[Babase] conference call summary 21 July 2004

Stephanie Combes babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Wed, 21 Jul 2004 16:08:10 -0400


My dear ever wandering Babase team -

   Today, we experienced a holiday miracle.  The clouds cleared, the sun 
shone, and the conference gods smiled upon us.  That's right folks, it 
brings a tear to my eye to say it, the successful conferencing of all 
parties on one try was truly a miracle. Hallelujah and Amen. (Oh and 
obviously the holiday involved is the marking of the passage of time for 
your quickly aging secretary)

   Karl update (from the Art Museum!): The speed-ups are close.  The rough 
translation (no cringing, Karl) of our slowness problem is that the 
database needs to generate some statistics every now & then.  The program 
became less efficient as more stats needed to be loaded and checked (and I 
think were sometimes not checked).  I don't know about you, but for me this 
conjures up images of a little man with an abacus counting database pieces 
as they roll by  - kind of like counting sheep, but different.  But I 
suppose that's just me.
  In addition, the database itself may  need some adjustments for how 
things are accessed, but this will be dealt with after we see how Karl's 
current version works.
   Karl is hoping to work on babase-ness on Thursday, but most other days 
this week are looking pretty grim.  Karl will be moonlighting at the museum 
through Tuesday of next week. Karl will email Steph as soon as he has 
uploaded the speed-ups into the program.

(Aside: Typing is REALLY hard today after eating 2 chocolate cupcakes and 
an enormous piece of chocolate cake.  Can we say "sugar high"????? And 
should I really be documenting my chocolate addiction for all of babase 
posterity??hhmmm...)

  Steph (from Durham!) wanted to double check that the conversion program 
grabbed the latest and greatest version of babase from Princeton.  Yes, yes 
it does.  The "make get" command (see Karl's conversion running info email) 
FTP's Princeton and downloads the latest version to work with.  This makes 
me, the error police, happy; I won't have to look at already corrected 
mistakes due to using an old version.

  Steph will also use her current sugar high to bounce upstairs and bug 
Hunter to create our different babase groups (readers and editors).

   After these important matters were out of the way, we spent much time 
discussing the various ways in which our special email systems are foiling 
our communication attempts.  We have decided that Karl's email needs to be 
added as an acceptable address to the babsat account.  We also need to add 
the babsat account as an ok address to the babase mailing list.  Daphne 
will look into getting someone at Princeton to add the babsat address to 
avoid having the babsat address reject the sign-up confirmation email from 
the exclusive babase email that currently rejects babsat email.  HA! think 
about that sentence for awhile! Didn't think we were working on mind 
bending puzzles today, did ya?

  The final update is that Steph and Daphne (covering the Princeton beat) 
are currently working on a week to week schedule for Princeton computer 
time.  We will see how this goes, and may implement a more formal, 
long-term schedule if necessary.

  And finally, Jeanne (from the hills of West Virginia) can sort of check 
email sometimes while away this week, but will be back in official babase 
territory next week. At which point, we will try to recreate today's 
miracle and conference fewer phone numbers.  Will it work?  What will 
happen to our babase workers as they continue their march towards an 
omnipresent babase?  Tune in next week to find out!!

Yours in chocolate happiness,
steph