January General Meeting

Making Things Just Work: from Computers to Pipes

Speaker: Roy Brander, CUUG Life Member and retired Senior Infrastructure Engineer, Calgary Water Resources

Roy Brander has been a CUUG member for 35 years this year, with 25 of them as an employee of the City of Calgary and its Water Resources departments, developing their CAD and GIS systems, but also worked as an Infrastructure Engineer managing their pipes.

For January 2026, Roy will be covering multiple topics:

• He was unable to properly install Linux Mint on a Windows 11 laptop that had been installed with "RST" (RAID) driver support at a low level in the hard drive interface - one Linux cannot use. A workaround was developed.
• Rather than solving that problem entirely, the workaround was sufficient, and there will be a short editorial discussion of just kludging your way through a lot of computer solutions, that "doing it right" may sometimes be just not worth your time.
• This will segue into a short presentation of all the things you can do with now-near-worthless old equipment: Two "media player" Linux machines, and an all-day webcam, watching a construction site, when the machine had no other uses...something of a sequel to his 25-year-old "BSDwall" project that gave a second life to about 25 old 486 machines from DeVry, headed for a dump.
• And then the conversation will take a sharp right-angle turn into the real (or "real") story of the Calgary Watermain Break: What went wrong this time, and (probably) why. The story he couldn't get out in his multiple media interviews, because they just cut and paste what serves the narrative.

Roy Brander is a CUUG Life Member. He has given a number of presentations on a wide variety of subjects, including the BSDWall project, the MEPIS Linux distribution, the Titanic, management of Calgary's water mains, and the ASUS Eee PC and Moore's Law. Roy has retired from his position as the Senior Infrastructure Engineer for Water Resources, The City of Calgary, and now lives in a Vancouver condo overlooking Stanley Park. He'll be coming to us virtually from there, via Teams.

A recording of this presentation is available.

December 30, 2025: Uh-oh!


January 16, 2026: Fixed!

707 Fifth

707 - 5 St. S.W.
Fourth floor, Black Duck office ← NOTE LOCATION! Same location as last November's meeting.

Parking is available one block south of the meeting location, at the Centennial Parkade (Lot 54). Additional parking is available at The CORE and Holt Renfrew Parkades just east of the meeting location.

5:30 PM, Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Snacks at 17:30. Meeting begins at 18:00.

Attendance is free for CUUG members, or $10 (cash or e-Transfer) at the door for non-CUUG members.

RSVP to office at CUUG if you plan to attend.

December Holiday Social

CUUG December Holiday Season Social Evening

It's December, and as in past years, CUUG members and their invited guests will get together for a social evening at the Regency Palace restaurant on Tuesday, December 9, 2025. We'll have a private room and have food from the buffet. Attendees pay for their own drinks.

If you are a CUUG member and would like to join us, please e-mail office at cuug.ab.ca so that we can get an approximate count of how many people to expect. If you would like to bring a guest, please let us know your guest's name as well.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Regency Palace Restaurant

5:45 PM, Tuesday, December 9, 2025

This event is for CUUG members and invited guests.

RSVP to office at CUUG if you plan to attend.

November General Meeting

Browser Extensions: Small Add-ons, Big Risk—What to Do About It

Speaker: Franz Erasmus, Senior Cyber Security Manager, Iron Spear

Please note the change in location.

Browser extensions have become everyday tools for productivity and convenience—but they also represent one of the most underestimated attack surfaces within organizations. This talk explores the security, privacy, and compliance implications of browser extensions, including real-world cases of malicious code injection, credential theft, and unauthorized data access. Franz will share practical strategies for assessing and managing extension risk without compromising usability, as well as guidance on building governance frameworks that balance productivity with security.

Franz Erasmus is a Senior Cyber Security Manager at Iron Spear Information Security, a Canadian-owned advisory firm providing practical cybersecurity solutions across North America. With over 20 years of experience spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Franz has helped organizations across finance, energy, defence, and transportation strengthen their cyber resilience.

A certified CISSP, CISA, and CIPR professional, Franz specializes in security program design, incident response, penetration testing, and AI security governance. He is recognized for bridging the gap between technical depth and business priorities, ensuring security programs are both actionable and sustainable.

Slides from this presentation are available (PDF), along with a recording of the presentation.

707 Fifth

707 - 5 St. S.W.
Fourth floor, Black Duck office ← CHANGED LOCATION! Same building, different floor.

Parking is available one block south of the meeting location, at the Centennial Parkade (Lot 54).

5:30 PM, Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Snacks at 17:30. Meeting begins at 18:00.

Attendance is free for CUUG members, or $10 (cash or e-Transfer) at the door for non-CUUG members.

RSVP to office at CUUG if you plan to attend.

October General Meeting

Technocreep Ten Years After

Speaker: Dr. Tom Keenan, FCIPS, I.S.P, ITCP; Professor, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Calgary

When he wrote the book Technocreep: The Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy a decade ago, Tom Keenan thought "Technocreepiness" would invade our lives in a linear fashion. Instead we have seen an exponential increase. From hidden facial cameras in shopping mall directories to smart homes that can bust the dog stealing a hamburger, the pace is accelerating. Are there things we should do now?

Tom is both a seasoned IT professional and a popular professor at the University of Calgary. He taught Canada's first computer security course in 1977 and was involved in the creation of the country's first computer crime laws. He has spoken on five continents and is the author of over 2,000 academic and professional publications. A frequent guest on radio and television programs, Tom has served as an expert witness in civil and criminal cases and is known for his ability to demystify complex subjects and tease out the "news you can use."

He is Vice Chair of the Information and Communications Technology Council, and a Fellow of the Canadian Information Processing Society and the Canada Global Affairs Institute. His 2014 book Technocreep: The Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy introduced ideas like image fakery, identity theft, and creepy surveillance technologies that are now in the news almost every day.

Slides from this presentation are available (PDF), along with a recording of the presentation.

707 Fifth

707 - 5 St. S.W.
Third floor conference room C

Parking is available one block south of the meeting location, at the Centennial Parkade (Lot 54).

5:30 PM, Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Snacks at 17:30. Meeting begins at 18:00.

Attendance is free for CUUG members, or $10 (cash or e-Transfer) at the door for non-CUUG members.

RSVP to office at CUUG if you plan to attend.

September General Meeting

ChatGPT-5 for Technical Geeks: From Tutor to Research Companions

Speaker: Jorgen Nielsen, Associate Professor, Schulich School of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Software Engineering, University of Calgary

There is significant hype regarding the emerging AGI that ranges from a dismal dystopia of a wandering purposeless society ruled by bad actors to "it's just a fad and will pass" to a promise of a turbocharged economy that will result in universal wealth creation. Everyone has an opinion, and an additional one is not needed. Instead, this talk will have a narrow focus specifically on ChatGPT-5 as an assistant in technical learning and research. How close are we to a personal engineering student tutor for learning a technical field such as electromagnetics, physics or circuits? Can this be extended to a research companion? Is ChatGPT-5 creative, innovative? Can it come up with the next patent? Will it allow the West to regain its innovative prowess, which seems to have atrophied?

Jorgen Nielsen is currently an academic at the University of Calgary in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering. His current research interests are in applied electromagnetics for antennas, sensors and wireless communications as well as machine learning for signal processing algorithms.

Slides from this presentation are available (PDF), along with a recording of the presentation.

707 Fifth

707 - 5 St. S.W.
Third floor conference room C

Parking is available one block south of the meeting location, at the Centennial Parkade (Lot 54).

5:30 PM, Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Snacks at 17:30. Meeting begins at 18:00.

Attendance is free for CUUG members, or $10 (cash or e-transfer) at the door for non-CUUG members.

RSVP to office at CUUG if you plan to attend.

2025 Board of Directors

At the June 2025 Annual General Meeting, the following people were elected to the Board of Directors for 2025/2026:

• Alan Dewar (President)
• Greg King (Secretary-Treasurer)
• Alex Chow
• Dick Miller
• Rebecca Reid