding the map table.
I anticipate this being much better done by small groups, and it seems a bit lengthy. So we are going to host two pre-specified nights of map reading, and if Friday nights don't work well for you then email me off-list to request your available T/W/Sat/Sun timeframe and we'll see if we can work something out. Fees per family won't be re-collected at subsequent attendances.
6:30 pm at Tina's house (email for directions). Snack/beverage potluck only (come with dinner already in your belly).
Postmark deadline for submission of this for scoring is Monday February 29th, which realistically means we're going to have to mail it on Saturday the 27th, so our last potential night is Friday February 26th.
Technical Meeting: Thursday February 11th
Robert Nix, on LVM.
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Using Logical Volume Manager can simplify your disk space management on both large and small Linux systems. This will be both an overview, and a look at specific commands and results. See how LVM can be used to streamline your Linux installation and maintenance.
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Here are his slides from the meeting.
Also on the agenda for the technical meeting:
-PCIG second round of officer nominations (with elections in March)
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Jon G or Tina know.
Downtown Lunch: Thursday February 11th
11:30 am, 1st Avenue food court downtown, at the bigger tables near the entrance.
Social: Sunday, February 7th 2016
Winterfest cardboard sled race spectating for our February social, Sunday February 7th, 1 pm. There IS an indoor viewing area, per the description, so no trekking through the snow required.
http://www.rochesterwinterfest.com/2015/01/07/cardboard-sled-race/
Rochester Golf and Country Club 3100 Country Club Road SW
Lunch: Thursday January 21st
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday January 14th
Dennis DeLorme on a recent basement project - the $2 wireless link.
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Do you wish there was an easy, cheap way for your micro-controllers to talk to each other over a wireless link? If so, come and learn about the Nordic nrf24L01+ type modules. These allow short range wireless communication in the 2.4 GHz band. The nrf24L01+ is designed for PC keyboard/mouse, remote controls, home automation, toys etc.
There is available software to use the nrf24L01+ modules with common boards such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black. The nrf24L01+ module can be added to these boards for about $1 per node, if ordered directly from China. I'll talk a little about my experience ordering directly from China.
I will talk about the features of the nrf24L01+ and the software to use it. I will demo a sensor star network with a couple of them on Arduinos (what else?) sending data to an Arduino attached to a laptop as the base unit.
If you are ready to break your New Years Resolutions, I will be bringing German Chocolate cup cakes with coconut pecan frosting.
-- Post-meeting addition - here are the slides he has provided. Here is the code in Open Office format because upload of text or code files is not supported.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Also on the agenda for the technical meeting:
-K-LUG’s annual officer elections – president, vice president, treasurer. Nominations or self-nominations for these positions please.
-Annual financial report from our treasurer.
-PCIG first round of officer nominations (with elections in March)
Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Jon G or Tina know.
Downtown Lunch: Thursday January 14th
11:30 am, 1st Avenue food court downtown, at the bigger tables near the entrance.
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