From announce at lists.nycbug.org  Sun Mar  2 17:57:09 2008
From: announce at lists.nycbug.org (NYC*BUG Announcements)
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:57:09 -0500
Subject: [announce] Wednesday NYCBUG
Message-ID: <47CB30C5.6090107@ceetonetechnology.com>

March 05, 2008, Wednesday

Jeffrey Mau on User Interfaces and How People Think

6:30pm, Suspenders Restaurant
http://www.suspendersbar.com/location.php

"User Interfaces and How People Think" will introduce concepts of 
designing software for different users by observing how they think about 
and do what they do. While much of design today focuses on the front-end 
of computer systems, there is opportunity to innovate in every area 
where a human interacts with software.

Bio

Jeffery Mau is a user experience designer with the leading business and 
technology consulting firm Sapient. He has helped clients create great 
customer experiences in the financial services, education, entertainment 
and telecommunications industries. With a passion for connecting people 
with technology, Jeff specializes in Information Architecture and 
Business Strategy. Jeff holds a Masters in Design from the IIT Institute 
of Design in Chicago, Illinois.


From announce at lists.nycbug.org  Wed Mar  5 10:02:15 2008
From: announce at lists.nycbug.org (NYC*BUG Announcements)
Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:02:15 -0500
Subject: [announce] NYCBUG Tonight
Message-ID: <47CEB5F7.2090309@ceetonetechnology.com>

March 05, 2008, Wednesday

Jeffrey Mau on User Interfaces and How People Think

6:30pm, Suspenders Restaurant
http://www.suspendersbar.com/location.php

"User Interfaces and How People Think" will introduce concepts of 
designing software for different users by observing how they think about 
and do what they do. While much of design today focuses on the front-end 
of computer systems, there is opportunity to innovate in every area 
where a human interacts with software.

Bio

Jeffery Mau is a user experience designer with the leading business and 
technology consulting firm Sapient. He has helped clients create great 
customer experiences in the financial services, education, entertainment 
and telecommunications industries. With a passion for connecting people 
with technology, Jeff specializes in Information Architecture and 
Business Strategy. Jeff holds a Masters in Design from the IIT Institute 
of Design in Chicago, Illinois.


From announce at lists.nycbug.org  Sat Mar 15 11:24:19 2008
From: announce at lists.nycbug.org (NYC*BUG Announcements)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:24:19 -0400
Subject: [announce] Special NYCBUG meeting Thursday, March 20th
Message-ID: <20080315152419.GB36315@shoeshine.sddi.net>

March 20, 2008
Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD

6:30pm, Suspenders Restaurant
http://www.suspendersbar.com/location.php

Special NYC*BUG meeting with FreeBSD developer Brooks Davis

Please note that this meeting is not on our normal first Wednesday of the month, and that we will not be adjusting our other meetings

Since late 2000 we have developed and maintained a general purpose technical and scientific computing cluster running the FreeBSD operating system. In that time we have grown from a cluster of 8 dual Intel Pentium III systems to our current mix of 64 dual, quad-core Intel Xeon and 289 dual AMD Opteron systems.

In this talk we reflect on the system architecture as documented in our BSDCon 2003 paper "Building a High-performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD" and our changes since that time. After a brief overview of the current cluster we revisit the architectural decisions in that paper and reflect on their long term success. We then discuss lessons learned in the process. Finally, we conclude with thoughts on future cluster expansion and designs.

Bio

Brooks Davis is an Engineering Specialist in the High Performance Computing Section of the Computer Systems Research Department at The Aerospace Corporation. He has been a FreeBSD user since 1994, a FreeBSD committer since 2001, and a core team member since 2006. He earned a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College in 1998.

His computing interests include high performance computing, networking, security, mobility, and, of course, finding ways to use FreeBSD in all these areas. When not computing, he enjoys reading, cooking, brewing and pounding on red-hot iron in his garage blacksmith shop.

Brooks' BSDCon 2003 paper is available at http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/fbsdcluster/


From announce at lists.nycbug.org  Thu Mar 20 08:16:40 2008
From: announce at lists.nycbug.org (NYC*BUG Announcements)
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:16:40 -0400
Subject: [announce] NYCBUG Tonight: Brooks Davis
Message-ID: <47E255A8.9040806@ceetonetechnology.com>

March 20, 2008
Brooks Davis: Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD

6:30pm, Suspenders Restaurant
http://www.suspendersbar.com/location.php

Special NYC*BUG meeting with FreeBSD developer Brooks Davis
Please note that this meeting is not on our normal first Wednesday of 
the month, and that we will not be adjusting our other meetings

Since late 2000 we have developed and maintained a general purpose 
technical and scientific computing cluster running the FreeBSD operating 
system. In that time we have grown from a cluster of 8 dual Intel 
Pentium III systems to our current mix of 64 dual, quad-core Intel Xeon 
and 289 dual AMD Opteron systems.

In this talk we reflect on the system architecture as documented in our 
BSDCon 2003 paper "Building a High-performance Computing Cluster Using 
FreeBSD" available at 
http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/fbsdcluster/ and our 
changes since that time. After a brief overview of the current cluster 
we revisit the architectural decisions in that paper and reflect on 
their long term success. We then discuss lessons learned in the process. 
Finally, we conclude with thoughts on future cluster expansion and designs.

Bio

Brooks Davis is an Engineering Specialist in the High Performance 
Computing Section of the Computer Systems Research Department at The 
Aerospace Corporation. He has been a FreeBSD user since 1994, a FreeBSD 
committer since 2001, and a core team member since 2006. He earned a 
Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College in 1998.

His computing interests include high performance computing, networking, 
security, mobility, and, of course, finding ways to use FreeBSD in all 
these areas. When not computing, he enjoys reading, cooking, brewing and 
pounding on red-hot iron in his garage blacksmith shop.


From announce at lists.nycbug.org  Mon Mar 31 09:21:16 2008
From: announce at lists.nycbug.org (NYC*BUG Announcements)
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:21:16 -0400
Subject: [announce] NYCBUG Wednesday April 2 on ZFS
Message-ID: <47F0E54C.1050707@ceetonetechnology.com>

Wednesday April 02, 2008

ZFS on FreeBSD

6:30pm, Suspenders Restaurant
http://www.suspendersbar.com/location.php

Ike & Yarema will tag-team this meeting.

ZFS ? the breakthrough file system in FreeBSD 7 (ported from Sun's 
Solaris 10 Operating System) delivers virtually unlimited capacity, 
provable data integrity, and near-zero administration. However FreeBSD`s 
sysinstall(8) does not yet support installing the system onto anything 
more exotic than a commonly used UFS partition scheme. Furthermore, 
FreeBSD`s boot loader(8) cannot yet load the kernel and modules from ZFS.

This meeting will cover installing FreeBSD 7.0 on ZFS as the root 
filesystem with a boot partition on a GEOM gmirror. Attendees are 
encouraged to read, download and try the zfsboot scripts at 
http://yds.CoolRat.org/zfsboot.shtml The rational behind the zfsboot 
script will be demystified and an install will be demonstrated. Anyone 
who brings a (minimum 1 Gig) USB thumb drive can go home with a bootable 
"root on ZFS" installer. Anyone who brings a hard drive can go home with 
FreeBSD installed on a ZFS root.

Bios

Yarema has been a FreeBSD administrator for more than a decade. A 
contributor to the FreeBSD ports collection. Likes to mouth off about 
his latest exploits with the OS only to be rewarded by getting 
"volunteered" to do a lecture at an upcoming NYC*BUG meeting.

Ike has been orbiting NYCBUG since the beginning. Not only does he not 
think within the box, he doesn't even know there *is* a box. He used to 
give talks on jail(8) in New York, but since he`s been banned from it, 
he is forced to do them for other unsuspecting BSD users at conferences 
like AsiaBSDCon and EuroBSDCon.