[ON Topic] How 'bout them Linux? Ain't they somethin?!

[Paul Lussier]

In a message dated: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 17:41:00 EST
Jon maddog Hall said:

>What do you look for in GNHLUG?

Community:	      good people to share time, experiences, beer with.
Activity:	      regularly scheduled meetings with good topics/speakers
Education/Knowledge:  people to learn new things from

>What brings you to a meeting?

The above, when I have time.  The past few months have been especially
difficult now that I waste 3hrs/day commuting and I have a daughter
whom I get to see a grand total of 45 minutes/day.  Getting to meetings
is all but impossible, and seldom something I'm willing to sacrifice
seeing my daughter for.


>What drives you away from a meeting?

Total lack of free time.

>What would it take to get you to bring new members to a meeting?

More free time.

>Would you be willing to volunteer for helping to pull off some "activity"?

I have done so plenty in the past: NUN, HOSS Traders, LBS, countless
meetings (local chapter and quarterlies), etc.  But that was when I had
time.  Personally, I'd love nothing more than to continue in this,
but I have no time.

>Would you be willing to spend a Saturday once or twice a year in staffing
>some project?  Could you get your neighbor to do it?

If I had a Saturday, or a neighbor, sure.  Unfortunately I have neither.

>If so, do you have any activities that you would especially like to do?
>Particularly ones that you would be willing to participate in?

I remember a long while ago Ben Scott suggesting that we have meetings
dedicated to 'figuring something out'.  This always sounded like a lot
of fun.  Personally I think it's something that would be better
for a Saturday rather than 2 hours on a weeknight.  That way we could
have more time.

Things I'd love to learn:

 - Configuring Apache for an enterprise
   Things like centralized authentication on a per directory level
   Address Rewriting (when, why, how)
   etc.
 - Kerberos
 - AFS (depends upon Kerberos)
 - GFS
 - Hacking together various 'Home automation' things:
    - MythTV
    - Voicemail/caller ID thingie which could send me e-mail/log who
      called, etc.
    - UPnp/X10 hackery
 
Things I wouldn't mind teaching:

 - NFS environments
 - NIS/LDAP
 - Backups using AMANDA
 - WebDAV
 - Subversion
 - Samba

Both lists could probably be a whole lot longer but you get the idea.
The big problem for me is time.  A Saturday with 4-6 hours to hack at some
of this stuff might be far more do-able for me than a weeknight given
my current situation, but even weekends are incredibly precious right now.

And, though we may have had some talks on some of these things before,
that isn't what I'm talking about here.  I'm talking rolling up our
sleeves and actually hacking on this stuff.  A bunch of people bring
machines, laptops, network equipment, etc. and we actually set up live
networks and make this stuff work.  Kind of like a Computer Science
Lab you might have to attend in a college course or something.
Complete with mock-up "Professor" for each session who has at least an
outline of what we're going to try to accomplish, steps to follow,
etc.

>Finally, after thirty-five years in the computer business it took a kid from
>Finland to remind me that I got into this space to have FUN....so what things
>would you like to do that would be FUN?

See above.  It's the tinkering and debugging that I think hooks most
of us, so it would be fun to actually do some tinkering and debugging
rather than just talking about it.  This list has always been rather
heavy in the sysadmin area, so there are plenty of us who do this stuff
everyday all day specifically because it's fun *and* they pay us for it.
Unfortunately, when it's your job, you seldom get the chance to tinker
on stuff your interested in just because it looks neat.

Most of us have a home network, which is the perfect 'playground' to turn
into a mini "enterprise".  So why not learn how to do it "right"?

I know there's been a lot of talk about advocacy here in the past year
or so.  But it seems like there's not a lot action.  I think part of
the problem is that many are outside their comfort zone here.  The
talk has always been of 'going to them' to advocate.  I think if we
were to hold these workshop type sessions, we'd be able to not only
attract more of our own members, but also advertise them externally
and get people to just show up who would otherwise not.

Of course, all this could be a total phantasy on my part.  And, since
I have no time of late to really contribute to putting all this together,
I really shouldn't be making suggestions.

Oh well.  That's my .02 sheckles on the subject.

Paul Lussier

     Presently-way-to-busy-to-be-Co-Chairman-in-anything-but-name
	  Greater New Hampshire Linux User's Group (GNHLUG)
			http://www.gnhlug.org
	   Events: http://www.gnhlug.org/lug_cal/month.php