sweasel.com

Where, oh where, is that free online AI that will take an audio recording of a meeting and produce the minutes for you? Better yet, one that will take a VIDEO recording so it can assign names properly.

I’m looking forward to hearing about the delicious walnuts. How many years will it take for that stick to start bearing fruit?

Aside:
Q. What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?

Try spicing the next one up!

Mr J replied “Sod off you mealy mouthed little gopher!”
Mr W then said
“I’ll kick your backside so hard you’ll have to unzip your fly to brush your teeth!”
Mrs Q said ” why don’t you two pantywaists just calm down and we’ll sort this out over a cuppa.”

At this point Mr J flung his flat cap at Mr W like OddJob in the Goldfinger movie, loudly exclaiming “Hi-yeah!”, and Mr W tumbled over backwards in surprise, landing on a plate of cucumber sandwiches sat out on the side table.

Meeting paused for 10 minutes at this point.

@Uncle Al – it should be called a stick.

During my working years I learned to LUV taking the minutes of important meetings. Like Ms Weasel I’d take my sweet time sending them out for approval – I preferred Mondays at about 10 a.m. I alway started them with a dreary list of who was there and a header list of subjects.

Then I wrote any damn thing I wanted to make the meeting come out in my favor, and damn right I used that later. Everyone was too busy to actually read meeting notes and they’d sign off on them…which I kept filed.

@Uncle Al
Q. What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?

A. Lost.

@Durnedyankee got it: non-returning boomerang == stick.

Yeah, it’s weak, but after stoaty’s article title I just hadda do it.

I sometimes got lumbered with the job of committee secretary and used to find taking minutes a chore but then I realised that it was a powerful weapon. I could downplay my opponents and big up my friends. I would mention the contribution of my foes very briefly so that they couldn’t complain that I had ignored them but I expanded the contribution of my friends. I also found that setting out the agenda was a powerful tool. Leaving till last the items I didn’t want discussed in depth was useful so that we rushed through them or left them till the next meeting. Also leaving awkward items to Any Other Business was useful.

Potted walnut tree….if it’ll grow & produce indoors, I’m seriously interested. Somewhere amidst the nightmare that is my back acreage are 2 oak trees I planted 25 years ago from acorns lifted off my mom’s place in Upstate NY. Last I saw them, summer before last if memory serves,they weren’t much bigger than that walnut stick. Don’t ask about the maples…..I’m still trying to find them.

I’m pretty sure they won’t like growing indoors, p2 (well, unless you have a climate controlled glasshouse, in which case anything is possible).

As for nuts (so to speak) I reckon maybe three or four years if I’m lucky. I have another one in a pot, grown from a nut, which is doing very well. Sadly, it needs a forever home and we don’t have room. It may be off to a friend’s farm before long.

Carl @ November 14, 2023, 12:54 am:
I sometimes got lumbered with the job of committee secretary and used to find taking minutes a chore but then I realised that it was a powerful weapon.

You weren’t the only one to notice that. Vide this very long-standing Communist dictum:

“In any organization, it is the duty of all comrades to ensure that a comrade is elected organization secretary.”

One of the best ways to spot a front group is to look at the secretary.

Oh, Uncle Badger, could you please define “Walnut”?

I know of the pale English Walnuts we buy in stores, but I used to love the American Black Walnuts that grew at my grandfather’s home.

A Mustelid front group!

Ahem!, we knew that all along, she’s on our watch list.

And we’re prepared to swing into action immediately AFTER she’s done a naughty thing, to advise all concerned that she was on our watch list!

Talking of minutes. At one committee meeting I was asked to give an outline of some procedures that I had developed for employing a new generation of some equipment. I spent about 5 minutes doing so and my contribution was duly acknowledged in the minutes in some detail – a whole page. The next person, from another organisation, was asked to do the same and he spent literally half an hour droning on in great detail about the same equipment. For his contribution the minutes just said three words – “Same as Carl”.