status: VOTE

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.