[PLUG] Meetings at CIGNA all set to go

[Beldon Dominello <beldon@speakeasy.org>]

Okay, here's the skinny on the space at CIGNA:

The room:

The room is nearly three times our current space, with chairs set out in
front of long tables facing the front.  The primary purpose of this room at
CIGNA is to hold classes in, so it's set up like a classroom.  There is a VCR
attached to a 21" TV monitor and an overhead projector in the room.  It is
both Air Conditioned and heated.

As a side note, the hallways outside the room are full of memorabilia from
CIGNA's (well, the INA portion of CIGNA's) 200 year history.  There are some
neat ship models and old fire equipment, if you're into that sort of stuff (I
sure am).

The food:

Liberty Place has a mall as part of the building complex which stays open
until 8 PM on Wednesdays (how fortunate).  There is a good-sized food court
with what you'd expect to see at a food court (Chinese, Bain's,
sushi/teriyaki place, Sbarro's, etc.)  There's even a Circuit City in case we
need emergency electronics or something.  There are also many, many
restaurants in the area and a Wawa about two blocks from the building (nice
clean looking one too).  There should be no problem getting food delivered.
I'd be willing to front the group money for the first meeting's food, and
solicit donations to cover future food purchases.  That's the way I've seen
most groups do it.

The parking:

Yes...well...I think the key phrase is "convenient to public
transportation".  The parking directly under the building is $11.00.  Yow.
There is parking across the street for $9.00.  After much pavement pounding I
found two more reasonable places.  An open-air parking lot in JFK, between
17th and 18th (4 blocks away) for $6.00, and parking at 1700 Market St. (also
between 17th and 18th, and three blocks away) for $7.00.  The building is
also two blocks south of Suburban Station and three blocks north of PATCO
16th & Locust station (which is how I will be getting there).

Remember that Liberty Place is in the heart of the Philly Financial District,
so our new digs are pretty spiff, but there is a price.

Anonymity of participants:

I'm going to assume (or hope) that the discussions as to how to go about this
are either an intellectual exercise, or a very dry joke.  If you want to sign
in at the meeting as Fred Fish, and you're on the list as Fred Fish, you're
in.  Yes, you can probably have the guard phone the room (there is a phone in
there), but I don't want to rely on that.  they have asked, as a condition of
letting a relatively minor employee use this room as the meeting place for an
unknown group of renegade hackers and geeks to use for meetings free of
charge.  I have no desire to test their patience (since the company that runs
security is not the company I work for - long story).

CIGNA's Linux policy:

Linux on any platform is currently not supported or authorized on any CIGNA
network-- yet.  I just had an interesting conversation with my AVP at our
quarterly meeting where he said that that may change fairly soon.  There's
going to be a big push for Linux on mainframe fairly soon (Big Iron, YEAH!)
Apparently, one of the chief System Architects we have is pretty hot on the
idea-- and we've got lots of System 390's to play with.

But as far as accessing our network from outside machines, the answer is
hell, no.

If I've left anything out, please ask (I know I'm going to regret saying
that).  Otherwise, we're a go for next meeting.


Over to you--

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