Recent content in Andrew Payne on payne.org
The Moderator’s Role 
 Under Lincoln’s bylaws, the Town Moderator appoints members of the Finance Committee . Terms are three years, expiring at the close of Town Meeting, with new appointments made within 30 days. With seven seats on the committee, one to three seats come up in any given year. 
 This responsibility is one of the reasons the Moderator is an elected position:…
Web Site Notes 
 Intersting style elements 
 
 Header format: http://achinghead.com/index.html 
 http://blog.crisis.net/get-crisis-data-with-python-and-pandas/ 
 http://www.benfrederickson.com/better-venn-diagrams/ 
 http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto 
 
 Side notes: 
 
 http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/command.html#directions-for-actors (great…
From: Andrew Payne <andy+moderator@payne.org> 
 To: Lincoln-Talk mailing list 
 Date: January 1, 2026 
 
 Fellow residents, 
 I once told a friend I’d never run for any office. She said, “yea…..right.” Sometimes our friends know us better than we know ourselves. 
 I’m running for Town Moderator. 
 Some of my background & principles: 
…
This note documents a general approach to calculating the location of
Voronoi nodes for point, segment, and arc geometric entities. This is
a part of my work for developing CAM software for my CNC Machine. 
 In a Voronoi diagram, nodes (or vertices) are points that are
equidistant from three or more entities (points, lines, arcs, etc.).
In most Voronoi literature, these…
Lincoln Population Analysis: Census Reconciliation 
 Summary 
 This note presents a detailed reconciliation of the Town of Lincoln’s local census and the 2020 Federal (decennial) census, including an analysis of the portion residing on the base at Hanscom. This is an edited version of an email I shared with residents in 2022. 
 Lincoln’s situation is unusual because a…
I have a screen that's wide and bright,
And buttons that control my light,
But in this cluttered space,
I'm hard to find in this race.

So if you're feeling bold,
Come and search for me, I'm told,
I'm waiting in this (nearby) mess
To be the one that you can watch,
And pass the time with ease,
As I bring you entertainment and peace.

School Building Impact 
 This page analyzes the impact of Lincoln’s approach to its school building renovation, which played out roughly between 2010 and 2020, on the town’s debt and finances. My goal here is not to relitigate past town meetings, but to help residents understand a major contributing factor to our current debt. 
 
 School Renovation History 
 
 
…
The Problem: 10DLC Killed Easy SMS 
 Sending SMS through an API used to be simple. Twillio used to let you grab a number and start texting in minutes, great for alerts, home automation, or quick-and-dirty remote control of a project. 
 Then came 10DLC (10-Digit Long Code) registration, a campaign by carriers to crack down on spam.
The intent is reasonable, but the result is an onerous…
2020 PREFACE: I originally wrote this back in the mid-2000s and
have resurrected it by request. 
 Introduction 
 The re-heating of the venture funded tech market has pushed a heat up
of the hiring market, and I’m getting more calls from friends asking
for help understanding startup stock (equity) offers. More than one
friend has suggested writing the advice down, so…