[Cadre-politics] status: $20,000

[Dan MacNeil]

MATT
JOHN
MVHUB $20,000
AGILE WORK STUDY
UTEC
GYM

MATT
This weekend, between school, his two jobs, the gym and walking home up
hill both ways through the snow, Matt Ouellette is re-packaging Mon [1]
to include bug fixes. [2] for the etch [3] release of debian [4]
	[1] http://www.kernel.org/software/mon/
	[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=mon
	[3] http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200609102259
	[4] http://debian.org/

JOHN
John's working on SAMBA [5], so we can be a Microsoft file server to a
UML academic department who fears that after 3 months, the University's
IT Dept isn't going to get back to them.

	[5] http://us2.samba.org/samba/

I'd initially figured that the project would take 2 weeks since the last
time we setup Samba, it took a weekend. I forgot that the last setup
dude was MSCE [6] and that ldap/samba synchronization is harder than
/etc/passwd and /etc/samba/smbpasswd synchronization.

	[6] http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcse/

There's no cash in this now, but experience suggests we can trust in the
future with this group. There is definitely cash in running the
http://cbacre.org  file server, We're just not sure how much. Right now
we're at:

	 "We'll take whatever you paid the old market
	  rate consultant that you say you don't like
	  as well as us because our service is better"

MVHUB $20,000
When you are Sheriff Rosco [7], Bo [8] and Luke Duke [9] are in the
lockup and Daisy Duke [10] is suddenly extra friendly, you should be
double checking jail key security procedures.

	[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_Rosco_P._Coltrane
	[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Duke
	[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Duke
	[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Duke

I was a little surprised when two years after a single meeting, Chris
Shannon [11]

	[11] http://www.lmvwib.org/

said:

	 "$20,000 for mvhub development"

and
	"We get the money pretty much by asking for it".

On reflection, David Siegal and Eric Marc Adum did the hard work that is
needed to make things simple. Everyone else in Massachusetts and
possibly the US didn't.

For an untrained member of the public http://mvhub.com sucks less than
the alternative [12] (Yes, they really don't have DNS) Apparently the
state is spending $200,000 [13] in fiscal year 2007 on the alternative.

	[12] http://209.6.11.171/rlocator/
	[13] http://mass211.org/Mass211About.html#eohhs

We'll know for sure that we have the money by January. Assuming cash
comes in:

Plan A is to fund raise like rabid crank crazed weasels [14] to match
the 20K, offer David half his market rate for a year, go after a piece
of the 200K the state is paying, the 150M the federal government might
pay [15] and the billions Google makes.

	[14]
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj97/spr97/cornum.html
	[15] http://www.211.org/legislation.html

Plan B is to scale the fundraising back to the level of merely rabid
weasels, use a chunk of money for me to quit my day job and a chunk of
money to compete with Red Hat or EMC for a clued Computer Science
student over the summer.

Thank You to Felicia Sullivan and Melissa Carino. They are quite
generous with their time in the preliminary fund-raising and feature
specification efforts.

Right now the Parker, Casey [16] and Greater Lowell Community [17]
Foundations  and the Google summer of code [18] are the top prospects.
The Casey Foundation funded the bulk of mvhub v1 and David Kronberg of
the GLCF was encouraging when I talked to him.

	[16] http://www.aecf.org/
	[17] http://glcfoundation.org
	[18] http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3634981

AGILE WORK STUDY

Given that the study of computer science is more relevant to our work
than keeping printers full of paper, that the typical work study job
doesn't require much more than showing up and that serious full time CS
students spend 60-70 hours a week studying, our work study labor (Manny)
is assigned the task of showing up and studying. I've been trying to
avoid being too much of a hypocrite by studying along with him
for part of the time.

I'm working on  "User Stories Applied".[19]  Putting aside, Prof
Lechner's forwarded  link to a good anti-agile rant [20], I think light
weight is better than heavy weight when it comes to requirements.

	[19]
http://amazon.com/User-Stories-Applied-Development-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321205685
	
	[20] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html

To quote page 135 of the book and a maybe somewhat contrived example of
a IEEE 830 requirement fragment:

	3.4) The produce shall have a gasoline-power engine.
	3.5) The product shall have four wheels.
	3.6) The product shall have a steering wheel.
	3.7) The product shall have a steel body.

and to quote parallel user stories from the same page:

	The product will make it easy and fast for me to mow my lawn

	I am comfortable while using the product.

UTEC
For the first time in a long time, I am only partially consumed with
guilt at the lack of progress.

We, (Jeff Blakely the UTEC staff and I) had two good requirements
gathering sessions. This weekend if the creek doesn't rise, we should go
into production on the script to synchronize the UTEC fundraising
database with their newsletter listserv.

GYM
The week before last, attendance was pretty spotty.  This week I
demanded a stupid meeting. There was a long awkward silence while I
waited for everyone to read my mind and volunteer to do to what I didn't
want to order people to do.

Officially, We're all re-committed to exercise and early rising.

Unofficially, I fear I may be found stuffed in a locker some day soon.

I might be sorry. Maybe there is a fine line between being a butthead
and forceful leader. Maybe a butthead is just a butthead.