This is the Slug, uh, steer committee meeting. Uh, the date is Monday, August the 4th, 2025.
It's, uh, 6.40, and we're starting the meeting.
I'll act as the recording secretary only.
Such a good actor.
I'll cheat.
Figure in a moment. Damn, he got a haircut. Yeah.
Took a great weight off my shoulder. Your beard cut, too.
What's the web page to pull up, though? Minutes.
Wiki.slug.org is a starting point. Then scroll down to minutes.
Yep.
Um, Stan may not have the link on there, but if you just go to the last one and then change the.
Month on the length of 8, you'll be there.
Yeah.
Eh, Treasury report? Okay. Uh, there was a typo, I fixed it at the end.
Anyway… Any comments?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I see, you already got them, okay.
I was wondering what shelf did…
I mean, me. Calendar report for the end of July. Oh, um… I put, uh… June in there, because I think the last time I didn't have it ready.
June is 380, July is 396. Quite a bump. Anyway, that's just the calendar. That's all that reflects is that… The number of lines that we've messed around with, it doesn't necessarily mean anything is accurate, or… current, because… very still hasn't got anybody to help.
Do that, as I've kind of been leaving it up to him to try to get a volunteer, and… I think he had… Rudy was gonna volunteer, but he hadn't… really gotten back to him.
Yeah, kept saying I was gonna do a better job of cleaning it up before getting into it, so… I'm not… yeah, you're right.
That… that's not gonna work.
You're right.
Subscriber Report, as of the end of July. Got the numbers in. Meetup is 907, but… That's just gone up a little bit.
Because I've been in there, and… really gutted a lot of those.
Names, anything that was a name I didn't recognize, it was more than 2 years old.
And they haven't shown up at a meeting, I just… I don't know who those names are. I think they're just robot names.
Most of them. We do, yes, we do get people occasionally to show up, but… you know, they don't really… We don't really fit into their way of doing things, I guess.
907… An ounces down one, discusses up one.
Steercon went down one. She said they've been is… sane.
Oh.
So the 989 down to 907, that was you doing the clean-out on that, right?
Yeah. Actually, I think that… I think it had… I think I had it down to about 850 at one point. Well, no, I didn't.
I think I quit at 900. I don't know.
8, 8… 880 or something like that. So, you can figure it's probably a jump of 30.
From what I dropped it down to, because they… Pretty consistently, the numbers just go up.
30 each month. Between 25 and 30.
So… And I'm still cleaning it out because I'm under the impression… still under the impression if we hit 1,000 that the… The rate that Ken Johnson is having to pay for the.
Meetup would go up. I don't know if that's true or not.
And he won't tell us, or hasn't told us, what he's paying it for.
How much he's paying. Right? Lee?
He hasn't said how much he's paying. Has he?
I never could find any evidence that the rate changed, though.
Okay. Anyway…
I thought he said in a call that… it didn't matter.
Maybe that was a… whatever it changes to, don't worry about it, I'm paying it.
Or if it was a… If it changes the number of people, it doesn't change the bill.
Or, even if it did, he's using it to the extent that it wouldn't matter how much it did change, because he still would.
Need to pay for it for other use. I don't know.
I say there's no real comment here.
The attendance report.
Last month's STEERCOM was 5, or, yeah, 5. Uh, Slack meeting was 9 down because, hey, it's July.
Schlug was 19. Very interesting.
Session, St. Louis Linux. Also was pretty steady.
Those are two good numbers for July. New Linux was 9.
But they were all regulars, for the most part. Essentially, you know, we had… Two guys peeked in and were kind of new, but… no big, uh… no real influx of beginners.
For the beginner workshop.
Not that, uh… it's a problem, but I'm just curious. In July, and also in the… July and the previous year.
Uh, for some reason. Some of the… lines are left justified.
I don't fucking know.
Okay. Just curious.
You know, if you wanted me to spend 20 minutes, I'd figure it out and fix them all. Would that make you happy?
No, I… hey, no, I'm… I'm not that picky, I'm just… Just trying to educate myself. If you happen to know, but you don't happen to know, so no problem.
Um, Stan, scroll up so I can see a previous year, please.
Okay, I was wondering if the leading lack of leading space.
Before the year had… impact.
Uh…
It also looks like… You have two spaces between the pipe and numbers.
Whereas July, you do not.
Yeah.
One of my 5 and 9 have two spaces. I wonder if that's part of how it knows to… Right, justified.
It probably does.
That's a nice catch, yeah. Yeah, it looks like you're missing the space after July.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
How about that?
Patterns. Who thuck… who'd have thunk it? But if you look at 2022 and 2023, they're the same way.
Yeah. Well, you know, these errors started way back, and they've just perpetuated.
Um…
These aren't errors, these are features.
Oh, okay.
Try PDQ. Add a space… go down to 24 and 25.
Yeah?
Put a space before 12, 16, 14, and 12. And then a space before… 19. Uh, the July column.
In which column… which column?
Like that.
Yeah, and save it, and I should refresh and see the results, correct?
Yep.
Hey, they're right, justified.
I'm gonna save it again?
Yeah, nah, yeah.
Who'd have thought white space makes a difference with formatting?
Yeah, how about that?
I… okay, I lost it there. Which… what? Which white space did you… remove?
He's adding a white space to the left of the number.
Save your file? Again, please.
And now 2025 is right, justified.
To hell.
Sorry.
Are we done here?
Yep. Pretty awesome. Cool.
Uh…
Got it.
This meeting is being recorded. Yeah, and Gary's Chromebook finally logged in.
Really? How about that? Hmm… Oh, eh…
Oh, I've got it recorded, and I watched it yesterday, and I don't remember.
Anything about what I watch other than it was a very enjoyable meeting.
No. The Slack meetings and the newcomer meetings?
Uh, depending on who shows up, it's… we always enjoy. You know, talking about stuff, if no beginners show up, and… Um.
I wish we'd have more beginners. But they are very… informative meetings, especially on the… at the Slack meeting.
Sometimes. Just… but then it… Depends on who shows up.
Almost as if it's been a month. I have to go back and look at memes.
Hmm.
It just seemed like I enjoyed the meeting quite a bit.
Over the holiday in July.
Pause before you go up any higher, pause, pause, pause. Uh, back on a Slack meeting.
Your comment for July was the guy from Red Hat said he would be attending.
Did he ever attend?
How the hell would I know? I mean, just because I take a tennis doesn't mean that I memorize all those names and… cross-reference the damn things.
Besides, you get to report on. If you just pull down the doggone database and look at it yourself.
I don't remember stuff, Gary. I don't remember what I had for breakfast.
What true? That's true. I just figured maybe you'd have a…
And how would I remember what you want me to remember?
Well…
That is predicated on Gary telling you what he wants you to remember, too.
Yeah, no shit. And you know what I'd tell him, right?
What?
I tell the newcomers I'm not going to do their… solve their problems for them.
You gotta figure it out yourself. I'm not gonna do their homework.
Homework. Oh, what an attitude.
If the guy from the red hat. If the guy from Red Hat comes as a newcomer, boy, are they in trouble.
I don't know. I'm just old and cranky.
Anyway, not a problem.
Salute marrying.
Um, I think… the July… Slug… that was Sean doing Ansible 101, and then his Ansible pull.
Was extremely interesting. And I think it made.
Things accessible. To a wider audience, doing it as two separate things.
Agreed, I think that worked out really nicely. Yeah, definitely.
I meant to go back and count the minutes and how long the base went a little longer than anticipated, but then… Our introduction went a little longer, too.
So, I think it might have been… it was well within 45 minutes, I'm sure.
And earlier on, Steve had suggested in the chat a base session on YAML.
And I think he had done that before. Sean actually got into his diagram that showed the structure of YAML.
During the session. And I thought that was… Very informative, and… I remember I did ask some questions about the, uh.
Editors and so forth. It was… he answered. To my satisfaction.
And I thought that overall, that was one of the best base.
You know, uh… that I'd seen in a long time, and the way that it all fit together.
You know? And that's the kind of stuff we need, yes.
Any other comments? Anything else I should write here?
Um…
A lot of green is my favorite color, Sam. Spoken like a true treasure.
I don't know.
What'd you say, Grant? You considered it, uh, quite… Well, quite what to put two…
Um. I don't know, I'd have to read the recording or transcript.
Um. I think it worked out very well.
I think it made or catered to. People knew to Ansible.
And two people wanting. Advanced things.
Yeah, that's what I think I and… Some of us were worried about, which, okay.
One talk to tracking. Fresh meat, newbies. In the second talk.
Really is only aimed at more advanced people. But it worked out, I think.
If I remember right, I remember some of the early folks dropping off.
And some people not coming until a little bit later, that's fine. It works out. In the meantime, the other people, I think.
It worked out for people who wanted to, okay, hey, I'm not… I'm not good at this, so I'll listen to the tutorial, I'll learn a little bit, and then, oh, great, now I'm… Now, I know a tool that I could actually use this for, cool.
Mm-hmm.
I'm just making stuff up here, folks.
I think you're at least on target, so…
Yeah.
You're very creative.
Any complaints?
Nope. Um…
Nope. Good stuff.
Mmm…
That was the base portion.
Now, the in-depth thing, what'd you think about that?
I would say same as above for base. Because my comments were about.
Both of them.
Yeah.
From the Ansible pole really turned out to be a nice, uh.
A nice stool, so I think I really… That was a good thing.
Anything else about that?
The St. Louis Linux meeting. Is, uh… what the hell was that?
Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't put all that in there.
Lee's presentation on Password Manager Vault things.
I'll go back and flesh it out a bit.
Yeah, I don't remember any of it, because I couldn't get past the password.
Yeah…
You couldn't remember your password, right?
Hey, Gary, they make these nifty things called password vaults to remember your password. You should try one.
Would somebody do a presentation on that?
Lee, why don't you get in your time machine and do that?
I'll see him copy his slides.
Hmm…
Oh, you're gonna be ditching.
Definitely neat. And yes, everything we were just saying.
Yeah, it's just so needed.
I thought it covered… a whole lot of things that I would never have thought of.
Quite… a number of.
Uh, what, facets, or consider, you know, issues and considerations.
Options and variations.
Yeah, and I feel like there was a lot of good audience participation and questions.
Some along the lines of the technical survivorship. Or… just general good ideas about passwords and.
Not to volunteer you, Lee. But it sounded like there was at least a couple of people.
Who would be interested in a… Okay, you have… Never used a password manager before.
Here's how you sign up. For a service?
And start using a password manager. You know, like, uh, 95 level, not even a 101.
Yeah.
Oh, I like that definition, the 95 level, not the 101.
I totally missed that.
Well, first of all, 95.
I totally missed the context of what you're talking about now, Gary.
Well, college courses, freshmen, like, 101 is what they.
Oh, oh, oh, okay, the $9.95 relating to an… 101, okay, I understand it now, yeah.
In other words, the catch-up you missed in high school.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, all of it? Who's slept through study hall?
Yeah, because that's why all my classes were numbered 73.
Know the course level, not the year, Gary.
I thought he was talking about the. Test scores.
Oh!
And not the number of phone numbers in your little black book.
You know.
Yeah… Anything else here, folks?
Sadly, just single digits.
And one's all you really need.
That's right.
Oh…
Say what?
Once we have the speaker, let me drift back there for a second, so… doing the lead, did you feel… Is there anything that, uh… You felt people were really excited about, or…?
I don't know if I'm excited, but I was impressed with the amount of, uh, participation.
Oh, cool. You know… 5, 6, 7 people were jumping in all the time, so… Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I did stir the pot there with a couple of questions.
What do you mean, a shill? What the… what? What?
And it… we probably need to think about a basic one.
Yeah, yeah.
But I'm not sure if I'm the one to do it, because I've been doing it for 20 years, and… I'm not sure I can… It'd take me… it'd take me a big effort to dumb it down, basically.
Yeah. You know, for somebody that's never seen one. Yeah, that's a good point, so… Now, should not shut down it down, but make it… basic enough that I don't lose anybody.
What are we… what are we talking about?
The 95 course. Presentation. To do a tutorial level on password manager.
Oh.
Well, I did one back in October. October of 2020, I think.
Yeah, on, uh, KeyPass.
Of course, I did it with 60 slides, so I wouldn't say that's very basic.
Will he pass GINIC with the browser?
Probably so good, probably.
That's right, I think I got pizza. Better make it 515.
Say again that I… conflict, I didn't hear you, what?
Does KeePass integrate with a browser. Like Bitwarden does.
You mean, like, uh… pump in the passwords and… So forth? Yeah.
Okay.
You know, it'll… although I do… I… it's a lot of work, so I just cut and paste because I'm lazy.
Turn off the microphone. Oh. You can leave it on.
You know, because it doesn't, you know, it doesn't work with every site the same way because of how the sites are set up, I think.
So, I had never really gone down that road. I just figured it's not that hard to cut and paste, you know, bam, bam, bam.
Well, the thing with the browser integration. Is… it will not… at least the ones I've worked with.
The site you're on is part. Of identifying the password.
So, if you're on a site that's a PayPal fish site.
The browser plugin. Is looking for PayPal.
With three L's. Instead of what you have in the vault, and copy and paste.
Might not catch that, or… Homoglyph… attack.
Oh, I… in KeePass, I go to my entry for… my bank, and I… I… Click a button, and it… it… pulls up my bank.
So it does, you know, so… It's not… not a man in the middle deal.
Yeah.
Well, and part of that is with a password manager. If the URL you have used in the vault does not match what's in your location bar.
It won't match it. It won't…
Right. There's actually… code or technology making sure that.
You're on the site, you think you're on.
I suppose so, because I click it and it goes to that site.
Boom. I guess.
It's more if you navigate to the site some other way.
I have… I have no idea, because I never do it that way.
And need to enter. And…
Because I, you know, I go to the entry in the KeePass, and I click one button, and it pulls up the web page. I click another button, it shows the pass… it pulls the password.
Paste it in there, and then they click another button, there's a password, I paste that in there, you know.
One for the user ID, and one for the… Password.
Yeah, the… usually the first hour of my day. Logging into Ticket System for work, and it makes reference to network monitoring system or some other work system, and.
I'll follow links from a trusted system. To a second or third trusted system.
And I have to log into those. And that's the browser knows what the integration, and it helps.
Okay. Much.
I'm not sure that there would be any issue, well, with the way I use it, I don't know.
It sounds… it sounds a little more complicated than… anything I'm doing.
No. You know, I got 500-some separate.
Urls with user IDs and passwords, so bam, bam, bam. I don't know. Nothing within and within and within… down a pathway.
Yeah. No, it's more… where do you initiate your navigation from?
Oh, I opened KeePass and initiate from there. Bang.
Right, but, like, if you're… Yeah, never mind. Aiden.
Different use cases for different people.
Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of people might find it easier to type in the URL.
And then hit a key combination to fill in a password.
Or they're inside of Gmail. And a link from an Amazon order that they did place pops up.
And they open that link from email.
Yeah, the takeaway is there's multiple use cases.
Yeah.
In fact, what I'm getting used to now is there's multiple vaults.
Because I've got one bit warden vault for the company, and another for me personally.
Yeah.
I, you know, I don't… I don't know about that. I… you know, I… It's not like… it's not like I've been working with a lot of people for the last 10, 15 years.
No. I'm not on a team anymore at all, it's all solo stuff, so I wouldn't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, the other big issue is. What if you're in a strange computer?
And you need a password. Well, if it's on a thumb drive you have at home.
It's on my… it's on my key fob with the… with the… with the dev files.
You're out of luck. Well, I do think…
Yeah.
But I would need. Which actually is a Ventoy file, so I could… boot up and… Uh, in RAM, and… run it from there.
You know, I could run Linux Mint. 22.1 from my key fob.
And not… not deal with the, uh… whatever, the guy's got loaded on it.
Computer, as long as I can boot off a key fob.
Well, A, some, you know, a lot of physical locations won't let you… Yeah.
Yeah, that's true, that's true. So, yeah, there would be an advantage to… that would be an advantage for the, uh…
Pass the re… centralized, uh, URL, no.
What's the word I'm looking for? Cloud storage, so the password stuff, yeah.
Well, cloud storage.
My use case, you know, I just don't… I don't have that issue anymore.
And… the last… the last thing similar was I used to do for my brother's.
Well, I always took my own laptop, but I was always planned that if I had a tattoo, I could just boot off.
Thumb drive, it would work. I don't know.
And one of the reasons I chose, uh. Key pastors at the time.
The earlier versions was. They started out as a Windows thing, and then they did cross paths.
Platform, so I kept that in mind, so that's one of the reasons I stuck with them.
And we move along, or is there anything more to talk about here?
Uh, that's it. Good.
I should say about the newcomer meeting, or, you know, the beginner workshop.
Not enough newcomers. We had… I think one guy… And he wasn't really… he was coming back to Linux after a number of years.
Been in the Apple arena, I think. And he just adds some general questions, and he's in, uh… He was satisfied with the, you know, the guidance we gave him, and he may never come back.
Because he had, you know, he was… issues that he had just kind of forgotten about, or, you know, had never thought about before, but when he was.
Working way back to Linux, he… he started… Ask about these issues. I don't remember exactly what they were right now, but… He was very happy.
Again, not enough newcomers. I don't know.
I think we can move on to, uh, meeting schedule now.
I'm trying to slip back here and look at the numbers.
Hey, welcome to the Steering Committee!
Are you looking at… are you looking at numbers, or do you want me to go back and look at the numbers?
So… 9 this plot. Oh, I'm looking. I'm looking.
Okay.
So it's 9 this month, 8 the month before. 11, 7, 8, 14, 13…
Yeah, it's a little bit of a slip, but… Yeah, it's nice to have more… more newcomers.
Yeah. And the Slack, the English, the 3rd of July, you know, and I didn't expect hardly anybody to show up, but… I got more than I thought.
That's… that's an excellent point, yeah. Close to the July meeting is to the holiday.
No?
Is a real problem, yeah.
Cool.
What'd I… what'd I lose here? Oh.
Any comments in general about our meeting schedule? Anybody would like to make?
Are we doing it right?
Yeah, I guess it's… it's the old thing about, uh. We're pulling the crowd that does make this meeting, but uh… I don't really have any feel for anybody who's not making it because of the schedule.
Yeah. Boop.
I know that I have not attended. New Linux or other things… Because the, uh… three meetings that I am attending.
Right. Takes time. And I'm choosing which meetings I'm attending.
Yeah. It's always appreciated, yeah. Limited time on this earth, and… You got your happy wife, happy life, too, you know?
Don't you have another meeting to go to?
Hey, she's trying to kick me out of the house. To have these, um, by yourself.
Yep, yep.
She's around people at work. When she's home, I'm here.
She's like, want some alone…
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Remember my swipe bought a trailer and put it on it.
Holiday Shores.
I want to stay happily married, Lee.
Okay. One out there. Not him.
Alright, um…
Oh, shoot, I can't remember what the problem was.
I don't know. I, you know, I really…
Really enjoy these meetings, too. I do. Happy meeting.
But, you know, it depends on who shows up, whether we can answer anybody's question, and I think.
I think we've, uh, pretty much… generally do, and it's… You know, we get… you know, Phil Bunch shows up a lot of times. Oh, we did have a question. Some guy asked a crazy thing about some… some TCP IP…
Segment. Was nothing that… anybody was familiar with, and I don't.
I'm… I'm kind of thinking the guy didn't really get the acronym right.
Whatever the hell it was.
Well, what you've just described is very much so, um… the TCP thing.
Yeah.
Whatever.
I don't know if Slack is recorded, but even if it was…
Oh, I record it, but I don't post them anywhere, and I go back and watch them at… hell, by the time I get around to doing everything else, I forget what the hell I saw.
But it… and…
Yeah, but I was wondering… there's probably no way, if I knew the answer, to get ahold of the person to share the answer.
Right, that's true. I mean, because sometimes… Especially last month when I was so out of it, there were… you know, I'd watch this thing, and I'd say.
Stanley, wake up! You know the answer to that! How come you didn't come up with it? You know, and… And, uh, you know, it's important to this guy, and who the hell is this? His name is, uh… Bill Bob, you know, and there's no email there.
No? You can't, you know, and… Unless she signs up for… you know, the base, or… you know, the discussed nailing list and ask the questionnaire, he's not going to get any help after the fact.
Yeah.
Yeah, it just… so I tried it. Continually.
Tell people, you know. Go look at the, uh, discussed mailing list, and sign up there and ask your question there.
Because I don't know all the answers, Phil doesn't know all the answers, and, you know, we've got… you know, a number of people out there, sometimes, if the question… intrigues them, you'll get a response.
And if it's the wrong answer, you'll get 3 good answers.
Or at least 3 different workers.
Or at least 3 different answers, yeah. It's like, Steve Gibson on last Tuesday, he said one of his readers said that.
What she does is she posts something, and then she comes back with a different name and gives a wrong answer, and then immediately people will come in and try to correct that wrong answer.
There you go. Yeah, rolling. I'm sorry, who was it who said that? What, Gail?
It was… it was a gal… one of the gals that, uh… was a listener of Steve Gibson's Security Now show.
Steve Gibson. Okay.
Yeah, she… she said she'd post… she would post an issue that she had.
And I would just sit there and set her, and then she'd come in with a… a phony name, and… post an incorrect answer and immediately there'd be 3 people trying to correct that answer.
Eww!
Let's paw pause here. Do I know that?
Oh, shit. Pawpaws, that's the Missouri banana.
Grows on the trees here in Missouri. South of the Mississippi River.
I mean, south of the Missouri River, not the Mississippi River.
Yeah, it'd be kind of hard to be south of the Mississippi. Yeah.
Okay, I was gonna say…
Yeah. Yeah?
Uh, down in the Boot Hill? Artly, where it curves, there's someplace you might argue is south of the Mississippi?
Yep.
There's a really strange spot just… just by Perryville, where I think it was the earthquake from the late 1800s.
1811.
The… the actual state line. 1811, okay, the actual state line is no longer in the river, it's actually… You know, like, a couple miles inland of the river on the Illinois side, then a couple miles inland of the river over the Missouri side, and it's…
Yeah, and I think that was the year that the river ran backwards for a while.
Yeah, I ran north instead of south.
Um… Yeah, last year they were… last year was the first year that I ever.
Found a pawpaw and ate it. It was good. This year, I went back to that same tree that's got them.
But they're not doing well this year. It's too dry. It's about the size of a walnut.
And, uh, last year it was the size of a banana.
And how far south of the Missouri River do you need to go to get that?
And uh… hereland.
Well, I got it in my park here, how… what do you think?
Well, that's why it doesn't taste good, you're too far north.
No, it was great last year, it's just… This is much smaller and drier this year.
It just didn't fill out yet. You know, unless we get a decent rain between now and, you know.
Five days of rain between now and the 15th. They might fill out by the end of the month.
Oh, dear. Alrighty, moving on.
The final frontier. Thanks for the void.
And that's just states. Yeah, do we have anything planned for the, uh… 13th of August?
I think you should ask. Uh, so I've… I've got multiple maybes. Actually.
I keep meaning to fix this. I don't think I'm on editor.
Would one of you who is in editor. Uh, the editor email list.
Check and see if anything's come in in the last, uh.
Few hours.
Nothing.
While you're doing that, uh… Let's see, so I talked to Andrew Denner up in Iowa.
And, uh, uh… he basically was like, well, yeah, we… He had some talks, which, uh… be good for you guys. And he goes, okay, let me… Let me, uh, look at the one I did and talk… check on this other guy's, and uh… so…
He was going to get back to me. Hasn't gotten back to me yet, but I did talk to him again this afternoon, and… And, uh, so he said he was searching, and would let me know.
So, uh… That's one of the possibilities.
Another one is Scott Graneman, uh… Uh, so… He didn't give a specific, uh.
Topic, but uh… he was checking his calendar just to see how this would work out.
And, uh, I haven't heard back from him yet, this evening yet.
Didn't we have somebody. In the wind for, um, returning to Linux from FreeBSD or something?
Yes, that was Brian Bilgary. And, uh, I did talk to him.
Uh, again, over the weekend. And basically, he has made… Very, very little progress, and… I said, okay, go… don't sweat it. I mean, you're… You… yeah, he's… he's just… nowhere near along far enough to make a presentation out of it.
So it's not a viable thing until, surprise, it is.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, you've been talking about doing this since April, and uh… part of it is… work keeps on, you know, coming up with stupid things for him to do for work.
How dare them?
Grant, are you familiar with that?
Familiar with what? My pager just went off.
I can't.
And, uh, Matt? Uh, Matt Hard… Hargrave?
Here's the Red Hat guy, uh, over in Kansas City. Who's supposed to be covering our area as well.
Uh, so, uh, two things with him. As far as doing a presentation for us.
Uh, he was like, yeah, he had… promised me, like, a month and a half ago, or two months ago, that, uh, I used… asking the other engineers in his office, you know, who could.
Who would be good for doing a presentation, and he thought he had a couple of takers.
Anyway, he… when I talked to him today, he said, oh, shit, this one still has… company, uh… not proprietary, but uh… Not even confidential.
Confidential.
But rather than being pure technical, it was sales… salesy-type stuff, was… interleaved into the presentation, and he was like.
Oh, yeah.
He said, I'd really like to take this kind of shit out.
Yeah.
Before I do it, before a lug. So… So anyway, he… he's not saying they can't do it, but he needs to do a little editing, and again, he was supposed to get back to me.
So, you've been asleep at a switch, is that it, Gary?
And, uh, has not yet, but, uh… Not totally surprised, so…
Yeah, I didn't… I didn't push on these people. Enough last week. I was asleep in the sweat earlier in the week.
Hey, Lee, I have an idea.
Yeah.
Yes?
I think Gary needs to do a presentation.
Sure. Uh-oh, Berg will get the handcuffs. Yeah, uh-oh, uh-huh.
If I remember correctly, the last presentation Gary did was with.
Rich Seibel, and they talked about. The 15 ways you could create a file.
Or the 15-day student application should allow you to create a file from scratch.
And that was back when we were still at Sunnen, and they did it on… the big paper… thing instead of a chalkboard.
Paper, heck, it was a clay tablet!
Oh, say, that sounds like pretty long ago.
It was, it was.
You had to be able to read hieroglyphics.
Well, I think the reason Gary tries to find these people to do presentations is so that he can't do one.
Kind of like Stan Reichardt is vice president because he doesn't want to be president.
Right? I don't know.
When you hit… when you hit some… a jackpot and get somebody to actually do a speak… a speaking thing, generally it's been turned out pretty well.
So, we've been fortunate that way. Right, Terry?
Yep, yep. So I do think at least a couple of these guys.
Because… cuz…
Will come through, like I said, I absolved Brian. I just don't think you should be even trying to… I think you should get his… is model system built first before he tries to make a presentation.
Uh, but the other three, uh, I think at least, uh.
Yeah.
Two of them will come through. And that will be, uh, hopefully one for Thursday and one for the main on Wednesday.
Um, so, uh, that basically then does still come down to, uh, we need a tutorial for, uh.
For Wednesday, unless I stumble them.
Well…
Uh, it's Leo Laporte once said, uh, she's… hope is not a viable security option.
You know, yeah.
Her defense. Hope is not really what we can count on.
I'm starting to rattle, folks.
Um. You were asking, uh, how work has been… Monday last week, had a multi-hour outage site-to-site, firewall problems.
Wait…
Tuesday was a 12-hour outage. Site-to-site communications problem. Same two sites.
Problem with a core switch at the other end. On Thursday, somebody rebooted his system.
Unexpectedly, at the first site and caused a 2-hour outage.
And, oh yeah, the same two sites that have been having problems.
Wow.
Had a problem for about an hour Saturday night. And I got paged.
If you… have you killed anybody lately?
No, there's nobody in proximity that Maining would do any good.
Yeah. Because you clicked.
And if I kill them, I have to do their job.
Oh, shit.
Naturally.
Sounds like you have to do their jobs anyway.
And there's no pretense.
Um, I got a little bit of a suggestion. I'm thinking that… part of the base time, we could… do kind of a… just dive into reading… how to read logs.
What to read, what to look for. And… you know, particularly.
Uh… journal control with a new… uh, logging system that… comes with the, uh… what do you call it?
Journal. Yeah.
Would actually back up, but even get into journal control. Say, very basic idea of looking at logs.
What controls syslog. Something… wherever, I don't care.
Yeah.
Look at a log. Entry. If you don't know what it is.
Research it. Once you learn that, look at the next log entry.
Yeah.
And repeat that process. And it doesn't matter what the underlying technology is.
Learn something. The rinse, lather, repeat.
Yeah.
Stan, that's probably the third of our time I've heard you mention.
Journal control. I suggest you do a presentation on it.
Crap.
Boy, does that feel familiar, Lee.
Yeah… shit.
I was like, one command journal, control minus U. Name?
Carefully. Don't swallow your foot.
Yeah…
As Stan takes one step backward. I learned that in the Army.
No, no, that's so you can kick hire.
Um, and while the rest of us have taken two steps backwards, Stan's still out in the lead.
Oh, crap.
Okay, uh, tell you what, on the note there behind Brian Bilgary's name.
Uh, put, uh, not until… October, more likely November.
Or January, or January, yeah.
Oh, and uh… October, November, uh, hit up Ken Johnson.
Uh, yeah, that's right, his commitment, whatever it is. Was supposed to be alleviated.
October or September and October?
October, November, January.
Yeah.
Yeah, I really have a good feeling that. Good feeling that Andrew's gonna come through.
And then, uh… Hargrave took a trip to Portugal, so he was out of the country for a couple of weeks.
And so maybe that screwed up his schedule, but I mean, he… He sounded like he thought he had a real good idea.
A presentation that could come off, and a couple other guys in the office.
So I think he, uh, I think he may come through with something here.
And it all bleeds down into St. Louis. Clinics, August 21st.
And basically, yeah. Out of the… Three possibilities there.
Bargrave, Scott, Andrew. Two of them will come through with mains for… the Linux on it.
On Thursday. And the main on Wednesday.
Those are the other dates for the following months, and I… Try to remember to double-check the dates, because sometimes I get them off.
I ran into a problem, but whatever. Old business, server admin, anything that's happened? I mean, Mike and Lee and.
Granted, I've been doing all kinds of stuff that… I don't know what the hell.
Let me jump back. Uh… anybody come up with any ideas for a tutorial?
On Wednesday? This coming month? August.
Next week, 9 days from now?
Gary, what was it? I was out of the room for a minute. What was that tutorial about?
That's the one, yep.
Thank you, Steve, for volunteering! That's your question, Steve. What are you gonna do?
Hey, you're a volunteer! Steve volunteers! Yeah.
There has been a request for a basic tutorial on using password managers.
Password manager. I don't think I've ever messed with that.
There we go.
Actually, that makes you a perfect candidate, and I'm not being a snarky bastard, even though I am both.
It's… As Lee was alluding to, when you've used something so much for so long.
You don't know how much you take for granted. So, very seriously, with all due respect.
Yeah.
If you could pick… A password manager.
I would request one that integrates with a web browser, so either.
Bitwarden, or LastPass. Something, and just… Okay, here's how I installed it.
Here's how I made it. Remember passwords for 3 or 4 sites I use all the time, and… Here's my day-to-day experience with it, going from 0 to 45 in the last.
Hour-type thing.
And, uh…
Well, he didn't mute himself.
I'm ignoring you.
Yeah, I wasn't the one harassing you, Steve.
This time.
Yeah.
You do a pretty good job, Lee.
Thank you. Okay.
Oh, I don't know what exactly Hargrave has… But he sounded really interesting. I thought he mumbled something about core image or something, and uh… Then he said, uh, wait, wait till I get… get a handhold on this, and I'll tell you more.
Okay.
So… Old business.
Server admin? Anybody want to say anything?
Not old business, but potentially new business for server admin.
Okay. Well. This is as good a place as anywhere, any to suggest it, I think.
Um…
Wouldn't it? And then if it becomes an item, we can… Next month, you can list it as a new project.
Dancer?
Fair enough. Um… Do we need to review… scrapers and the likes.
Hitting the site and see if we need to… respond to them, or if we can continue ignoring them.
Lee, what's your feel?
Uh… I don't like them. I like to block them.
We've got some failed demand jails I use on production servers that block.
The majority of bots out there. Especially the ones that are, uh… stealing things like ChatGPT and different.
Gemini in it.
Do you have any experience. Blocking those?
Yeah, fail to man.
So… Why do I feel like I'm… writing a presentation as I ask these questions.
How do you use fail to ban. To block… scrapers.
Steep?
Most of the ones I do are typically bots. And basically, the, uh… tag on the log entry identifies a bot.
Fail to ban filters sees it. And if you get sequential hits on that.
Uh, the jail will block it for a time period.
Oh, so you have it looking for certain user agents in your access log?
And configure fail the band once it sees that agent from that IP.
Certain number of times, just block that IP for a while.
Right.
You want to put that in 2 or 3 slides?
Comey, Gary.
That'd be enough!
Well done, Grant. Well done. I did the one last month, though. Why don't you put that in three slides?
Now, we can work something out.
Yeah. I don't know, the conversational… how do you do this?
You know, I feel like… was it Abbott and Costello who's on first?
Yeah.
What's on second? I don't know. Third base.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, in fact, uh… Man, we get… yak a little bit more, and we can do it as a test on Bach and watch it.
Yeah, and it's actually… I was just thinking to myself, it's actually very prescient.
Gary, where do I send my bill? For finding precision.
Let's see, to our treasurer, that would be Lee! No, no, no, Treasure hasn't authorized your expenses yet.
Oh!
Okay, I gotta fill out my expense account report and submit that to the treasurer in triplicate.
Make sure you have the right cover letter.
That's right.
Can I get, uh, Elon Musk to come in and do some Doge work to… to thin out the hierarchy here? No, no, no, I want them to donate some Cybertrucks this Luke. Oh, there we go, there we go.
Hmm…
Only if we're gonna sell them as a fundraiser.
And I don't even consider doing a bonfire with them a good thing. If you like the lithium in the batteries will, uh, ruin whatever I'm trying to roast.
Well, no, no, you don't burn the batteries. You spin the wheels.
To create the friction and the smoke to smoke it. There we go.
I like wood smoke, not rubber smoke.
Gee, dude, what are we smokin'? Hey, man!
And that's a third type of smoke.
I'm getting a contact. Hi, folks.
And Steve's ears yet.
I'm sorry, what was the question?
Is there smoke coming out of Steve's ears yet?
Ah, there we go, Bill. I muted himself, he's playing possum.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh, he found me on the… found the unmute button.
I have a critical failure of my drink vessel here at the house.
There's a hole, and there's nothing left in it. I need to mediate that.
Oh… they do it.
What?
There's a hole in the top of my glass. Any liquid that was in the glass.
Has left that through that hole.
Appreciate my… mine… mine, uh, pours even without a hole, the condensation dripping off the glass.
You haven't added Lamert or SteerCom to your address, or to your dictionary yet?
No, I'm lazy.
I'm just gonna sit here, I'm not gonna say anything.
Smart man, Steve.
Not usually, but this time I think it was, you know, I got it.
First, we could save the failed demand for next month and do a password manager shootout.
Everybody gets to install their favorite one and show you how to use it. There we go.
Uh, we… I think we kind of tried that before and didn't really get any response.
I'm sorry, tried what? I didn't hear.
Uh, password… vault shootout.
Password manager shootout.
Kind of… threw up those balloons, and they didn't go anywhere.
Let me find the Security Now episode, and there's your answer.
Do we want to move along, or keep going here?
Uh, move along, I think.
Bach upgrade. Well, we're kinda… need to start looking at… Um… Well, are we far enough along and we can look at Debian?
13?
Um, I think we need to look at Mailman first.
Okay, let's… let's… my roundabout way of asking his mailman fixed?
Not that I'm aware of.
I'll be right back.
I don't know that we're dealing with it, I think we're all busy.
Need to… need to, uh… finished mailman two to three… pro- uh, plan.
Um, need to, uh, find out what Mike's… bribe is and submit a request through the treasurer.
To approve funding the bribe for Mike.
Actually, he'll say, well, I told you how to do it 4 years ago, but nobody ever did it.
I wasn't here 4 years ago.
Anything else?
Um… Perhaps the, uh… bought and failed ban discussion.
Is under website. Or is that the next section?
Now, the website, it's just more or less… maintenance.
Okay.
You know, like, did I spell stuff wrong? Did I go in and fix something? Did I…
I have a real simple. 45-second tutorial.
Go to where you have slug.org?
Like, yes, in your… Editor. Nope, nope, nope, where you were.
Ooh, me.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Give me that. The what?
Like, move your cursor to where it says Slug. Hit, um… ZG, as in Zulu Good.
I just added it to the spell check file.
Oh, okay. Alright, you know, okay.
So, you can do that with things that you know are.
Good.
More properly, Zulu Gulf.
Fair enough.
So, friends, there you have it. Tonight's tutorial, or this month's tutorial.
How to go from New Zealand.
Huh.
I do know some spelling.
Fix a little bit more to set up, but you can actually… Um… Isn't it… virtualization with a Z.
Depends on whether you're British or not.
Hell, I don't know. Yeah…
Yeah, IBM uses… Z-A-T-I-O-N.
Red Hat uses it as well.
Like that. Oh, shit, that's not right.
Did you… Add it to the dictionary?
Or… V-I-R-T-U-A-L-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N.
E-i-r-t… No, no, no, no, no, where's the hell?
8 by Famer. T-u-a-l.
I don't…
Eir. G…
U-a-l. Iz.
Ation.
Like that.
I believe so.
Okay? What? Shit, what'd I do?
Damn it.
Z before A.
Escape, escape, escape!
Now ZG.
Is that right? Looks right.
The… T-U-A-L-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N.
My brain is foggy.
Oh, yeah, I get it.
Anyway, continue on. Sorry, did not mean to sidetrack.
Nothing wrong with sidetracking.
Yeah.
Steady as she goes.
I don't know if I'll ever get around to… Under… getting back into trying to understand that new website structure.
Git process.
Did you ever find time to finish the redirects, Grant?
Um, no, it's been on… the shortlist in my inbox for… couple of months now.
It seems like, since the weather started heating up, so had things from work.
Okay. Um…
Yeah. It seemed to me that… things are working the way I want them to work now.
So… I don't know.
Yeah, I think most of them do. There's a few I need to finish.
Okay.
Uh… no, uh… No, I'm awake.
Are you awake?
Yeah, I've got a… thinking, but I don't really have… Yeah, never mind.
Okay, moving on.
Hmm… I've been spending… well, no, that doesn't go here, never mind.
Well, okay, yeah. Okay, the redirects…
I had… Uh, guys, I have to, uh… step away from…
Save your file. Nevermind.
Jerry, you were gonna ask a question?
Yeah, so is there, uh… How better to describe the redirects?
Um, so when somebody types… in general sense.
Um.
I can't remember the exact example. Uh, but if somebody types… HTTP… Slug.org.
Having the web server redirect them to HTTPS. Slug.org.
Or www or not. The various incarnations.
Okay.
Basically, when somebody comes in. The non-canonical.
Way to gracefully. Move them to the canonical place.
Okay. Yes.
Does that make sense?
With as busy as work has been as of late. And a friend having network problems.
Independent of work network problems. Like, his primary internet connections, plural.
Have been having multiple. Hardware issues per day.
We're waiting on parts to come in to address that.
Back.
Saved.
I was gonna say, if you were gonna be gone longer and needed somebody else to take over the editing.
Anything else in that section? Okay, so it's going to upload real quick.
I don't think so.
I'd like to comment that I… Do not understand the word canonical, never did. I've looked it up 27 times in dictionaries, and it still makes no damn sense to me.
Fair enough. Um… to me, when I say canonical.
I mean, like, the official, authoritative… real name.
Like, your real name, as far as I'm aware, is Stan Reichardt.
You can go by multiple nicknames. But Stan Reichardt is your canonical or authoritative.
Name.
That's quite a… kind of what I understand, but it's… I don't feel comfortable with it.
When it comes to URLs.
Another… Yeah, another… Well, URLs, it gets weirder, but, um… you could also think about canonical.
To be a non… nickname. You can have multiple nicknames.
That reference one official name.
Right.
And URLs, it's… the interaction of, is there a site there.
Does it redirect? Are there TLS certificates involved? Many different aspects.
Good information. Let's move along. Thank you.
Okay.
Um…
Uh, I wanted to comment that. Lee sent me a bunch of files that were related to these base presentation, and I just put them all up there on the presentation archive page.
Whether it was necessary or not. Right. Throw them all up there.
Markdown pages, and… PDFs, uh… Bunch of other things. Graphics? I don't know.
Kind of a… a richness of things. I just wanted to comment on that.
But it didn't all go up at once. There was a couple days delay between things, so… I didn't have an issue with that.
And I kind of wondered, has anybody ever look at this stuff?
I do. Um, I have gone back and watched. Recordings, um… That's actually how I've found… we had a DNS security.
Key, exposed. And he corrected it by rev… I founded watching a recording, went, oh crap!
Tested it, even more cuss words. And fixed it.
Okay.
I've gone back and looked at multiple presentations, watched recordings, and looked at slide decks.
Well, good. Makes it all worthwhile. Thank you.
Yeah.
But we just… hardly anybody ever says that they've… looked at stuff, I've heard… maybe 2 or 3 other people say they have, I don't know.
And I kind of wondered, do some of the guys come in and see what's going on, and then just leave and think, oh, watch it tomorrow, or… next Thursday, or… On the weekend. I just wonder… We don't have any counts of…
Well, we can see…
Any of that stuff. We're… where… where is… if we… went completely to the new system.
Uh, that, uh, YouTube is capable of giving us counts.
We can get some of that information from. Web server logs if we care to do it.
Too much work.
I think that it's just that I want an occasional attaboy on it, or something that.
For the group, you know? This is… That we should all get the sense that.
Somebody's doing some work, and it's been worthwhile, and the fact that we keep trying to do it.
Good on us. Good on us, that's all that really matters.
Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, God.
We are a little fragile, but we're still chugging along. Thank you, Grant, for joining us.
Thank you for having something that holds my interest.
Good. And you've sparked a lot of the stuff that we've done. That I appreciate.
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
What the hell is this word?
What the hell happened there? Oh.
What the hell is this?
Keeping up with monthly updates?
Oh. Duh!
I can't even tell you what it was before that it was unhappy with.
Is it CASE, thinking it…
Yeah, cake, because what happens is, after a period. It thinks it needs to capitalize the next word.
Oh…
Yeah.
Which is annoying as hell, but whatever.
That may be an option to twiddle, but…
Too much work.
Are you guys seeing that? Never mind. God. Yeah.
Little pop-out thing. I just saw…
That was something… I think that was something either you or Wayne S. Gave me a clue to.
What do you mean?
It's… it's something that's in my Quran file, and the way it's set up, it pops up to things that, hey, it's doing this now.
Oh, okay. Um… Growler or something? There are some options that you can send messages.
Yeah.
Okay, I missed that reference.
That's alright. You're not gonna… remembered anyway, so it doesn't matter.
I was pub is gone.
None of us are going to remember it till it pops up and goes away again.
Uh…
I'll be doing, Gary? Stan is finishing a comment there.
I think. I don't see anything done on that comment.
Dan? What are we… what are we doing?
On what?
You know, were you about to write something there, or…? Under website.
No, I just… I just, uh, no, no, it just… I moved down to websitemeetup.com maintenance.
Okay, okay. Does anyone have any comments to make about the website maintenance?
Okay, hearing none. Let us move on. Internet presence on other social media.
Being up sucks. Me up sucks.
I haven't gotten any feedback while… James has been missing ever since he got married.
And, uh, Sean hasn't reported anything back about, uh, anything going on on social media, so… Game, you ever come back?
I don't know, he's just gone completely silent. I mean, I dropped him a couple of notes.
You know, before the last couple meetings, and… Never heard anything back. I remember you say he was going over for, like, 2 weeks for the wedding, because that's how long it took.
The stranded.
Robbie got him as an illegal immigrant.
I had to port him out of India.
Alright, uh, so yeah, I've got no… no feedback from either of them, and.
No one else.
Gary, I just thought of something you could add to the presentation dance card.
Uh-huh.
Lee has had questions about. Email configuration and filtering.
Okay…
So… that could… either be a… round table.
Or another Abbott and Costello routine. Asking questions, me going.
This. Lee asked another question, I go, that.
What do you think, Lee?
No thoughts.
Is that… lady stepping two steps back.
Here it sounded like.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, what were we talking about? Possible topics, yeah.
One of them was password managers and our shootout. And the other was our thing about failed event.
That I proposed you had asked me. Questions on how I'm doing email server.
Filtering. And… Another Abbott and Costello.
Routine, you asking questions, me answering, and you asking another question, and me answering type thing.
Ah, okay, I'm with you now.
So basically, you feed me the questions, I ask them publicly, and then you answer them.
Uh, yeah, or you've asked questions already.
Okay, uh, now it's mailing list.
I don't have anything.
We're off the blacklist thing, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that only lasted a day and a half.
Okay.
Once I kill that email that was being used, it… you know, about a day's worth of recovery time.
I'll keep that question about. What do you know, did you kill?
Okay.
And that's… not unheard of.
I talked about it at the time. I can't remember. It was one from, like, 30 years ago. Oh, wow.
No, it wasn't yours. Oh, okay.
Nah, we already reclaimed the space from your mailbox, Gary.
Um, any comments here on… Further unannounced mailing list?
I don't.
Moving right along…
Um… equipment, cabinets, hard drives, microphones, projectors.
We still got them.
But we got, we got, what we don't, we don't.
Want to sell them?
Everybody's using cell cameras nowadays, nobody wants a physical camera.
Yeah.
I don't know, retro is becoming chic.
Yeah.
You know… They're just continually depreciating.
You know, and uh… Push…
The chance of… getting anything worth… Wow.
The effort. Yeah.
Well, every once in a while, I hook a projector up, and I just throw stuff up on the wall, just for grins.
Yeah.
Um… Mr. Treasurer.
Yeah, sure.
Is the time frame for… hardware to actually write it off as fully deprecated.
Well, we're a non-profit, we don't have to worry about depreciation.
Okay. I just know that was a thing at prior jobs of, like, after 5 or 7 years, it… becomes a $0 item.
Yeah, one of the big benefits of a nonprofit. Slash tax exempt of the fact you don't have to file tax returns unless you have over.
$50,000 of net income. So, there's no reason to keep track of depreciation.
Fair enough.
Uh…
Stand to Yugger, get the database fixed? Were you gonna email me about that at some point?
No.
If I could remember how far along I was, I… yeah, it's working its way up on my to-do list. It's getting toward the top, let's put it that way.
Fair enough.
Yeah, and… and…
Yeah. The attendance database is not a problem.
Yes, the planning schedule one is a problem.
Gotcha.
I thought that was just a form he had.
Nope. It's… kind of complicated.
Okay, you, you, you dump it as a PDF, that's what everybody else sees, so you've got to… You've got to… you've got to actually use that database behind it. Okay.
Right. Yeah. The problem is that the database is one day off.
On everything. I put in a right date.
And it comes out wrong.
Why does that feel…
Oh, and it comes out wrong in the database, and then… all the past dates are one day off.
It's, uh… I may not be describing it quite well, but uh… That's… that's part of the issue of why I haven't really finished sending anything to Grant, because he offered to help me with it.
Fair enough. But, uh, things don't happen.
By looking at it. Got it. One of the things I did… well, I did some complicated stuff, and it.
Perfect.
That solved it, but the way it solved it is weird.
Because I did it at 9 PM, and the PDF. It says it was done, like, 3.30 a.m. The next day.
That sounds like… time zone versus UTC.
Is Zulu from… Right. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's kind of… what I think is something to do with time zone, and what, you know, and… I think if maybe if I was in Australia, I wouldn't have a problem.
Maybe you'd have a different problem in Australia, because that'd be the wrong day.
But, I don't…
Fuck, I don't know.
That's what he's saying, he's getting the wrong day. No, but Stan's saying it's 5 or 6 hours, which is a… TMT problem. Right, right. It was Australia, you'd be a full 24… 26 hours off, okay.
My problem is I don't know how big the Earth is, okay?
Well, there's 24 slices around it. Roughly.
And don't feel bad, stand this. Time and date?
Okay.
Has been a source of bugs at least twice a year.
For as long as I've been doing computers. By big players like IBM.
Okay.
Microsoft, Adobe. Pick your poison. People that should have people on staff that know how to do date and time.
They have problems, so… you experience problems in an open source database?
Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. You're in good company.
Well, I'm… I was thinking maybe it was me. So, something I did wrong, or maybe something they coded wrong somewhere, or… God knows what happened, I don't know.
Yeah.
It could be as simple as looking at the properties for that database.
Anyway…
And tell it to use local versus, uh. Gmt?
Yeah. Or, uh, tell Steve to quit messing with the database.
Okay.
Yeah.
Hmm…
You're off the quiet, Steve.
He's muted, otherwise you hear him snoring. Do that, or he's watching Fox News.
Okay… Handouts, uh… Gosh… I have a severe… Now, that's moving up on my to-do list.
Yeah, we can see Steve, but we can't hear him yet.
So I'll be getting to it, hopefully.
Yeah. Well, you volunteered again? Alright!
That's because I didn't say anything.
Oh, God!
Yes, that, uh, 3 tutorials in a row that Steve volunteered for, right? Yep.
Oh, yeah. Organizational papers.
Yeah, yeah, perfect. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Uh, two of them back-to-back next week, right?
Yeah. Organizational papers. Are the polls gonna shift this week or not?
I keep reading about it on YouTube.
Probably not this week, but it may happen eventually.
Yeah, I gave up watching YouTube years ago because. It's all bullshit.
Right? I pay for, uh, YouTube.
Yep. It's fun bullshit, though.
Premium, or whatever it is. And I get no ads.
And I listened to music for hours a day. Ad-free.
I'd do it ad-free, too. I just point my, uh. Raspberry Pi at NPR.
Fair enough.
Actually, I use, uh…
I use YouTube, I just run, uh… Brave browser, and none of the ads show up.
I've never seen an ad on YouTube.
Oh, they're all over the place.
Not if you're running Firefox with NoScript.
Well, or run, phrase. Brave does that automatically.
But Brave is based on Chrome, which is the… most worthless browser out there, unfortunately. We got… infinite people with infinite bucks behind it that want to glom on all your data.
No, the title… Edge.
Let's do a browser… let's do a browser shoot-up. Chew it out.
Brave? Yeah. I… Yeah.
Dave doesn't do that. They took that…
Brandon did that a couple years ago, didn't he? Yeah.
Yeah, he concluded that Brave was the best one to use.
Sponsorships.
Depends on…
I mean, no sane person's gonna use Edge.
No sane person is going to use Chrome.
Um, I have a co-worker that… is using Edge.
It was doing some things he wanted that Chrome. Stopped doing. Chrome removed uBlock Origin.
Recently. And… I have things, and I… cold turkey switched from chrome.
With UBO to Firefox, with UBO. At, like, 10.15 Monday morning.
Three weeks ago, and I haven't looked back. I've been using Firefox with UBO for personal stuff, but I switched work.
Cold turkey.
Yeah.
Ubo. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah.
U-block Origin. Chrome's problem, to me.
Hub block origin.
Biggest problem is Google.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Of course, I find out the hard way. You know, 3 months ago, Chrome did a major upgrade from 138 to 139.
But to have an update… updated the freakin' Chromium on Google version yet?
Which killed Mitwarten. I can't run a bit more than in Chromium now.
Until they come out with the 139.
Okay. I don't know how he got into browsers, but uh… Sponsorships?
Let's see… I was sick. I did mention the fact that Ken Johnson.
Needed. We reconcile…
I mentioned that earlier in the meeting here. Ken's been covering the meetup.
Yeah.
Oh, Stan, there's no K on Omnitech. Line… two lines up.
Oh, sorry about that.
That's okay.
I know that, it's just that I didn't… my brain didn't see it, okay?
And I'll please do, VG. There you go.
Um, put a K back on the end of it. For a minute.
Nope.
And go… now do a Z capital G. And I think that will remove… the… Okay, uh, take it off. That's a temporary… spell check, there's a way to remove it.
You've inspired me to look in the help file, I might find it.
If it fought Omnitech with. Kay was…
Um… colon help space spell.
If I don't forget.
Not now. Yeah, not now.
Fair enough. I totally appreciate that.
I'm just gonna say no change on the sponsorship. Burroughs, Mr. Gary.
I've done nothing.
You know, we found a building last month. Huh? Didn't we find a building on the map?
Uh, I don't remember that. I mean, I knew where the building was, but… I remember looking hard.
Stand there for you.
Whatever. Let me rephrase that. I remember where the building… the building is still there.
As far as I know, though, the offices. Left somewhere late COVID, like, maybe in the last 2 or 3 years.
No, I was talking about one of the founding. Oh, well, yeah, okay, where those were originally, okay.
Oh, that's…
Yeah. Vacant field, if I remember right.
Sandy, while they're talking, do you want to remove. The wrong spelled Omnitech.
From the dictionary? I looked up how to do it.
Okay?
Zw.
Um…
Capital W?
Uh, lowercase, lowercase z Zulu, locate… well, lowercase w for wrong.
Unless it thinks… Oh, hey, there it knows it's wrong.
Okay. There you go.
And then delete the end of it. Lee, you sit with BGP for Omnitech?
I am starting to work on this week.
Okay? Wins the deadline?
Uh, end of the month.
How comfortable are you?
By now, by the end of the week.
You got ASN, you have your IP addresses. Now it's going through the motions.
Well, I gotta… I gotta build a new router with the, uh… tool in it.
Okay, I…
And I start… I started playing with it last week. I didn't make too much progress because I needed to download a bunch of stuff.
And I didn't have any simple way to do it the way it was configured.
Um… I halfway remember this conversation, and I missed the first sentence there. What are we talking about?
No, we're… we're, uh, AT&T, at the end of May, said.
Last…
We will no longer advertise routes for IPs we do not own.
Since they do not own our IPs. It means that sometime in September, they're going to start bitching about it and stop advertising the route.
So, I need to originate it.
Like… what kind… what… what… cost… what constitutes advertising the IP?
The last line on the screen.
Advertising the route to the IPs.
I don't… I don't… Ugh, I mean, you can't get there from here unless you do this, all this paperwork.
Right. If it takes an ASN. Over the last 30 years.
The upstream provider that we have is, okay, we'll drop it in our ASN and advertise it.
Yeah.
Well, apparently the rules have changed, and AT&T is auditing all their stuff, and said, well, we don't own those IPs, therefore.
We're going to stop originating the route. So, uh, I went ahead and got an ASN, I know what it is, I've got the data.
Yeah.
I've got the firewall set up. As a separate box right now.
And as soon as I figure out how to. Online yet.
Without affecting the current system. I think… I think I can do it just, uh… need to run a separate cable for it so he's on the public side.
Then I can download and configure it directly, as well as upgrade it, since this is… This version is about 6 or 6 or 7 months old.
I have a real simple hack for you. Um, in a basic SOHO NATing router.
Okay.
And put… what your… the router you're working on?
Thinks is the default… its default gateway. On the inside of the SOHO router.
And put your SOHO router on your internal office network. And just nap through it.
Through your office to get to the… what you need to download.
It's just a scaffolding to make it easier to work with things.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's a possibility. I was thinking about things like that, but… I think it's simpler just to run… all I gotta do is run a cable 50 feet.
Okay.
Because I've got…
Yeah, because I've got a spare port. On our DMARC.
Although I could do it… I think I'm just gonna do it on, uh… on the office side.
Because I know I've got spare porch there.
Okay. Feel free to hit me up if you want to bounce any ideas off me, or… I can show up and shoulder surf and point fingers and laugh at you like Cartman.
I will probably take you up on that, my friend, appreciate it.
But right now, I've got a couple other fires to put out.
No problem. Yep. Or you could laugh at me like Cartman, if that's…
Fair enough. Please tell me you're not burning the shed you just built.
No, but I can't get out there because I got stitches in my foot, and I can't put any shoes on.
Oh, well, you don't wear shoes. That why you have stickers in your foot?
Happened to your foot?
No, I had a bone spur removed. Nice Friday.
It's not even bothering me for 25 years, so… since everything's free nowadays, I hit my, uh… max from out of pocket on Medicare.
No shit. I'm renewing all my scripts early.
Oh, and you're trying to milk everything you can.
Nope.
Even the ones I have to pay for. Because they're free now.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, uh, that covers the Omnitech change. The Unix time counter thing.
I wanted to point out, I think we've got that date in the… as an entry in the.
Planning report.
And exactly… Grant, you had suggested we do something to… kind of advertise that, or…?
Do a presentation?
Uh, you know what I think would be hilarious is if we do a… Unix Epoch countdown slide.
As part of our… introduction.
Oh.
Oh, okay, yeah. Today, we have 8,006 days to go or something, right? Something like that?
And just… Do what?
I'll probably put it on the main webpage. Put it on the main webpage.
No, I couldn't find him.
That's a lot of work. I think… well, I think… I think I'd rather stick it in that, that, uh… PDF I show at each of the meetings, and the announce page.
Kind of like a countdown to the… Microsoft's end-of-life kind of thing.
Yeah, except you're probably displaying that on your local machine, right?
You can't… you don't have a server behind it running JavaScript.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you…
Well, I guess you… I guess you could run it locally, never mind.
That's true.
Yeah, I bet there is some, uh, scripting capability. Just real… you know, crude.
Back of the terminal buffer. Math, it's around 45… 150 days from now.
Folks.
Not that I'm aware of.
Three recurring… Requirements!
Oh, this is not… structured properly.
Thank you. Can you kill your spell checker? Those highlights just don't come across too well.
I need to add this.
We're out here.
Okay, alright, just…
This is so hard, right?
God bless America.
For viewing this, Sid. From back in June, the Missouri Annual Report on the Corporate Legal Status, that happened, right?
If I remember correctly, this was the off year. Oh, I'm sorry, yes, it's due in 2026, you're right. Never mind.
Okay, uh, automatic… Automate it, let's encrypt free SSL certs for websites on Box. That happened?
Uh, it's automatic.
I think part of the question was, was the automatic still working after the changes I made earlier in the year? And I'm gonna double check.
Date Form 1982… I wonder how else to do?
You search… was renewed Friday the 20th of June 2025, so yes, it has been automatically renewing.
And the corporation filing was done in June 24, so it's not done.
Not record… not… the next one's June 26th.
Uh, okay.
Um, I just remembered something. I don't know if we should talk about it or not.
One of the Buddy DNS. Servers was having problems.
Uh, recently.
Uh, they do tend to bounce a little bit. I've… I've seen that happen before.
Okay.
You know, when you want to pick at least 3 or 4, and if you… if you pick the wrong ones.
They'll go… they'll go offline once in a while.
Okay. You're aware of it, so, cool.
Yeah, because I, you know, I use Buddy also.
I didn't understand that. What you just said.
I use BuddyDNS also. Yeah, before that, said a couple days.
Oh. Uh, when… when… when you sign up with BuddyDNS, it's like… 3 bucks a month or something like that.
And you get to use their DNS servers. Scattered all over the world. Okay.
And you got, like, two dozen to pick from. Okay. Every once in a while, one of them will go down for maintenance.
In which case, you might get a failure. But since you're listing 3 or 4 of them.
If one fails, it'll fail over. Yeah. Okay, okay.
If it's a heart failure. No, they usually let you know.
In fact, I watch ours. And every once in a while, I'll see one pop up for a day and go away.
Okay, uh… Let's see… slew.org account do?
What's your count? It just doesn't count due. Automated.
Oh, there's… July 2025.
Where are you looking? Where are you looking?
It says done in June. Okay.
Lee and I are not sure what account we're talking about.
I would assume that's website. Um, currently, Slug.org currently expires.
July 10th? 2026.
That's probably one of the dotsters that are, uh… Renew automatically?
Because we had 3 help come through less… less… 4 lakhl.
Yeah, at one time, I had asked Gary to make a little.
Spreadsheet, or something, saying where the hell all these accounts were, and who, you know.
How much they were, and when they were due. And… I don't know.
No, they're all a Dodster, and they renew automatically. And if you watch the Treasurer's Report, I think we had 3 of them hit.
Now, okay.
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.
Month before… in May, if I remember correctly. And that would have been the main three.
Uh, I think… I think, Stan, you do New Linux and another one, right?
Okay.
Black, okay. I think you should mention that, that's what's coming up in August, yeah.
Yeah, the slack.
Uh, on your to-do list, would you do me a favor?
Yeah.
Put your creds… on Bach in slash home slash slew slash wherever you want to put it.
Just so, in case you get hissed by a bus, we can… figure out how to keep them going.
Say that again? Grid…
Credentials? You know, I don't know what registrar I use.
It means you're… the registrars for new Linux and Slack. We don't know where they're registered, so if you… of a sudden effect.
Oh, okay. I'm sorry, guys, I'm a little distracted here, and… And that's why I didn't understand what we were talking about.
Put it where?
Uh, there's a directory on Bach called Slug under Home. And… I don't remember what it looks like.
Okay, I know, I know what you mean, I'll find it.
But… Yeah.
Thank you.
You know, I try to keep anything that is organization-specific in there, so that if I get hit by a bus, you guys know where to find it.
Yeah.
Don't fat, fat, fat. Grants are just about buying two years at once, then additional each year, so that when you're new, you have the year worth left out in a few days.
We haven't really done that yet. Okay, we should reconsider that, Grant.
Okay, September 25… Nothing. Over… nothing.
November. Searching for… The Christmas parties, okay, so we've got things pretty well taken care of for a couple months.
Except for presentations.
Except for presentations, yes, which is the main thing.
You know, it might not be too soon. If people were… enjoyed the in-person meeting. I know Stan didn't want to go to another one and get sick.
But if there was to be something planned. Um, you know, either… early to mid-October, avoid Thanksgiving, avoid Christmas holidays, or, um.
January, mid January. If there was interest.
Might be worth starting to talk about. Slow plan for something like that?
Good point. Uh, so let's jump. I'll jump back up to new business.
Wait a minute here… Uh, new business.
Do what?
Uh, perhaps plan for a, uh. Physical or joint.
Pizza party! Type thing.
Either physical or hybrid meeting.
In December's time frame.
Or when? December?
I'd do either… October or January, middle of the month?
Avoid conflicts for other people type thing. You know, Halloween…
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you want to start talking about it and planning in October, November? For when?
Uh… start talking about it relatively soon. Perspective, date.
For it, the actual event would either be mid-October or mid-January.
Uh… promote.
Promoting or planning, right? And planning?
How's that sentence?
Yeah.
Okay, good. Ooh! Hmm.
Yeah.
Okay. Another… another entry under there. Uh… uh… Gary has given.
Matthew Hargrove. Our group. Our grave.
At Red Hat. The phone number… of Nick and Elena's.
Matthew gave it to one of the guys in the marketing department.
Who has… said that he didn't get a call back, and he may have.
Misplace the number. So… they haven't got anything set up yet, but… We're working at getting them working on it again.
What the hell?
The plan… the… the… the guys at Red Hat had been talking about doing a in-person, face-to-face.
Red Hat, easy group meeting. In August, and all we were doing was trying to be.
Uh, cooperative partner for them and say, here. This is where we've met physically.
We know it works in that place. So, we'll recommend Nick and Elena's… up to you all to… get your date straightened out, what you want to do.
But the marketing department does intend to buy beer and pizza.
Fuck.
Spell tricker. Do you get that pop-up with Z equals?
What was that? Oh…
Stan?
Yes.
What's the highlighting?
It's spelled wrong, so you do a Z… equal, and it goes look for stuff.
Oh!
Okay?
Oh, I just never saw that.
It's one of VIM's 27,000 features.
You feel like you're off by an order of magnitude. You're low.
Year group? I missed it. Ear.
That's true.
Whatever.
Oh, ear groove! Uh, you probably should say Matthew Hargrove of… Red Hat, or of RH, just so… Sorry?
I know, I'm getting there, god damn it!
I think… I think Stan's getting tired and cranky.
Shit.
Has anybody done anything useful lately? Above and beyond.
The normal outstanding work that everybody does here.
Everybody does a lot, I feel. Did…
Yeah. Wake up, Gary.
It's your… it's your Q.
I… I… Yeah, I know, it's my cue, and I, uh… Obviously, all of you have been.
Keeping things alive and going, so… It's amazing sometimes how this organization continues to run.
Uh, so thank you all.
And watch out for that truck on the corner.
Yes, yes.
Um, we are accelerating at doing the boring things that keep the lights on.
Yes. That's a good, good phraseology for it.
May your life be boring and predictable.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. As Phil says, he's a leader in trailing edge technology.
Is unique to Trailing Edge Technology? I don't think so.
I don't think so. I mean, as much as people joke about it, let's face it.
The most common computing device in the world is… Cell phones. What do cell phones run?
Unix. Android.
Or variation thereof.
Android is a version of Unix. Ios is a version of the SD Unix.
I… dispute that. 30, 40, 30 years ago.
It's a Frankenstein version. Ed says there's a Frankenstein.
Everything, I guarantee everything's been replaced. Yeah, with applica.
Oh, that's… by the way, that's another person I, uh… haven't gotten a reply back from, but Greg Ray at, uh.
Who was the head of the Apple Professionals. I was trying to get him to do a presentation on, uh, DSD.
The status of BSD within macOS. But he hasn't gotten back to me on it yet, so…
You ready? All right. Anything else?
Um.
Do we want to do blue sky? Private, not recorded.
Uh, anybody have a… need for that?
No, and I've recently learned some things that make me want to avoid blue sky.
Oh, okay. You want to tell us about that, or you'd rather not have that recorded?
All it had to do with… Apparently, Blue Sky wants… pictures of government documents.
To authenticate.
We're not actually using anything called Blue Sky, that's just a term for… They… daydreaming.
Oh! Okay.
You know, uh, you know, oddball ideas, just throw out and see if they stick on the wall.
You know, or if they inspire somebody 6 months from now, and they say, oh, somebody said something about doing this.
Three years ago, or two, three weeks ago, and I… Now that you mention it, that's a good idea.
That's what… that's what we mean by blue sky. And sometimes it's, it's, uh… you know, we don't want it as part of the recording.
You could, you know.
Gotcha. Um, not so much… blue sky in any meaning of the phrase.
But the open group who owns Unix, as in the registered trademark.
Currently lists Apple. For macOS.
Yeah.
Both Apple Silicon and Intel. As official.
Unixes have the legal right. To the capital naming eunuchs.
Registered trademark. As does IBM… Hewlett-Packard and Sco Group.
Interesting.
I'm sorry, where was this being said?
Uh, the open group, which is whom. Owns the Unix… Trademark.
Trademark. Trademark.
I'm putting a link in the chat for this meeting.
So, iOS is not… a registered Unix.
Macos is.
Basically, what Lee said is right. It's been… It may have been twisted enough at this point that it no longer.
Well, I don't think they used to be anything for… related to the BSG kernel for iOS, right?
It was back when he started iOS, they didn't have a standard.
Gpu in there, they were using the mobile stuff.
Yeah, I don't know about etymology or lineage. That their stacks came from, but I'm just speaking to who can legally claim.
They tell you what, Stan? Why don't you copy what Grant just put in.
Yeah.
And, uh, the link? Link. Yeah, copy that link over and put it under the.
I guess under the blue sky recording comment.
Give me a second.
Lee, speaking about Buddy DNS servers being down, there's one down currently.
None that I use.
Uh, one that Slug uses. I believe.
What we got here?
I move we adjourn.
Yes, that's it. Alrighty. All in favor signify the eager to sign.
I… bookend.
Bookend. Okay, bookend is, uh, this has been the St. Louis.
Linux… Unix user group. Steering committee meeting for.
Uh, the month of August, uh, this is Monday, August the 4th.
Thank you all