[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