From Calstuff Correspondant Phil Nunez

I am sure you are a familiar with last week's election debacle, but I suspect you are not fully briefed on how the election was subsequently saved.

In brief, geeks from the Computer Science Undergraduate Association (CSUA) and the Open Computing Facility, together with Eshleman/MLK building operations staff, came in like gangbusters and saved the ASUC's ass. The elections would not have happened if not for their help.

If you would like to verify the authenticity of the events described below, just ask Tommaso, the elections chair (electionchair@hotmail.com). Alternatively, I can provide you with a complete listing of the IP addresses used by all campus polling stations, as well as the password used on all of the Linksys nat boxen.

Tommaso visited the CSUA and OCF about two weeks ago to ask if we could lend some machines for elections. As a result of this, one of the CSUA members (he's a friend of mine) ended up working closely with Tommaso, initially as a technical adviser, though by Tuesday (4/8) he got sucked in to the process more or less completely (he completely dissappeared that week until he recruited me to help out this past Sunday (4/13)). He's got some interesting stories from last week including running around at 3 AM with Tommaso and a UCPD officer keying into buildings to check ports, calling up a friend of his to put together a firewall at the last minute, and a truck slicing the ethernet cable at South Hall in half.

Anyway, this past Sunday, my friend put a call out to folks in the CSUA and OCF to find geeks to help out with the election. We got paid $10 an hour, which was ok, but realistically, this was charity work. Most of us consult on the side for anywhere from 5 to 50 times that.

We came in and got the geek shit done. A few of us were in Sunday evening checking nat box configurations, cables, etc., and then we had people working various shifts on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to get machines deployed and troubleshoot when problems arose.

Credit is also due to the Eshleman/MLK building ops staff, and the talented folks from the ASUC auxiliary professional staff we worked with. They rock.

Deployment worked as follows: A bunch of geeks and building ops staffers would pile into a van. At each site, we'd haul out the equipment (computers, ethernet, surge strips, nat box, router, etc.) and the tables and chairs. The ops guys would set up the tables and chairs, then we'd leave a geek at the site to bring up the machines. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It seems simple enough, but doing this at over 15 sites with 70+ computers is by no means a trivial task.

These folks deserve credit for their work. They saved the ASUC a lot of money (which hopefully will go to student groups) and a lot of face. I know someone talked to a reporter from the Daily Cal, but they seem to have completely missed the ball on this. The geeks that helped out are:

Adrian Cahya [adrian]
Brett Cannon [drifty]
Charles Connaughton [ensign]
Jeff Emrich [jeffe]
Patrick Feyh [cpfeyh]
Debbie Hoo [debbie]
Nathan Hunsperger [njh]
Darin McGill [darin]
Myself [phillip]
Dan Silverstein [cubes]

I'll try to get a list of the building ops guys too.

- Phil

Once again, geeks save the ass of Poli Sci majors. Here's a possible campaign violation they might've found, mocked.

Here's the Building Ops list:

Jon 'Shadow' Green
Joey Kim
Mike Romano
Jeff Ehrman
Manuel Zepeda
Diana Carranza
Marcos Estrada
Vlad Kroll
Edith Perez
Andy Falzone
Norey Navarro
Fernando Casarez

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