[Cadre-politics] status: math

[Dan MacNeil]

GIFTS
COFFEE WITH THE MATH PROFESSORS
MAKING YOUR OWN TOOLS
BACKUP BACKUPS
BEYOND GIFTS

GIFTS

Thanks to LAVA CROSSES GLACIER for $150. She/he is the second VISTA 
Alumni to make a big cash contribution. It touches me when somebody 
parts with scarce cash in addition to a few thousands hours of their life.

Thanks to MELLOW NEON for $150, this brings his/her lifetime total to 
$400. MELLOW NEON is another person who has made undemonstrative but 
solid gifts of time and influence to us and to the world.

The checkbook [1] is still a bit light but the balance sheet [2] and 
next year's budget [3] look good. We've paid off John's VISTA fee and 
anticipate revenues sufficient to cover required expenses for the 
foreseeable future.

	[1] http://thecsl.org/sys/finance.d/csl_checkbook.xls
	[2] http://thecsl.org/sys/finance.d/balance_sheet.xls
	[3] http://thecsl.org/sys/finance.d/csl_2006-2007_budget.xls

There will be a time when we need more money. A server could melt. We 
might have to pay to move off campus. We could reach clear consensus on 
a solid plan that needs money to move us to the next level. However for 
now, we're set.

I think people gave us money partly because they can trust us. To earn 
that trust, we should admit when we don't need money urgently.

Ideally, you should give money to something more worthy than us [4]. 
However if you need an emotional connection to avoid something dumb [5], 
by all means give it to us. We'll spend it with reasonable 
responsibility or bank it for a rainy day.

	[4] 
https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/darfur/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1318

	[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTL

COFFEE WITH THE MATH PROFESSORS

Friday afternoon, My small and chipped marble was about to drop into a 
deep and satisfying work groove. I looked around the room. Gerry & 
Kamala were deep in their work. It was tempting to let 3pm Friday, 
afternoon coffee at the eggroll cafe slid.

I'm happy I didn't.

We hooked up with a pack of lounging math professors.  At their friendly 
invitation, we pulled our tables together. Conversation ranged the 
qualifications required by the new chancellor to combinatorics.[] In the 
later discussion, the professors politely interrupted each other to ask 
for definitions and clarifications.

	[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics

Inspired by their example, I learned the difference between a 
constructive and non constructive proof.

A constructive proof demonstrates something is possible by doing it. A 
non constructive proof uses other means. For example to constructively 
prove that there is an oldest person in the room, one can list the ages 
of the people in the room.  A non constructive proof might use the 
definitions of "oldest", "age" and "number".

Another tidbit we acquired was the fact that this year there were a 
number of new professors without offices. This makes the loss of the 
nice space we had in Engineering easier to swallow.

WELCOME DAVID MCCABE

In 1999, before we were called "The Community Software Lab", Dave did 
great work with us on setting up the Lowell Community Technology 
Consortium [7] website.

	[7] http://lctc.org

With an MS in CS, Dave was not too proud to go through each page to fix 
  dinky html nits. He's between jobs at the moment and therefore can now 
spare 20 hours per week for our efforts.

MAKING YOUR OWN TOOLS

A side effect of the my paranoia about PHP and safe mode is that our PHP 
scripts can't use libraries. (yes this is dumb). A common sloppy PHP 
custom is pretty much to hard code dependency to mysql instead of using 
a proper database abstraction layer []. (yes, this is also dumb).

	[8] http://pear.php.net/package/DB

As a result, until we get things sorted on brave, Kamala's been doing 
development with apache on her workstation. This week she succeeded in 
configuring apache for her own use. It was a struggle but we all learned 
  more in the process.

BACKUP BACKUPS

John's finally on the downhill side of the off-site backup work.

Chuck created most of the second generation of backup scheme which is 
roughly:

   1) Backup each machine to a separate hard drive on that machine.

   2) Backup each machine (again) to a hard drive on a dedicated
      backup machine.

John's been working on:

   3) Backup the backup machine to a machine in our downtown data center.
      (the top of the bookcase in Laura's bedroom)

Simplifying a bit, we've been doing differential backups [9] with 
rdiff-backup [10]

	[9] http://www.backup4all.com/differential_backup.php
	[10] http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/

One possible drawback of rdiff-backup is that the diffs are stored in a 
binary format. From painful experience, binary backup formats are 
subject to corruption. The odds of corruption are small. The 
consequences of corruption are large.

Before John's work, we were doing differential backups of backups to the 
3rd backup destination. If the building burned and we lost all but the 
offsite backup, we'd have to restore the backup before restoring files.

John got rysnc [11] setup make a straight copy of the 2nd backup. The 
trick was to set the flag that removes files from the destination that 
are no longer present in the source. rdiff-backup was puking when 
presented with multiple versions of it's index files.

	[11] http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/

BEYOND GIFTS

For now, we have enough money. At least in June, July and August we have 
enough talent.

Perhaps a majority of us doubt that the Lord can or should be petitioned 
with prayer. I understand your position [12]

	[12] http://www.flamewarrior.com/prayer.htm

 From the rest of us, who seek Dharma [13] by following Jesus into 
prison [14], I ask that you pray that we are granted discipline, 
humility and courage and that we do not squander our gifts in fear and 
laziness. If these prayers are granted, it follows that we will 
accomplish something this summer.

	[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma
	[14] http://www.soaw.org/new//newswire_detail.php?id=763