Tech Staff Meeting Notes March 13, 2026

The top priority is always repair of down stations.
NM problem stations
ET problem stations

Duty Table updated July 2025

Priorities

• ET Trip
• AG and NM BB PM
• Luxo node
• station repair
• Preventive Maintenance

Be present in your work and pay attention to safety. Don't fall off the end of the rope.

News & Highlights

Staff agreed to do the 24th? annual fish fry this year. Last Day of classes is Apr 29, Exams May 1-7. Best day is Friday May 8. Fridays are best to allow time for preparation and avoid losing the whole week. Expenses last year were $11/person and we charged $7. Many rounded up and extra donations helped. Used much of the remaining "Dorman donation." Recommend $10/person for 2026.

Year 2 funding is official and includes funding for the 8 remaining Helene Upgrades. We only received four of the promised five sets of hardware for 2025DM (ASTN, CCNC, VHTN, and WMTN2) so now we have a total of nine to do in 2026. Yolanda reports four sets are on the way with another five coming in three to four weeks. The budget includes: Supplies $5600/station = $44,800, Travel $5312, and Gas $2,038. Prioritize five remaining geobit stations: CMGA, LRVA, DSNC, MGNC, TVNC2. Final three are NM: ARPT, FPST, and MFRT. And the ninth will be ETT (replace the current CERI hardware with Depot owned hardware).

Debula replacement is progressing slowly. Change to sysadmin is in process. Kristian Skjervold from ITS research computing will join James Davis and Mitch on the search committee. The plan is to have the new sysadmin help determine and implement the best way to retire the gaia shared file system and public_html web pages. They will then migrate to help the monitoring networks. There is also a CERI LSP component to the position description.

Jim will retire at the end of 2026. Dave needs to slowly take on more of those tasks. Need to make a comprehensive list of tasks and look for ways to share the load. Will need to reclassify to something more appropriate than LSPIII and will have to conduct a search. Will likely have to wait until Jim is retired to make changes but Mitch will find out (once HR digs out of their oracle transition backlog).

Mitch will retire at the end of July 2028. The plan is to transfer PI and other administrative functions to the CERI Director and hire a network manager in early 2028. The network manager will be staff not faculty which will allow them to focus on the monitoring networks (GPS and Seismic) without academic and administrative distractions.

Preventive Maintenance. Jim's spreadsheets for most recent service:
ETSZ Service Status
NMSZ Service Status

Old note carried forward. USGS is moving forward with their SLU adoptions. Unfortunately they haven't yet changed any stations from NM to GS. Mitch will continue pushing for this after the shutdown ends. See this map for plans and progress.

Helene Upgrade and Hardening

NMSZ

PLAL has issues and can be retired. Hardware should be removed rather than repaired. Note, don't just end the epoch in SIS, remore hardware at the time of the closing. We wish to avoid closed stations with lingering obsolete hardware in the field.

MSAR and LVAR upgrades are done.

January work on Luxora also got delayed by the ice storm.

PM on DBB PPP's and nodes. Done.

RDGT replace cell with radio to CACT.

NMAD node building has a leaky roof. Need to hire a contractor to make the repair, clean, and paint.

Remove abb hardware from water tower at Peckerwood Point.

Need to review station list to reduce redundancy (e.g. PLAL) and the number of urban strong motion stations (e.g. GILT).

CVTN/CVMS. A contractor, A2H, was hired to design and build the new school. They're aware we're there and are willing to work with us to restore those stations when the time comes.

Remove decommissioned I40 bridge and AZTN hardware as time permits.

UALR needs a new vault.

NMDown

ETSZ

LRVA is closed due to Helene damage. A crew was able to make it to the site and found a nearby clearing formed by the storm that could be suitable. It won't make the telemetry shot so will need to be a cell modem.

Murray Co. Fire/EMA is using the lower part of the fire tower at GMG and have 5G microwave. Might be able to piggyback and get AC and internet. Sensor needs to be reinstalled.

ETDown

TVNC2 keeps dropping out. It's using the Choctaw license (as are DSNC and DYTN) but it has a large mountain in it's path. Consider replacing with a cell modem.

Etowah utilities is running fiber up to Starr Mt. They seemed amenable to sharing bandwidth with us if it can be made to work with our router. Could then get the camera going again. Camera is damaged and needs replaced. And we can bail on the Dalton link.

GPS

AG Network

All permanent stations are due of PM visit.

FDL

The old FDL wiki is here: https://umwiki.memphis.edu/display/FDL/CERI+FDL

The new FDL wiki is here: https://uofmwiki.memphis.edu/books/ceri-fdl-migrated/page/ceri-fdl

MISCELLANEOUS

The seisnet group on umdrive is at http://umdrive.memphis.edu/mwithers/seisnet You will need your uuid and password.

The seisnet wiki uses confluence at https://www.atlassian.com/