January meeting - new year, new ideas. See the event notification for location information. The topic is: ideas on documentation, procedures, and standards. Acronym soup for the Sysadmin Soul: ITIL COBIT SAS70 S-OX

This is an excerpt from a discussion on enforcing policy and the policy makers not wanting to be included in their own policy. It seemed appropriate to quote, because we sometimes lose sight of the enabled position we hold when we see the disconnect between policy and practice. We do have the ability to adjust attitudes and to convince the user community - which includes upper management, that following a sensible policy or practice is actually better for all concerned.

We are having a change of venue for this meeting. We are making it a social event, and as such will be having it at the Cheshire Cat in/near Carp. I can provide rides for a few people, as I’m going past March Rd. on my way out there. Feel free to ask. Keep reading for more information. The Cheshire Cat is located at: 2193 Richardson Side Rd Carp phone: 613-831-2183

We had a few links mentioned at the meeting and I thought I’d post them here before I forgot about them: http://www.i18nguy.com/humor/privacy.html - a sample privacy statement http://www.lopsa.org - the new League Of Professional System Administrators http://www.geeklog.net - We had a discussion on translating /looking up substitutions for internationalisation. http://www.linuxbutler.ca/rsdidw.html - When request meets implementation http://www.monkeybagel.com - Some sysadmin humour (dark humour in some cases)

We have another meeting Thursday, Nov 17, 2005 at Altera. See the calendar for address information, or check the meeting location link at the top. We may even have a proposal for a new format to add some useful substance to these meetings - it’s a thought. In addition, I do not know how many people are members of Usenix and SAGE, but there have been some rather interesting developments in the past week.