[conspire] How does changing CABAL to 1-9 pm sound?

[Rick Moen]

Currently and traditionally, CABAL has started at 4 pm and ended at
midnight.  Like pretty much any other hours we could pick, this has
advantages and disadvantages.  Parts of the year, we're indoors because
there's risk or occurrence of rain, and/or it's too damned cold on the
patio.  Other parts, it's great out there -- if mosquitos don't ruin the
party.  

Starting at teatime (4 pm) has always seemed civilised, and people
staying to midnight aren't a problem to _me_ because we're there anyway
and don't have a long drive home.  

However, lately SVLUG has needed to find new space for its installfests,
which for historical and site-requirements reasons were (most recently)
11am to 4pm.  I've offered to solve their problem ("they" being mostly
"us", anyway) by letting the SVLUG event occur on a CABAL day, the
installfest being basically what we've been doing twice a month since
January 1998, anyway.

Anyhow, how does 1pm to 9pm sound for new CABAL hours?  Comments
welcomed.  (It's very doubtful that we'd kick anyone out at 9pm, mind.)


----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 17:35:37 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Andrew Fife <afife at untangle.com>
Cc: volunteers at lists.svlug.org
Subject: Re: [volunteers] [offlist] Installfests

Quoting Andrew Fife (afife at untangle.com):

> Rick & Ed: 
> 
> This is offlist but not private from my perspective.  

Hearing no objection, Cc'ing Volunteers.

> Wanted to have a frank dialogue with you both about the sustainability of
> installfests at the Moen household.  It makes me uncomfortable to
> indefinitely hold installfests at Rick's place because I feel that its
> taking advantage of a situation.  Rick, do you have a deadline in mind of
> how long you are willing to host the installfests?

Well, the nice thing about it being on CABAL days is that it's really no
more household burden than what occurs already.  (Also, a lot of the
people are already there, because they're in both groups.)  Because I'm
not suffering a wearing out of CABAL's welcome, by the same token, SVLUG
should not be substantially more burdensome.

I'd actually also been meaning to have a conversation with CABAL people 
about whether they might be fine with moving their hours to earlier in
the day -- for reasons completely unrelated to SVLUG.  That is, I've
been worried about the possibility of this summer & autumn being a
particularly nasty mosquito season.   Adjusting CABAL's hours so that
it's officially over some time not long after dusk would sidestep that
possible hazard.  

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/ says:

  The following information is provided for Menlo Park, San Mateo County,
  California (longitude W122.2, latitude N37.5):

        1 May 2008            Pacific Daylight Time          
        Begin civil twilight       5:45 a.m.                 
        Sunrise                    6:13 a.m.                 
        Sun transit                1:06 p.m.                 
        Sunset                     7:59 p.m.                 
        End civil twilight         8:27 p.m.     

Same data six months away:

        1 November 2008       Pacific Daylight Time          
        Begin civil twilight       7:07 a.m.                 
        Sunrise                    7:34 a.m.                 
        Sun transit               12:52 p.m.                 
        Sunset                     6:10 p.m.                 
        End civil twilight         6:37 p.m.        

So, hours of 1-9 pm, for example, would work pretty well -- and let the 
group(s) reliably use the outdoors areas most of the year without either
getting frozen or mosquito-bitten.  What I've _liked_ about CABAL's 4 pm
to midnight schedule has been the fact that it doesn't eat up my entire
Saturday's go-out-and-do-things hours:  I can go off and do errands, and
as long as I am back by 4 or 4:30, I can be there to help and look after
things.

By contrast, 11 am to 4 pm really sucks for that.  

I'll ask for feedback from CABAL's mailing list about 1-9 pm, as a sort 
of compromise that might work well for everyone.  (Note that CABAL's 
event duration has always been eight hours.)  Suit you guys?


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----- End forwarded message -----