Today I met with a network administrator from one of the local colleges. He had been given my contact information by some of the networking staff at OIT as someone who might be knowledgeable about 
NoCatAuth. We talked about nocatauth for a while. Then I showed him our local setup and he was very interested in the Authentication Gateway (for all the same reasons we use it: it's small, simple, and easy to configure). Then, we talked about using vlans to aggregate the traffic from access points to a single port on a switch (to run it through the authentication gateway, for example). It sounded simple to set them up the way he described it. After a while, we came around to the issue of community wireless. He was very supportive of the general idea, but suggested that, for it to be successful, it would need to have a staffed Network Operations Center that was focused on providing good service to the Five Colleges. That was something I hadn't thought about. It raises the stakes quite a bit in terms of the funding that would be needed to get the project off-the-ground, but would probably make it work a lot better. Food for thought.
This afternoon, there is a potluck at Mill River for the families in Charlie's class. It's been a really great year for Charlie in school. Last year seemed to be mostly work-sheet driven. This year he's been working on all kinds of off-the-wall projects that provide interesting ways to use discplinary knowledge. The kids in the class fit together incredibly well. It's sad to see the year come to an end.
It was in the 90's at the potluck. It was hot, but it was wonderful for the community to come together. The kids had a great time running, screaming, and playing in the river. Their teacher came and was lauded by everyone. I thanked her personally for making the year such a great one. Someone got the kids all together to run toward her screaming and cheering and then they spontaneously broke into singing songs from the play. I think everyone was very moved (except the kids, of course, who just thought it was a lot of fun). The class presented her with a gift certificate with the admonishment that this time it should be spent on something for herself, and not just for the class (like it was perceived she had done at Christmas). While chatting with her, I confessed that part of why I was so grateful was that I had a great teacher when I was in third grade who made a big difference in my life. I'll have to write more about my third grade sometime. But not tonight.