Technology Great When it Works

Today was the SFSFC Board Meeting. Three of the eleven directors (Cheryl, Wolfgang Coe, and me) couldn't be there and were participating via Skype. This went very badly for the first hour of the meeting, with those of us online only hearing about one word in three. At the first break, those in the meeting room in Fremont tried a different hardware and internet connectivity arrangement and all was well for the rest of the meeting.

Somehow, I managed to act as Secretary for the meeting despite not being present in person. Of course, it helps that I can always start with the document of the previous meeting as a framework and that many of the bits of routine business are boilerplate.

I don't blame Skype for the problem here, aside from the mysterious way in which some microphone/speaker/computer combinations just won't work with it. It's certainly the only practical way we could hold conference calls nowadays.

List Bankruptcy

After scanning the first twenty or so messages of the over 300 backlogged set on The List That Shall Not Be Named, and at the advice of others, I declared bankruptcy and deleted the rest without reading. And I'm not reading the further follow-ons that closely, either, unless they manage to raise something interesting in the first few lines.