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Grex > Coop12 > #86: Minutes February 21, 2002 Board Meeting | |
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mooncat
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Minutes February 21, 2002 Board Meeting
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Feb 22 15:53 UTC 2002 |
Starring, in order of appearance: (pre: 7 pm) Flem*, Mooncat*,
Bhelliom, Mary*, Other*, Aruba*, MDW* (7:14 pm), STeve*(7:24 pm) (*
indicates Board Member)
1. Gavel Banging: 7:06 pm
2. Chairman's Report: Nada
3. Treasurer's Report: In January we took in $530, Spent $594.
Three new members
Mark opened a savings account for Grex after the last meeting.
So far we have collected $397 in February
One new member thus far
Begin discussion of Charitable Trust / License to Solicit Donations
(see item entered in Coop by Mark/aruba for very specific
explanation) Very long discussion (what is meant by solicit?). Debate
over whether or not Grex falls into the category of needing a license.
Discussion of what kind of paperwork is involved (IRS 990, etc.) and
how many hours are needed (lots and lots of both).
End resolution- Create item in coop for further input, gather more
details about the law and how it pertains to Grex, paperwork will be
mailed in unless further information illuminates that we really don’t
have to.
4. Publicity Committee: No Comment
5. Technical Committee: MDW is in possession of two Sparc machines, two
drives and a disk with OpenBSD on it. Marcus/MDW will install OpenBSD
on one or both machines as well as addition software needed. Begin
testing for consideration of usage as the Next Grex.
Overall it has been a rather quiet month.
7. Disposition of Old Hardware: Much discussion. Since we are paying
property tax on items Grex will not be using we need to dispose of
them. The question being lengthily debated was how. Preference (by
some) to get items to people who can and will use them, others prefer
to simply recycle them as quickly as possible. At one point in the
conversation the tax issue was brought up, again, and Marcus/mdw
donated $20 to pay the taxes for the next 1.4 years so that would
cease to be an issue.
End resolution: (after a ‘For God’s sake!’ exclaimed by flem followed
be an offer detailed below- read on) in the next week STeve will
determine which items on list for disposal he thinks he can foist off
on people who will use them. Items from that portion of the list
remaining in the Pumpkin on June 2nd will be taken to Greg/Flem’s
apartment and he and STeve can thereafter deal with them.
Items that did not make this cut that are in the Pumpkin on June 2nd
will be gathered for recycling purposes. And thus, the Pumpkin will
gain space- for new stuff to clutter.
6. Schedule Next Meeting: Thursday, March 21, 2002 7:00 pm, Zingerman's
Next Door.
"Same Bat time, same Bat channel"
"Same Bat discussion?"
"For God's Sake NO!!!"
8. New Business: Short discussion of Auction procedures with regards to
new items entered either a- by someone other than auctioneer, or b- an
item entered when the auction isn’t currently open. Agreement made that
the auctioneer can freeze such items.
Price of Grex Handbook called in to question. Mark/aruba moves to
increase the price from $1 to $2, Anne/mooncat seconds. 7 Yeas, 0 Nay
9. Bang Gavel: 9:20 pm
These are the events as I saw them. Please let me know if I’ve missed
anything
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| 70 responses total. |
mary
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response 1 of 70:
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Feb 22 17:01 UTC 2002 |
Cool minutes, Anne. Thanks!
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aruba
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response 2 of 70:
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Feb 22 17:12 UTC 2002 |
Excellent minutes, Anne. Thanks for being so prompt.
The reason for increasing the price of a handbook is that it costs $.57 to
mail one, and if someone pays us $1 via Paypal, Paypal keeps $.30 of it. So
we were down to $.13 income per handbook (though Grex doesn't actually pay
for the postage - I donate it).
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keesan
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response 3 of 70:
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Feb 22 18:25 UTC 2002 |
Can you just charge anyone paying via Paypal the extra 30 cents? It is still
cheaper than a postage stamp and a check.
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jp2
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response 4 of 70:
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Feb 22 18:35 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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flem
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response 5 of 70:
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Feb 22 18:54 UTC 2002 |
I don't remember for sure, but I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to charge
different prices for people using paypal. But I could be wrong. Or
something.
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keesan
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response 6 of 70:
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Feb 22 20:43 UTC 2002 |
Can you ask people using paypal to voluntarily donate enough to cover the
extra cost to grex?
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other
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response 7 of 70:
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Feb 22 21:17 UTC 2002 |
The decision is made and has been implemented. If the extra dollar is
too much, in your opinion, for other people to bear, then feel free to
contribute the second dollar on their behalf.
Since Grex has been distributing, on average, on of these booklets every
two months, the decision is not worth the time required to reconsider.
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aruba
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response 8 of 70:
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Feb 23 00:15 UTC 2002 |
Re #6: There is a note on memfaq.html telling people that they can donate a
little extra to cover the cost of Paypal if they'd like to. I think only
one person has ever done that.
Do you have grounds for objecting to the increase, Sindi? I'd be happy to
cut you a deal if you want to buy a batch of them, or something like that.
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jp2
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response 9 of 70:
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Feb 23 04:29 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 10 of 70:
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Feb 23 16:21 UTC 2002 |
We have a batch of these handbooks to return.
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aruba
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response 11 of 70:
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Feb 24 15:52 UTC 2002 |
The handbook is good for a raw beginner who needs help with things like
logging in, entering the conferences for the first time, and things like
that. I'm not suprized it didn't tell Jamie anything he didn't alredy know.
Back to the minutes - one other thing we discussed under new business was
splitting the treasurer's job among several people. This is not an
immediate issue, but I think it should be done in the long run. The
hurdle we need to get over is that almost all of the treasurer's tasks
involve the same database, so that data will have to be put online before
the tasks can be distributed. Of course we need to be very careful to keep
it secure.
STeve and Marcus suggested having a separate machine in the Pumpkin (perhaps
a 386) just for the treasurer's data. Greg also pointed out that some of
the tasks (such as sending paper receipts, paying personal property taxes,
and (potentially) filling out the 990 and Michigan forms) can be done using
a static copy of last year's data. So those tasks could be split off
without too much trouble. (Though when I thought about it later, I realized
that in the course of filling out the forms I found some gaps that needed to
be filled in. So there ought to be some back channel to allow the person
filling out the forms to update the data. But it doesn't have to be
real-time.
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jp2
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response 12 of 70:
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Feb 24 16:59 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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aruba
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response 13 of 70:
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Feb 24 17:57 UTC 2002 |
Heh. Well, I only have the one Xerox machine, and it was free. :) I
thought they came out fine this time, though.
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keesan
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response 14 of 70:
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Feb 24 20:55 UTC 2002 |
Is the same information that is in the handbook also available via the grex
website? Many people are now able to access the internet and download and
print things out and don't need to be sent them on paper.
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aruba
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response 15 of 70:
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Feb 24 22:19 UTC 2002 |
No it's not online, but I agree with you that it should be. If anyone would
like to volunteer to translate the handbook into html, I'd be happy to work
with them.
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remmers
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response 16 of 70:
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Feb 24 23:04 UTC 2002 |
But then we'll lose that valuable source of income! :)
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glenda
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response 17 of 70:
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Feb 24 23:22 UTC 2002 |
Mark if you have it as a Word document all you have to do is save it
as a Web document and Word will add the necessary html tags for you.
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gelinas
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response 18 of 70:
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Feb 25 00:06 UTC 2002 |
I think I started to transcribe it, shortly after I got a copy. I should try
to track it down.
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davel
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response 19 of 70:
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Feb 25 13:21 UTC 2002 |
Re 17: Since Mark mentioned using a copier, I suspect that the original
word-processed source is not available. At a guess, it was a cut-&-paste (&
I mean scissors & rubber cement) job in the first place, but I could easily
be wrong about that.
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spooked
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response 20 of 70:
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Feb 25 14:34 UTC 2002 |
=p Whoever said Mathematicians or IT gurus were artistically talented?
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aruba
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response 21 of 70:
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Feb 25 14:51 UTC 2002 |
The source is in PageMaker, and I do have it. (I created it, from Misti's
original Word document, and then I added a bunch of stuff.) PageMaker has
a "bookletize" feature which can take a serial document and rearrange the
pages so they print out in the right order to make a booklet, which is why
I used it.
I can save it to a text file, but it would require some formatting to make
it look good in HTML. Unless anyone has a later version of PageMaker
which can do that automatically?
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glenda
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response 22 of 70:
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Feb 25 15:32 UTC 2002 |
I'll check mine when I get home this evening.
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keesan
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response 23 of 70:
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Feb 25 16:04 UTC 2002 |
Can you input the text file into some format (perhaps WORD) that you can then
convert easily to HTML? Can you also post the text file itself for download
by people who don't know how to print out html? (And wonder why they get all
those <p>'s when they try). <pre> </pre> ?
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aruba
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response 24 of 70:
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Feb 25 19:19 UTC 2002 |
Outputting it to a text file would lose all the formatting, so inputting it
to Word would not generate a good looking document. If you're volunteering
to clean it up, Sindi, I'll give you a text file.
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