Budget

• September, 2004 MHF grant: $21,500
  • Expenditure on room remodelling: ~$5,000 (need to check records)
  • Expenditure on hard disks: ~$300 each x 12 = $3,600 (will need to double-check figure)
• Balance as of 2007-06-10: $11,982.15
  • charon: -$1,463.10
  • hermes: -$3,276.48
• Remaining: $7,242.57
  • hephaestus: -$1,122.25
  • poseidon: -$1,122.25
• Remaining: $4,998.08
  • 9xMuses/Naiads (~$467 per system) - see Hardware Purchase): -$4203
  • 3xNVIDIA 8600 cards ($102.44 each): -$307
    • RMAed, total loss of money is $49.50 plus shipping cost, est. $60
  • 4xlow profile NVIDIA 8400 cards ($67.95 each): -$271.78
  • 10x1gb Memory ($36.59 each pair): -$365.89
• Remaining: ~$103

I know that we're awash in CRT's, but do we want to go with LCD's at some point? My guess says no, since we've got ample table space.

• I find CRTs very uncomfortable to look at for more than a few minutes at a time, maybe we could get some for the Naiads? If the goal is to encourage working in the lab this would make a big difference to me. Alexr@ugcs.caltech.edu

We'll want to put in another MHF proposal in winter after our funds are exhausted or secure other sources of funding. We also need to find out whether we sent in an impact statement, or whether the ball was dropped and we need to turn something in. I'd also like to include paying sysadmins a small salary in whatever future budget we arrange, as I know that UGCS is impacting my income stream right now and that I'm (very willingly) giving it hours that I'd otherwise be billing elsewhere.

I think that getting equipment donations is substantially easier than getting financial donations, although equipment donations pose many logistical issues such as shipping for heavy rackmounts, etc. - we'll need both, but donated equipment can always allow us to forgo buying expensive new hardware.

Offering any kind of improved service (i.e. increased quotas) for donors is very iffy in terms of legal issues for Caltech, but I'm sure that we can think of ways to encourage contribution that won't get us in trouble.

We need to come up with some better method of filtering the job postings that people tend to send us - I know for a fact that the Career Center charges companies fees in order for their company to be promoted to students, so there is definite precedent there for us to charge a nominal fee to accept listings and/or display them more prominently.

• When you log in, a message is chosen. We could allow companies who pay more more average views. Say we display adds randomly. It upps the odds of your add being displayed if you donate/donate more. If we mapped this, eg logistically to prevent anyone from dominating, this could be a good system. If we used non-random ordering as well, this would also be applicable. I kind of want free ads possible, with better posting giving you a better shot, but maybe we should have a small (~$5 or so) entrance fee. I don't want to zing students who are trying to start a business, etc, but it would be nice to grab a few bucks from larger/more established companies, and if we make it clear that the money's going to a good cause many of the ones who'd want to advertise with us would probably be willing to make small donations. The downside is this may require sysadmins to screen ads to see if a fee is required, etc (assuming we say certain kinds are free and others aren't). I'd be happy to code such a system, once we decide on specifics. Alexr@ugcs.caltech.edu