[Cadre-politics] status: VOTE

[Dan MacNeil]

LINKS
Maybe you didn't catch the global rich list [1] or John Gatto [2] the 
last couple times?

	[1] http://www.globalrichlist.com/
	[2] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/index.htm

PATRICK vs HEALEY
Sunday we went to hear Duval Patrick speak at Lowell High. The two
take-aways were:

	The experts said he didn't have a chance to
	break in. We ignored them and that was good.
	Now they say he'll win by a landslide, it
	would be wise to ignore them and come out
	and vote.

At a debate, all the candidates were asked to say something nice about
each other. Kerry Healey said:

	 "Patrick speaks well, but those are just words."

Patrick quoted some words from other people:

	"We hold these truths to be self evident,
	 that all men are created equal..."

	"I have a dream that one day..."

	"Ask not what your country can do for you."

	"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

This morning the Patrick signs and waving at cars, Laura & I got more
thumbs up than thumbs down but if you haven't voted yet, you've got an 
hour...

THANKS BOOMER GRANT

Big thanks to
	Tim O'Connor
	Felicia Sullivan
	David Kronberg of
	Gregg Croteau
	Jane Benfey

...for writing very kind letters of support for the boomer grant. [3]
The grant was written [4]  in Open Office (a quick free download for 
windoze and GNU/LINUX) [5] but that shouldn't be a big deal as soon Open 
Doc [6] will be the official format of Massachusetts [7]

[3] http://www.mass-service.org/funding_opportunities.shtml#boomers
[4] http://thecsl.org/sys/bids-grants.d/mass-service.org.d/boomer_2006/
[5] http://www.openoffice.org/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
[7]http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=itdterminal&L=3&L0=Home&L1=Open+Initiatives&L2=OpenDocument&sid=Aitd&b=terminalcontent&f=policies_standards_opendocformfaqs&csid=Aitd

The Mass Service Alliance required a fiscal sponsor since we had been a
501c3 for less than a year. More thanks to Gregg for agreeing to do this
for a very, very reasonable fee (zero). Special thanks to Jeff Blakely
for hunting Gregg down to sign things.

Most special thanks to my roommate for a complete last minute review.

MICROSOFT TO SUPPORT LINUX
Not everything you read on slashdot is true, but apparently Microsoft is
going to support [8] Novell's version of GNU/LINUX I dunno, maybe the
Ubuntu people can close bug #1 [9]

[8]http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs
[9] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1

MEETING WITH GLCF
Chris Shannon and I met with David Kronberg. I was hoping for:

	 "Dan, I'd like you to meet my friend Bob, he's got
	  some spare money is looking for a worthy cause."

We wound up with:

	"Here's what you do, when you find somebody that
	 wants to put money in an endowment for mvhub"

I guess since I asked for a meeting about endowments, I got what I asked
for. Ah well, at least we picked up a bit of wisdom from David. The last
lengthy conversation, Paul Hansen and I had with him after the GLFC
rejected my first over-earnest grant application, turned out well
eventually.

Better still, I got more wisdom walking back to the car with Chris
("Don't go for tech grants, go for grants to solve problems with tech")

MEETING WITH YAR
John Miller & I met with Kirsten Doherty and Jim Ryan. The meeting with
the Essex county Youth At Risk [10] and Northeast Center for Healthy
Communities [11] We agreed to work together to share data and code 
between the YAR directory and mvhub. [12]

[10] http://www.essexcountyyouth.org/resourcedirectory9.html
[11] http://www.nc4hc.org/
[12] http://mvhub.com

Jim started saying he didn't have money to spend, but ended by agreeing
to chip in $200 for pizza.  Me the slick sales guy? Jim giving what he can?

UTEC
October was a relatively good month for getting stuff done for UTEC and
for us for billing. (30 hours @ $10/hour woo-hoo!) Delivery problems to
hotmail made me create a script to remove bad emails from the teen
database. Now exported teen emails don't  don't keep getting re-added to
the teen listserv each night.

I communicated openly and honestly with Gregg on the possibility that
there are at least a billion people in Asia who have no interest in
being on his mailing list.

Gregg communicated openly and honestly with me about the possibility
that board members and major supporters might not be giving time and 
money one day and tagging his messages as SPAM the next

Jeff Blakely is coming over W-F to work w/ me on UTEC stuff beyond
fixing problems.

KUBUNTU UPGRADE
The new ubuntu [13] is out, and like a moth to the flame or a bird to
wedding rice,[14] I immediately upgraded Laura's laptop and my dayjob
machine.  Ubuntu is not Debian.[15] It was a crappy experience. I wound 
up reformatting and starting from scratch. (backups and networks are nifty)

[13] http://www.ubuntu.com/
[14] http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/birdrice.asp
[15] http://debian.org

The next time somebody says we should do more marketing, I'll say
something like:

	"Yeah, that's right Ubuntu is better than
	 Debian because they do more marketing and
	 their home page is all slick and happy."

And yes, I'm ok cursing the darkness.[16] I lit candles
here [17] and here.[18]

[16] http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/232050.html
[17] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/koffice/+bug/58399
[18] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ldaptor/+bug/68518

CHECKS FROM ED McMAHON
Whenever I feel that I might skip checking the mail, I always remember
that there might be a check from Ed McMahon [19] and the prize patrol 
[20] waiting.

[19] http://www.militarymuseum.org/McMahon.html
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Family_Publishing

In the past couple weeks, we got a $100 check from
http://artsommerville.org and a $60 check http://lowellwaterfestival.org
in response to the optional invoices we submitted in September of 2005

Our hosting is no cost, but last year the board wisely decided that we
should ask for a donation once a year. (which I need to do for this year)

REFERENCE CHECKS

For some reason, I've had a lot of calls checking CSL Alumni references.
The one question that every asks is a variation of:

	"Did he show up on time?"

Sometimes, I think of lying, but then I remember my obligations to the
managerial class. [21] (really)
	
[21] http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/6/ehren-sherman.asp

GOOD GOSSIP
Fred Martin got a swanky grant. [22] Stephane Alnet started a business 
[23] and Felicia Sullivan is still the new ED of OC.[24]

[22] http://www.uml.edu/Media/eNews/martin%20career%20award.html 		[23] 
http://carrierclass.net/
[24] http://organizerscollaborative.org/

GODADDY CUSTOMER SERVICE
For a personal project, I registered a domain with GoDaddy. It didn't
suck. For $11, I didn't really expect tech support to explain DNS to me
and they didn't. However a day or so later somebody called me to
follow up and see how I was doing. As it turned out I was too dense to
change IP# on their DNS server from their parking pages server to the
box at home on the DSL. (duh!)

I guess we should get in the habit of calling new/old customers to see
how they are doing.
	
SLEEP
To correct the last update, Kamala is not satisfied with her sleep, more
often than she would like she finds it difficult to put aside her
worries and rest. My bad, I'd assumed that because she shows up every
day, on time, alert and ready to work sleep was all good for her.