Recording notes. Added a button to start a new cart from the new split cart. Started working on a mini header, while in shopping cart mode. Added some new session management stuff to watch for split carts or not. Made changes and pushed up new code.

Working with Shannon. We got access to all of sales gallery stuff (presentation gallery pages). That's awesome and will help so much. We spent the rest of the time going over the main homepages in the presentation gallery and the four sub homepages. Shannon took a bunch of notes and uploaded them to the element of time for today. See attached for our notes. It's exciting to see some of these really old assets starting to play in and actually come about (being used).

Went over to Bryan's house. We did some research on restaurant POS (point of sale) systems. We then did more planning and checking code for our invoice line item grouping project. We spent more time brainstorming and dividing up tasks. We are both working on the same project. Once I got home, I then merged in some code for Bryan dealing with new database updates. Recording notes from earlier today.

New cart navigation tweaks. Added some new buttons and light navigation changes (window targeting). Looking into working on a mini header and mini footer. Met with Dustin to go over the new changes that we have made. I got to look at his new shopping cart and he got to look at mine. We may end up swapping out some pieces and borrowing from each other's designs. Both are new shopping carts inside of adilas. That's great.

Recording notes from yesterday (4/16/24). Meeting with Eric. He was expressing a need for SQL (database) access to real server data. That really helps with debugging things (at least a view only option of looking at the data). Also, as we were talking, he was wishing that we had a full data dictionary (what fields in the database tables mean and/or do). We spent some time and went over payroll time clocks and project time clocks.

Went over to Bryan's house. Further planning on the cart line item groupings and sorting options. We did some planning on scenarios, mock-ups, new notes, questions, and ideas. see element of time # 2460 (inside of adilas) for scans. We then switched over to help work with Bryan on the golf, country club play site. We went over some flex grid settings, ecommerce settings, payments on account, etc.

Working with Eric. We looked at a database update, ran it locally, and then merged in some code into master. We pushed new code up to data 0 and ran the database updates on all servers.

Working with Shannon. Small cart demo. Flipped back to notes from 4/11. Show people - that was one of my takeaways from the note review. We can say all kinds of things... We need to show people. We ended up going through a few pages on the presentation gallery and taking notes on changes that would help that process go and flow better. See attached for some of our plans for the presentation gallery (just starting).

Recording notes. Jumped on a meeting and working with Bryan. I gave him a small demo on new cart changes. See attached. After that, I gave a quick demo with Suzi and Steve. When the meeting was over, I lightly reviewed the video.

More cart line item level settings. The original cart had seven columns for the line items. You can now pick and choose which columns you want and even change column names. After that, started to work on some small fixes on the old split cart pages and what the buttons looked like. It still needs some help but at least looks ok (ish). Pushed up changes that I have done to this point and tested them live on data 0.

Back working on the split cart options for the mini scan cart. Working on limited views, more modal breakouts, and adding line item level settings for controlling columns (show/hide options).

Meeting with eric. He was showing me some of the time tracker stuff. It gets kinda complicated mixing payroll timecards and project clock in/outs - all mixed together. We talked about some database updates. I ran them locally and then we tried them on the live servers. We ended up deciding to wait and push on the tie-ins and processes a little bit more before pushing things up.

Working on the new split cart for the mini scan cart. I was breaking things (existing features) into modals (smaller popout windows). Working on the simple search and the basic customer info. Broke both of those out into modals.

Email to Chuck about main website and navigation issues. He is going to check into it. I then spent a little bit of time undoing some of the new cart stuff that I was working on last night. I decided to go in a different direction. Working on the new mini scan cart and the new split cart stuff. Adding new settings and playing with a new modern split cart including variables for which sides and sizes to use the split cart. Should be pretty fun. Making good progress.

Meeting with Chris - a SaaS Analysis for an investment bank. We chatted and did some light introductions back and forth. I grabbed a few notes from talking with him. Just trying to learn the ropes. Interesting meeting.

- Bootstrappers - he likes that we are a bootstrapping company, no major capital input, just building things out on our own. That shows promise to some people. Minimal debt, loans, or payables.

- We are a multi-industry ERP system. That means that we do a lot of different things. ERP stands for enterprise resource planning software.

- Great customer satisfaction and retention (number of invoices or how many years each company stays with our company). We have tons of clients that have used us for over 10 years.

- Company seems to have good momentum, it has a great story.

- There seems to be a magic number where investors start to get interested. It is around the $2M/year revenue mark.

- Chris asked, why no marketing and no salesperson? I answered that we tend to get pulled into custom land (doing custom code).

- He also wanted to know what are our financial goals were for both now and in the future (long term)?

Text messages, random to do list stuff, recording notes, paying bills.

Meeting with Shannon. She took a bunch of notes about what we were talking about today. See attached. We started talking about my daughter Abby and what she could bring to the mix. We then talked about Russell and some of the fun things that he brought to the mix (inside adilas, look and feel, ecommerce, AFB, photo galleries, other projects). He has been a great asset. We spent a lot of time talking about being our own style. That's really important. That's who we are.

We then spent a ton of time looking around the presentation gallery and expanding things. We'd like to build that out and let it go deeper, if someone wants to go deeper. Keep it really simple on the top level and then they can go deeper if wanted or needed. We may have to get access from Chuck to work on the presentation gallery. He built the WordPress site. We would love to add photos, videos, modals, and other things to that site. It could be really cool.

Looking into the void expense/receipt logic with splits (payments on account). Ended up doing a small data clean-up for one of three expenses. One had some bad data. The other two were cleaned up using existing internal void tools and logic. Sent an email off to Cory with information. The existing code seemed to be solid. Not sure what happened on the one expense/receipt. We got it all taken care of.

Recording notes from earlier meeting and sessions.

Meeting with Russell. We were going to be working on our dashboard practice project but flipped over to the shopping cart. We need to define what can be moved for a new cart. Ideally, we need to build in flexibility, have it fully documented and laid out with good documentation, and realize that it takes time to build things like that. We spent some time talking about my new planned changes to an existing cart. Russell and I will build a new cart for adilas, as a side project. I will give Russell some of my percentage of adilas (ownership options) for helping. He has been helping since 2015. Good stuff.

We spent some time looking at Jonathan Wells' Adobe XD prototypes for the cart. Here are a couple of links as resources.

Small video on the cart prototype - 03:49 minutes

Link to Adobe XD mock-up file with cart stuff - mostly research

Phone call with Bryan going over questions about support, logging, and how we handle support tickets. We talked about some other questions as well. Quick Zoom meeting with Cory to go over a needed fix for elements of time and tying in PO's based off of flex attributes. She is going to send me more info via email with requirements and a valid login.

Recording notes from earlier in the day and some notes from yesterday.

Planning a restaurant MVP with Bryan. I went over to Bryan's house as he already had some whiteboard drawings and other notes that we worked on last time. We had a good review, brainstorming, and planning session. We are seeing three main projects for our current needs. They are: 1. Tweak out the mini scan cart interface and settings. 2. Build out the line item grouping stuff for carts, quotes, and invoices. And 3. Build out the restaurant specific pieces as a separate project and use the tweaked out cart and the line item groupings to make it all happen. Sort of a 1, 2, 3 - different but related projects.

Maybe use my cart favorite buttons (or something like that) to group customers for a restaurant type interface (tables and areas). We also talked about building out a 3-level deep grouping and sorting option for carts, quotes, and invoices. Along with that, we may make a new table to hold the grouping data. Not everybody needs it.

Great meeting with Shannon. Trying to figure out plans, how to make changes, and where we are heading. See attached for some great notes. We spent time reviewing our notes from last Thursday, talking about new things that were happening, and where are we headed next. Everything keeps moving all around us, part of the game. We live in a very dynamic environment. See attached (you may have to scroll down to see notes for today 4/9/24).

Looking into fixing a data issue on data 6 for Cory. She sent me an email and I started looking into it. I ended up in the "voidTicket" method for expense/receipts and looking for possible errors and adjustments that might be needed. I left off getting ready to look at live data to make sure that the void process was still fully working and would back out split payments (payments on account) correctly. Took a bunch of extra notes on where I left off.

Emails, phone calls, and touching base. Quick phone call with Cory to touch base on some plans. Spoke with Wayne on the phone for well over an hour. Some of it was just dealing with life, death, suicide (my son recently and Wayne's little brother years ago), and then talking about adilas stuff. Here are some of my notes. As a side note, Shannon helped me convert my post-it note level notes into these digital notes.

- What people see with their eyes and their perception. If you have 8 different people looking at the same product, they see 8 different products or solutions. People have such different views.

- If things are measurable then you can go to a measurable standard, but it is still perception. It's hard to have people agree on things even when you can measure it. It is even harder when you have to have people interpret concepts, principles, things that cannot be measured but have to be interpreted or understood other ways.

- We talked about change and discussed some analogies in physics. If you have a swinging bar, pendulum, how much does it take to change that? Do you have enough force to really change that momentum, to set something different in motion?

- Sometimes, Wayne really likes having peers that know what he is talking about - that is an important part of building a working community. It's important to be able to bounce things off of people that can really consult, help, and understand things. That is helpful for all people.

- God (our Heavenly Father) has plans for me (and you) - there is a plan and God continues to do His work.

- Wayne expressed that while talking with another developer that "our" way has been ingrained, it is the known norm, it is the default path - It feels to some of the developers like, "will it ever change?" What would it actually take to change?

- From this, dealing with change, Brandon was thinking, instead of just jumping into the coding side what could he change that could change the outcome? Like what if he helped plan the project instead of just took the next coding assignment? How does that change things?

- We don't want to sacrifice in the wrong way. Sometimes we are willing to sacrifice but how much more value does it make it to have the sacrifice in a way that benefits the greater goals?

- If Brandon moved more to helping plan this out what could that change? Could that help it move further down the road? Would that be an unwise or undo sacrifice?

- How do you break free of the default patterns and cycles?

Emails and recording notes.

Meeting with Chuck to go over the horizontal time view stuff for appointments and scheduling. Sent him a link to the video for Beaver Mountain and how they use the horizontal time view and scheduling for ski school stuff. Also a couple of screenshots and some other notes and references (notebook entries id #'s 8004 and 10914) dealing with time, settings, and where we want to go.

Emails and recording notes.

Meeting with a Potential client in Preston, Idaho. Drove up and met with a guy by the name of Reggie. He has been a business owner and bounced around a bunch. He seems to get in there, get things going in the right direction, and then moves on to the next challenge. Anyways, super fun guy and we had a great little session. He showed me what he was doing and where he had gotten things to (in their business). Along the way, he was expressing wants and wishes. We then switched and I showed him a small demo of where we have come from and what we can offer. It was a fun visit.

I called Steve on my way home and gave him a light update and told him that I would pass his info along and put him in the system with some notes. It was fun to get out a bit and talk with people.

Good meeting with Shannon. We spent some time reviewing notes from our last meeting. We then dipped a little bit deeper into some timelines, questions, and exploring some ideas. See attached for our notes. We are trying to identify patterns and see what we can do to break those cycles and/or norms. Sometimes that can be a challenge. We did uncover that we really need to setup some rules and regulations for investing, rules for other things, and really be clear as to what is needed, wanted, expected, and agreed upon. We have to basically spell it all out. See attached for our notes (scroll to the bottom).

No new planning took place. I ended up checking emails, doing a few text messages, and just general stuff.

Checking some emails and then working on a new split cart for the mini scan cart. Light brainstorming and working on a new back button on the classic page. See attached for some notes.

Meeting with Russell. Talking about backend data warehouse syncing and replacing of data (backend processes). As part of his process, he checks the full amounts, if good, keep it. If off or incorrect, he filters down until he finds what needs to change. For example: Find year (yes/no), find month (yes/no), find day (yes/no), find smaller chunk if possible (yes/no). Only pull the data back and forth that you need vs trying to sync up everything.

We flipped over the practice mockup dashboard project. Playing with placeholders and no data selected (starting or default modes). Then, once selected, how the interface or focus changes. Spent some time building up the ideas and then getting rid of some of the older ones - once you have progressed pass that point. Good practice, asking yourself, is that really important? Sometimes we have to cut things that would be cool, but they just aren't important. Russell made this comment towards the end of our meeting - 80% planning and 20% coding. Not always the case but a good standard.

We weren't able to meet today. No new progress to report.

Meeting with Eric. Going over query of queries errors. Tried a number of things with casting the date/time formats from made up values. Going over a number of scenarios but unsuccessful with casting dates and what not. We may end up flipping to numerics vs date/time objects.

Recording notes from end of last week (3/28/24). Also recording notes from today's meetings and what not.

Demo meeting with Steve and Suzi. They have been meeting with a frozen yogurt company out of Canada. Steve and Suzi have been meeting with this client for a few months. We went over a video of their point of sale (POS) system. We are going to need some groupings and ways to sort things within the line items. Basically, you add a main line item and then you get to choose a number of different options or additional add-on's, tied to that main line item. We need to be able to hold sub selections and be able to edit as a group vs just a single line item. As we were talking, Steve wants us to build out the mini scan cart (new existing cart) and really tweak out the configurable settings. Make it be able to do all kinds of things. Along with that, we also want to build out our own split screen (new settings... right, left, pane sizes, etc.). That should be pretty cool! Exciting!

Emails, fixing permissions for Cory, also a quick PDF address change on a number of custom PDF's. Recording time and notes from last week (3/26 and 3/27).

Meeting with Eric. He is working on a mobile clock in/out (payroll) and project clock in/out (time tracking on projects) combo project. Eric is calling it a time tracker app. We were talking about relationships between timecards and projects and how to create that special relationships (new joiner table).Steve joined us on the meeting for a bit. Talking through ideas and going over flow processes.

Projects for Cory. Did some PDF changes for a client. Changing state withholdings for Colorado. Checking on Oklahoma state withholdings, formulas, and table data. Recording notes from earlier in the week.

Phone call and planning with Bryan. Then meeting with Suzi and Bryan to go over cart/invoicing line item groupings and sorting options. Both Bryan and Suzi have some upcoming demos that need invoice line item grouping and sorting. Quick meeting to figure out a plan and talk about timelines. Lots of drawing and just talking about possible options.

Working with Shannon. Talking about sorting and grouping cart, invoice, and quote line items. That's a new and upcoming need. We talked about cutting corners and building on top of that - under pressure. Sometimes it just has to happen but you don't want to make that the norm. At some point, there will be some future clean-up that is needed. As we look forward, the question comes up... who is going to get to it and when? All part of the game. See attached for some of Shannon's notes.

We also spent some time talking about buying a house and what a person would like to know... and how that translates into buying shares of a technology and SaaS (software as a service) company. Good discussion. See attached notes.

Emails. Gathering up some resources for Steve. Put together a quick page to help show some investment opportunities for adilas. It's really rough, but a start.

Meeting with Russell. Working on the mini dashboard layout practice project. Russell was working on the project overview layout. On the layout and planning, you have to take into consideration the length of the text (variable lengths). You end up making big ones, small ones, and mid sized ones to see how the layout looks and what is allowed (text and graphics - hit all the variables). Not everything lines up perfectly. We did some masking, locking, and playing with layout ideas, all in Adobe XD.

Wow, the value of a good mock-up is huge. It almost becomes live without being live. Being able to show and play with alternates and design decisions - duplicate, tweak, duplicate, tweak - see what you like. Towards the end of the session, we were working with profile pictures and playing with masks and opacity (alpha transparency). We also talked about showing and designing starting modes, active selections, and watermarks. Lots of playing with our layouts. Good session.

Meeting with Cory. Handing over the torch to Alan to work with the developers. Being wise about how we are spending our development money. She lined me up on a few different projects. Pretty short meeting.

Went over to Bryan's house to plan some dining things and cart line item level groupings. See Bryan's notes on EOT # 2460 inside of adilas. We ended up doing a planning and brainstorming session. We had multiple handwritten pages in a notebook, tons of free scratch papers (each with different subjects), and a small whiteboard drawing. For scans and photos of our brainstorming session, see EOT 2460 in adilas.

Working with Shannon. Going over all of the different custom code requests (doggie salon, frozen yogurt, golf/tennis clubs and restaurant, POS, and calendar (complex pieces). We had a brainstorming session and Shannon took a bunch of notes. See attached. Unwritten, our business plan has been - chase the $ (money). We talked about the difference between the demo clients vs existing paying clients. As we were talking, we made an analogy of running a race. Imagine the difference between racing and tying shoes vs just flopping along (not tying your shoes). Shannon took some notes (see attached). At different times, we are seeing cycles and patterns. We are trying to learn from that or those cycles and patterns. They are not bad, we just need to keep learning from them.

Emails and checking out a finance company's website. I got an email asking to meet and chat. I wanted to check it out a bit before replying back. Switched and started working on some notes from a multi-day conference for Rezzimax, back in September of 2023 (see element of time # 10257).

Meeting with Bryan. Going over needs for the resorts or tennis/golf club type businesses that deal with both scheduling and restaurants. Need for being able to keep track of guests at a table and meal courses (subgrouping of cart, quote, and invoice line items). Thinking about altering the description fields. That could be pretty easy. We already allow that, we would just have to create some easier tools to manipulate that field or value. We could also allow for line item sorting from within the cart. You can do it on an invoice (after the fact) but not in cart mode (line sorting or moving up or down inside the ticket).

We also spent some time talking about options for being able to split the check (split ticket or split check options for a dining bill - who pays for what with multiple people eating together). We need to take into consideration both server (waiters/waitresses) and backend kitchen needs. Bryan was basing some of his needs off of a version of Clover table service software (separate software offered by Clover - outside or external vendor).

Back to the tables in a dining room or bar stuff. We need a visual display option for showing the seats, tables, and restaurant style layouts. We could do it manually but it would be better if we had a dynamic tool that the users could use, manage, and fully control. You would need to know things like how many guests, per table, total occupants, what to call things, defaults, other settings, etc.

We kept switching gears. Back to the possible cart line item grouping option... This is basically a way of organizing or putting a pre-fix on the descriptions or flagging certain line items to be part of a group within the main cart or invoice. Towards the end, we switched to button layouts and building special pages (we may need to design a custom layout or customer homepage with settings).

As a note for myself, what the clients are really asking for is a multi-level carts, line items groupings, line items sorting, custom dynamic interfaces, and advanced scheduling options. Complex items, tracking, relationships, and deep time stuff. Interesting.

Meeting with Suzi. She had a new analogy for me (for the dog care demo site), think of an operating room... patient(s), doctor(s), other assistants, etc. Complex scheduling stuff. Switched over to some questions on a frozen yogurt demo site. Suzi has a need for items and sub item attributes, extras, or modifiers. This would need to be tracked per main item but basically, a pool or preset group of extras that could be hung on or attached to an invoice or cart line item. Imagine, a main item with sub options. These could be called options, extras, sizes, flavors, colors, modifiers, attributes, etc. I'm not sure. We spent some time going over an ice cream store (frozen yogurt) type options and needs.

Phone call with Bryan. Talking about needs for Golf Clubs (resorts) or Tennis Clubs and how they need software for Tee times (scheduling), pro shops (retail), memberships, dining, etc. Multifaceted needs. We talked about options to help draw or create custom visual interfaces for dining rooms, restaurants, and bars. We talked about how we have custom label builders that allow for buttons, input, and then setting up rules and data connections to each field or barcode on the custom labels. Setting up a dinning layout could be similar to the custom label builder (in theory).

We may need someone to help plan things out. Maybe work on layout and flow as well as processes and options. There seems to be a growing need for a project manager/designer.

I spent some time brainstorming on the adilas pitch deck and how to build some of the graphics and videos. Lots of ideas about using the adilas core graphic and the adilas interactive map graphic. Maybe even using both of them in combo to help show progress and what happened over time. See attached for a couple of scanned planning note pages (scratch paper).

Suzi and I jumped on a demo meeting with the Puppy Pals folks (potential client). Suzi was doing the demo. They, the Puppy Pals folks, need real time texting (push notification). Suzi was demoing the messaging stuff that we have out in ecommerce. Their clients need a quick way to get logged in, communicate, and even get automated responses. They really need notifications.

We switched to flex grid and showing limited flex grid options (for entering pets and one-to-many relations between clients and pets). Talking about dashboards. We went back to messaging for a bit - they really want real time text messaging. Deeper talks about wanting automatic messaging and responses. Two-way communications are needed (big time). Even batch messages.

Suzi handed over the demo to me and I helped with some scheduling stuff. Lite show and tell. They like the time down the side and people across the top for their horizontal time views. Lots of other notes and requests. Basically, they have a complex scheduling need. Almost a 3D model. They have time, rooms, and attendants. They have to matchup all of the pieces.

Partway through the demo, I started writing things down... this is kinda rough (my notes) but here is what I recorded in a quick notepad doc...

- Booking and re-booking

- Moving appointments around

- 5-6 clients coming in at a time

- 100 appointments a day

- Logistics of what happens each day

- Need a quick overview

- Docking and sliding appointments into the slot - temp copy and paste to move things around - move all of the pieces - all of the extras - maintain relationships

- Complex appointments - and then rebooking those appointments

- KISS (keep it simple silly) - visually formatting things to work with the team

- Be able to move the data around

- POS integration

- Be able to divide the tips

- Be able to take a deposit on upcoming services - pre-pay

- They have both taxable and non-taxable items and services

- Bill for no show

- Payoff accounts

- Customer credits - in-store credit

- Notes for customers, notes for pets, notes for appointments - two or three years of notes

- Calendar and time-slot issues and needs

- Per appointment - show dog name - show client name - breed - color code(s) - size, appointment type, assistance level

- Conflicts and rules - max out levels - how many rooms may be booked at once

- Conflict notices

- Each location is different - they are trying to grow from two locations to 10+

- Biggest challenges - complexity of the appointments and be able to move things around

- Be able to manage things and move things around

- Everything happens within 15 minutes... they come in, they get serviced, and they get checked out (payment), and maybe get re-booked

- Future dashboard options - financials, scheduling, inventory, etc.

- We want to help you further that (what you are doing)

- These are "dog" (pet) people

- Pare it down... make it look easy... (frontend)

A lot of that we already have. I was just writing down what they were saying so that I had a record of it. One of the ladies on the call was very sharp. Her name was Jen. You could tell that she had some software and development level background. Great questions, responses, and just knew her stuff. I was impressed.

Recording notes from today and yesterday. Also, went back and filled in some older notes starting on 1/25/24 to 2/1/24. I got behind and then my son Tanner passed away. That really put me behind. Doing some catch up work. Lots of moving pieces.

Working with Shannon. We were going over our ideas for the adilas pitch deck. We had some notes from back on 3/12/24. I was reading the notes and expounding on some of the ideas. We talked about all kinds of stuff. Tons of side tracks and trying to get clarification. We had the idea to use the adilas interactive map and adilas core to show how things came about. That could be pretty fun. We will also try to use the graphics to build up what we have. When ready, I'd really like to link to the presentation gallery and use that for some our pitch deck stuff. I really want to use that resource (presentation gallery) as well as other graphics. See attached for our notes and changes to the original notes. Shannon will also be adding her notes from our meeting.

Recording notes from weeks past. Trying to catch up (1/23/24 to 1/25/24).

Working with Russell on the dashboard mock-ups. We ended up getting lost in the details (micro tweaks on fonts, colors, sizes, etc.). We talked about style guides and trying to get to a good style guide level (ish). Constantly moving target, in some ways. As a reminder, who's the audience for each thing? Keep that in mind. It makes a difference. We spent some time adding in charts and graphs to help with the layout and display of the data. It was fun to watch him build things up from wireframe to actual mock-up. Going through the refinement process. From placeholders to mocked data and elements. This is just a practice project to go from design to full output.

Helping Bryan with some questions and setting up a merchant account on data 7 for a company. Recording notes and making a small fix on the developer's notebook pages.

Meeting with Bryan. Working on some demo flow options. Tons of stuff for the golf club demo site. We went over new carts, ways to track tables (say like in a restaurant), custom buttons, and other topics. Here are a couple of topics that need their own line.

- We would like to set it up to be able to setup and/or pass through flex grid items from the shopping cart to either customers, invoices, quotes, or elements of time. That would be so cool. Currently, you have to get out of the shopping cart before you can deal with flex grid tie ins (custom fields or custom one-to-many relationships). We talked about ways to do this and make it happen. Brainstorming.

- Putting multiple people on a single element of time. We already do this for places like Beaver Mountain (ski school lessons) and High Valley Bike (bike shuttle services). We just need ways to make it easier to do for other companies. You can already set it up, but you kinda have to know what to do and how to do it to make it really work. Also, some of those other businesses, we've helped them out by creating a custom set of buttons to jump into their specific flows. That really makes it easy for them. Basically, ways to speed things up and make it not so custom but a generic, yet configurable, toolset. Behind the scenes, we use a thing called limited flex grid to make the forms look super simple and easy to use.

- Bryan and I went over lots of options for splitting tickets or bills. Here's the scenario. Say a guy wants to set up a tee time (golfing) for he and three other friends. We need to schedule the tee time (calendar event or element of time). We also need to bill each person or put it on their tab. We can do that right now but we would have to do one of the following. 1. Create four invoices, one for each person and put it on account (they will pay later or their tab). Or 2. We make one invoice for the full amount and then let them, each person, make a payment towards the full ticket. You can do that right now but it doesn't put it on account for each one. It would just be an invoice with multiple payments. Anyways, we talked about some bulk tools for the shopping cart or ways of saying... duplicate this invoice for these people (bulk tools). Then it, the system, goes out and does it.

Just some ideas and discussion topics. Good stuff! Bryan is doing a great job asking questions and what not. Lots of fun ideas and getting him some training on the system.

Working with Shannon. We finished up the adilas lite (fracture) project overviews. We then pushed up the overviews to the correct pages. That is awesome, we've been working hard on some of these overviews. Here's a list of projects. They are not done yet (as of right now) but we are making progress and getting things planned out.

Adilas Lite - Main Homepage
# 1 - The company structure - adilas jelly fish model
# 2 - The overall structure of the adilas platform or system - adilas value add-on core
# 3 - The education and training needs - adilas university
# 4 - The marketplace for the adilas community - adilas marketplace
# 5 - The virtual portal or primary landing spot for the community - adilas cafe and community
# 6 - Deeper dive into the adilas platform or system - adilas lite or fracture
# 7 - The budgets, finances, marketing, and sales plans - other business plans
# 8 - Come take a look!!! - adilas lite videos and research

Working with Steve and Suzi. They are planning a demo site for a dog care (nails, baths, grooming services) business. Going over processes, routes, settings, processes, etc. It ended up being a small planning and consulting type session. Suzi does a great job and is very organized. Once we figure out the flow, we plan on passing that info over to Chuck (designer) to let him work his magic to help design a custom skin or mock-up.

One of the things that we may end up doing is adding a button to the element of time to allow a pet to be assigned. We are handling all of the one-to-many pet to owner details in flex grid tie ins. That's working pretty slick. We just need to populate that data around a bit more to help it show up correctly.

Another thing that we may need to do is a popup builder to show services that can be added to an invoice and also pushed over to an element of time to help the attendants to know what is scheduled, needed, and what was done per appointment. We went over some options.

After Suzi left, Steve and I jumped back in and went over other stuff. We talked about merchant processing. We went over some database updates that Steve is working on for invoicing time and sub timecards (job costing stuff). As a side note, Steve was mentioning that adilas is starting to sell some bookkeeping services along with the main system or main product. That's awesome. All part of what we want the adilas marketplace to do, speaking towards the future.

Steve also requested that we start working on the known issues report to help Mike out. This is a list of things that we have identified where things could go off the rails. Things like duplicates, certain dates that are out of order, mismatch between main and line items, sub inventory issues, etc. We have a page called known issues where we are listing all of these possible gotchas (data problems). It would be really cool to start working on some small reports to show those pieces that may have issues.

Meeting with Bryan. Going over golf club (image a country club) type business options and how to use adilas to help with certain tasks. Things like scheduling tee times, tons of restaurant type needs, etc. Bryan was asking all kinds of questions. We have all of the tools, they just need to be tweaked a bit. Eventually, our meeting got into a who knows what type conversation. For example: So and so knows about this part, and so and so knows about this other part, etc. No one knows all of it. I was telling Bryan about some custom work we did for a Mexican Burrito place and how we were using ecommerce to help them place their orders with certain choices. I know that Sean and Dustin know about tons of other stuff. Alan has helped with other setups and custom code. Steve, Shari O., and Cory all know other things.

We talked about normal cart stuff, delivery, fulfillment stuff, custom webpages, and setting up custom skins or custom flow processes. I ended up doing some consulting, talking to Bryan about custom skins, and setting up a demo site. It takes effort to configure the tools. Once set up, the flow is much easier. Ideally, we would like to gather up all of the knowledge and put it in one place for use by others who want or need it.

Phone call with Bryan. He had some questions about merchant processing and internal scheduling. Recording notes from the past couple of weeks (3/5/24-3/14/24). It's been a little bit crazy.

Working with Shannon on project overviews. We did some work on the adilas cafe overview and then on to the adilas lite and fracture overviews. We made a few website changes and Shannon attached the documents that we are working on. See attached.

Meeting with Steve and Suzi. Looking at a dog care software package. It was actually a human salon software system that they are using for the dog care company. Looking at options and seeing what we can do, using adilas to help them out. Lots of talking, planning, and even building out some flex grid pieces in the demo site. Steve had to drop off due to bad Internet. Suzi and I spent the rest of the time planning things out and talking about what already exists and what would need to be custom. Great session.

Suzi is quite sharp. She is willing to get in there and figure things out. Self-taught.

As a fun idea, Suzi thought that it could be really cool if you could tie a picture to a piece of flex grid. That would be pretty cool. Great idea.

Just for the record. Some of the pain points for the dog care people were things like their software system only allows one person per appointment. Sometimes they need multiple people if they need to restrain and/or assist with the appointment. Each client needs a one-to-many relationship with their pets. When a tip is given, they need to be able to split it based on who was working the appointment. Currently, all of their notes just run together. There isn't a any type of log notes or custom fields.

Suzi and I were having fun planning things out and being able to come up with ways that we could solve all of those problems, almost right out of the box. We will have to do some custom stuff, but it isn't too big of a lift, and we could easily reuse it over and over again. Fun project.

Meeting with Chuck and Russell. Touching base with Chuck. It's been a while. Working with Russell on some CSS tweaks for the adilas lite site (mobile ready). Then back to working on our dashboard mock-up project with Adobe XD and AJAX stuff. Russell was prepping things and building out his own components. While working in Adobe XD, get close but not pixel perfect. Just enough to get going. Everything will be dynamic (data wise) later on. Building out custom components and zooming in/out to make sure that we get the visual ranking correct (what is the most important). We also talked about not being limited by the template (CSS theme or template). It's okay to go custom if needed. Asking lots of questions. What do we want to show, why, where, what is the most important part of it? Balancing out the visuals, the user experience, and gently leading the user to what to do and what is important. As a light goal... is the user experience good enough that they could use it without training? The design determines the architecture (what is needed). Good session.

Looking over plans for the pitch deck (notes from session with Shannon and I from this afternoon). Rereading some of the notes and plans.

Letter of recommendation for Bryan. Also, cutting a personal check out for Shannon and work done helping me with Ship B stuff.

Great meeting with Shannon. We were going over ideas for an adilas pitch deck for selling shares (percentages of ownership) for adilas. I was talking and going over some of my notes and ideas and Shannon was taking notes about what I was talking about. See attached. After we got done talking about plans there, we switched gears and did some more planning on the project overviews for the adilas cafe. Once again, see attached for our progress.

Meeting with Steve. We had a great little brainstorming session. We were looking at the database, checking out tables, and planning out options for using elements of time for perfect job costing. See attached notes for some of our plans.

Daylight savings time changes on all servers. As a note, data 5 was missing the main logo. May need to check that out (fixed it on 3/14/24).

Lunch meeting with Chad Jeppsen. Talked about different companies that Chad has worked with or for. Their cultures, management styles, perks, and stable vs more open models. We talked about getting multiple tasks piled on top of you without removing other already assigned tasks or responsibilities.  That can really add stress to your load. We also spent some time going over work environments and level of control where you work. Those are big factors.

Phone call with Steve. Going over ideas, what's happening (I've been out for almost a month with the passing of my son), talking about new projects, job costing ideas, merchant processing, managing people, talking about investors, and creating a pitch deck. Steve had the idea of creating revenue caps and repaying things based on values that exceed a certain revenue cap or amount. Other different ways of financing things. Good conversation.

Working with Shannon. Touching on the adilas value add-on core model and the adilas university overviews for the adilas lite and fracture projects. We also spent some time working on the adilas marketplace project overview. Good work session. We then added the overviews to the web pages where they belonged. See attached for our documents and progress.

Links to the project overviews:

- adilas jelly fish model

- adilas value add-on core model

- adilas university

- adilas marketplace

Meeting with Russell. These are some of my quick notes from our meeting:

- Talking about testing and testing coverage.

- Doing mock-ups and putting yourself in the right thought pattern (not pixel perfect mock-ups).

- Experimenting, looking at layouts, looking at distractions, questioning everything, etc. Quick mock-ups and throwing things around to see what looks good. All of this in Adobe XD. Bouncing between the project (CSS theme) and then pulling out small reference pieces.

- Managing the attention of the user (visual layout and visual priorities).

- Make the mock-up so mouthwatering you just say yes - powerful, easy, and beautiful.

- Dream it up and then build it and make it happen.

- Crafting an experience takes time.

- Building out mock-ups to catch all of their desires.

- Even asking for non-refundable percentages to do a more detailed estimate or price quote.

- If you tell me what you want... I can sell it to you (sell you a solution to fit your needs).

- Russell, helps other people build their dreams and then tells them how much it would cost.

- Just for fun... I sent him a copy of the horse graphic (client asking could you do it any cheaper?). See attached.

Working with Shannon. I was talking and she was taking notes. Lots of things have been going on. My son Tanner passed away, I haven't been working for almost a month, things were left with some uncertainty, etc. Pretty crazy time. Anyways, I was talking and speaking, and Shannon was catching what I was saying and talking about. See attached for some of the notes.

After our meeting, I printed out the notes and reread them. What a help to have here take such good notes. I was literally just talking and she was catching all of that.

Small little bug fix for a new shopping cart. It was erroring out on a page include (sucking in variables from another page). I made a few changes and pushed up new code. Sent an email to Steve and Cory. Recording notes from the day.

Back meeting with Bryan to go over the auto tie-ins for PO's to elements of time. We spent some time working on the flex attributes and how they are tied in to time (new settings). Small work session. We made a small to do list and started going through the different pieces. I did lots of explaining and drawing to show where we are hoping to go. Plugged a small hole (in the data) and pushed up a small change to permanently plug that hole. Ran a quick update to update any past or older data.

We ended with ideas and instructions on automating the setting of the master time template settings when creating a new element of time. We went over a couple of options. Our main goal is to make the function of creating a new element of time lighter for developers and later potentially for API socket users. Because we are under a budget crunch on this one, we'll tone it back a notch. We may have to revisit it again later. Making progress.

Meeting with Bryan to work on automating some time template settings. We ended up fixing a small bug on his current code. We then started looking at the next steps to make the tie-ins even better (tighter). We ran out of time. We will meet later today to finish up.

Started out doing some emails and recording some notes. Then meeting with Cory and Shari O. Looking at a small convert to PDF error on data 1. Other systems seemed to be doing fine. Just a problem on data 1. We also looked at a possible error out in statement land and math dealing with tips. Also in statement land, we had a request to apply a data filter to what was going to be on the statements based on amounts owed (paid or pending invoices).

We then spent some time looking at payroll settings and checking code on bit bucket (code differences between old and new code). We couldn't find anything that really stuck out. We then went and tried it on a play site, and it worked great. Cory is going to check the settings for the company in question. Also dealing with payroll, Cory and I jumped into a couple of state websites and pulled new tax and withholding tables and formulas for a couple of states. We need to update those values inside of adilas.

Lastly, we went over some priorities and talked about other projects. I've got the top 3 priorities written down in my notes on my computer. They are checking some older bad data for a report dealing with sub inventory, helping Bryan with the custom project to connect PO's to elements of time, and updating some state withholding formulas. We also know that a custom data import is coming towards the end of the week. Busy times.

Email to Wayne about ways to improve or fix the tables for storing sub inventory attributes and parent attributes. See attached for a copy of the email. It has some light plans on how we could change the columns on the custom_text table (and other custom attribute storage tables - numeric, text, date, and json).

Fixed the error messages and moved the unique id/error code to lower on the error message. Trying to make it look better. Wayne just added the unique id/error code a couple of days ago.

Started to work on an advanced search page that shows parent items, parent attributes, and sub inventory attributes, all on the same report. Bryan originally made the report. Just going over things and lightly cleaning things up. Refining some of the logic.

Small bug fix on the master time templates. Recording notes from today and the different meetings.

Meeting with Hamid. We were having fun talking about the analogy of chasing a ball down the hill. Just for fun, we were saying that we better stay out of its way so that it does not squish us. Sometimes it feels like the ball is going faster and faster and getting bigger and bigger. Just being silly.

We spent our time looking over Bootstrap code and CSS changes. Bootstrap and prebuilt templates are pretty cool. However, you can get layers and layers deep, and you tend to find yourself going down a number of rabbit holes. Lots of moving pieces and dependencies. We end up needing someone who is good at doing frontend code (designer) and someone who is good at doing backend code (database and code developer). You almost need a small team or a buddy. It's hard to be good at everything, to a master level.

Emails and then meeting with Bryan. Going over an API for a 3rd party vendor. We were checking messages, record counts, and adding up totals. We made some changes and pushed up the new files. Recording notes form the day.

Meeting with Shannon. Looking for and seeing trends and patterns. Some of the hot topics right now are building industry specific skins (customer interfaces), BI or business intelligence reporting, AI or artificial intelligence options and marketing, job costing, manufacturing, and harvesting services and byproducts that adilas creates.

We spent most of our session reviewing and working on notes for the adilas university project dealing with education and training (No. 3 in the adilas lite or fracture plan). See attached for our notes and progress.

Just for fun, Shannon and I were talking, and we made an analogy of chasing a ball down the hill. It just keeps going (out in front of you). We talked about communications and collaboration options. We, our goal, is to stay out in front of the guys/gals with some rough plans. As the guys/gals get to the next levels, they will be looking for the next thing. We will keep feeding in the pieces that we have done or roughed out. We will let them interpret those plans and make them (the plans) their own. Basically, help to point and influence a direction without directly forcing it.

We also talked about how we learn by repetition and relearning things over and over again. It seems to really help to write things down, then re-sharing it back to someone else. That helps it gain clarity and makes it stick better.

Sometimes we present our clients with tooooo many options. We love that but it can be overwhelming and distracting to someone who is brand new. As part of our discussion on education and training, we talked a lot about industry specific skins and matching training and verbiage to those industry specific skins. See our attached notes for some other ideas.

Lastly, as we were talking, I mentioned to Shannon that Steve has a dream of offering basic business classes (business principles) to cities and communities. He would like to use adilas as the teaching tool. The class would be on the business principles, we would just use adilas to show those principles (how to do it and how easy it is to do it using adilas). I also wanted to record that another dream that Steve has is jumping in his plane and flying around and talking to CPA's. If CPA's really used adilas and adilas for their clients, they could do way more tax returns and also offer other ongoing oversight services, consulting, training, etc. It could be pretty cool! Just wanted to record those ideas from past meetings with Steve.

I joined the meeting late, but Alan and Steve were going over SG&A costs when I got there. They have a client that is wanting to virtually plug the SG&A numbers. Steve was talking about how that is playing with fire and not good accounting. After that, Alan gave a small demo of his production and advanced recipe/build process for sub inventory. It looked great and had lots of heavy client-side JavaScript stuff going on.

We covered a bunch of topics. Here are some small notes that I picked up from the discussion. No specific order.

- Steve and Alan were discussing settings and adding more settings for production and manufacturing.

- Steve was asking for input on direction, on the sales side of things.

- Alan was proposing some industry specific skins to help with sales.

- Alan was also saying that we should circle back around and build out more reports or even dashboard level pages to show all of quick data, counts, and totals. He was saying, we should stick to our name - Adilas - All data is live and searchable - stay true to that slogan. Along with that, we were talking about some places that still need some help and a little bit of loving. Sub inventory was a big topic along with other histories.

- Steve mentioned that he is working on some job costing options and reports. Tying in expenses, invoices, deposits, PO's, and time cards to elements of time (the job or projects).

- Small observation - both SG&A costs and job costing are dealing with deeper tracking of sub pieces and components that make up a bigger thing or item. Kinda interesting. That's some deep terrain and more than just simple inventory tracking. It's a mix of operations being tied into accounting.

- There have been more requests for more charts, graphs, and eye candy type stuff. At one point, we really wanted to do some graphical homepages to show and highlight some of that data. We have all of the data. It just isn't presented in an eye candy and easy format to see and look at.

- Alan is thinking that people (our clients and users) are going to be looking for more and more efficient ways of doing things and tracking things. There seems to be a draw or trend towards efficiency.

- We spent some time talking about AI stuff (artificial intelligence). That is a big buzz word right now. What if we redid some of our homepages (made them more graphical) and helped to show trends and month over month, year over year tends and patters. That could be really cool!

- We talked about the history homepage and how it shows a great overview of what was done or worked on throughout the day. That is some great information and a great daily summary of what happened in the system. Steve was showing that piece to a perspective client and they were super impressed.

- Back to AI stuff. We may use some verbiage like, we do such and such, similar to how AI works, without actually saying that we are using true AI. We already do a lot of that type of stuff. We feed data in, we then train the system to do certain things with it. As we go along, we can see areas that we could work on and turn our interface into a more AI oriented type product. We're not that far off, even right now.

- More talk about comparing patterns, comparing trends, and showing business intelligence (BI) level stuff.

- Mike, would like us to work more on the backend accounting pieces to help round out the system. Mike is a CPA that Steve has been working with for years.

- We could gain a lot, even on the virtual AI level, if we started to build out reports that show the known issues. We have a whole page that lists places and scenarios where things can get off the tracks or in the ditch (virtually). Date problems, number mismatches, disconnects, cart before the horse stuff, etc. That would be super cool to get those pieces built into the system.

- We circled back to sub inventory and possible ways of fixing things up there. We would love to add part id's, part category id's, and other key attribute id's to help the retrieval be faster and smoother. We can get the data in, it's the getting it back out that makes it a little bit harder (current database relationship structure). Anyways, some talks about ways to sure things up and fix some of the underlying pillars in the system.

- Quite a bit of discussion about Biotrack and Metrc (state compliance systems). We spend a lot of time and money trying to keep these connections up to date and working correctly. It's a moving target. We also want to pass on some of the costs to our clients and users.

- Our clients have some great ideas and tend to tell us what they are wanting and/or needing. That is awesome! We just need to figure out how to charge them for those upgrades. Basically, who is going to pay for the changes? Sometimes that can get tricky - either way, it's still part of the game we play.

- Most of our clients want real-time data going back and forth (live - not batched or staged).

- Alan and Steve were talking about ways to simplify the current API connections.

- Light talks about what some of the other developers were working on.

- We would love to be able to bill for real usage and what features our clients are using.

- We keep seeing costs increase. This is costs to us, costs to our clients, and even costs that 3rd parties are pushing and/or passing on. Everything seems to be in a state of upward flux. Along with this conversation, there were talks about some of the 3rd parties limiting throughput and/or limiting the number of API socket requests without a price increase.

- We talked about changing some of the file names. Some of the pages started out as a cannabis related page. We are now making those things more general so that we can use them (the pages and features) for our other clients.

- Going where the money is (based on client requests).

- Steve wants us to quote/estimate some new code for a client. Alan was recommending that we break things into phases and stages. Good discussion on this topic.

- Steve is doing some high-end business consulting for some of our clients. Helping them make decisions and plan for the future.

- The last topic of the day was thinking and finding ways to harvest the services (service byproducts) that our clients want or need (adilas marketplace stuff). If we help our current clients, that is an avenue of funding that comes from inside vs having to get new clients. Basically, help them get what they want. Steve put it this way - make your choice and then build up that choice (meaning software choice and pushing that software further along).

Phone call with Cory to go over some questions and then check up on priorities for what project is next. Recording notes from today and the past couple of days. Quick phone call with Bryan.

Great little meeting with Russell. We are working on some mock-ups for a mini project that we are going to build together. The mini project will end up beign a dashboard of sorts (somewhat limited, but just for practice). We were working on the mock-ups today. We are going from a super simple paper and pencil drawing to a layout with boxes and placeholders (wireframe). The wireframe is great for conversations and being able to ask questions without going into crazy amounts of detail.

We were working in Adobe XD and putting different notes in different places. Russell was making a place for notes for interactions (how it works) in one place, notes for functionality (what it does), and then other interactions and user experience stuff (UI/UX). We ended up having a good discussion about budgets, dreaming big, but keeping things within a budget related scope.

We ended up jumping in to Snagit and going over quick ways to grab and build a quick mock-up. Russell also showed me how to download Adobe Fireworks (substitute for Adobe Photoshop - much easier). That is awesome, I loved using Fireworks. So much faster and better for simple web graphics.

Anyways, we got the wireframe mock-up done and then started moving into a more realistic version. He was calling it a high-fidelity mock-up (more true to form and even prepped with fake data and charts). We built a basic mock-up with headers, footers, navigation, and backgrounds. We then started to duplicate that basic template to make the other pages. One step at a time.

Great meeting with Shannon. We were working on project # 3, education and training - aka adilas university project. We spent the whole time going over things and putting together a number of pages, just brainstorming ideas, needs, and direction. See attached for where we are working.

Meeting with the Cannapages guys over GoToMeeting. We started out by debugging an API call. We tried a few things. I then had to login to the client's site, flip some switches, and then try it again. They are pulling menu info, but we had to turn on some ecommerce settings to let the pages (API sockets) play through.

They also expressed a desire to get two more API endpoints for pulling sub inventory attributes (list of values) and parent attributes (list of values). They then take that data and loop over it to populate their menu forms. I sent an email out to Cory with an update.

Three different sessions, spread out throughout the day. Emails and checking payroll settings (new changes that got pushed up). Meeting with Bryan. Looking at a small bug on the data 10 PO reports. We got into a mix of old school values and new school code. The error ended up being a query loop without a start and end row value. Thus, it was duplicating form fields. We made the changes and pushed up new code to all servers. In the afternoon, more emails and setting up a client meeting for tomorrow.

Going over the federal tax and payroll withholdings in the calculate payroll page. Ended up on a quick phone call with Eric to help him merge in some code to check on a live server. He needs to show someone the new page tomorrow morning.

Back on the payroll withholdings. As I got deeper into the mix, I found that they, the federal government, had changed how they did their withholding lookups. I had to alter some table values. Originally, I had done the wrong look-up tables out of the Pub-15 document (offical tax table document - 70 ish pages). They, the federal government, took off the pay frequency for the automated payroll systems. Previously, we have always added tables that had the pay frequencies built into the tables (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual). The new tables that we were supposed to use didn't have that. I had to do some light tweaking of our code.

Anyways, got everything in and done and push up new code. Merged in the branch with master and ran some database updates. The new code will go out tomorrow morning with the auto deploy.

Working on payroll updates for 2024. Did some dynamic looping and math inserts for database look-up tables. Started looking over login on the calculate payroll page.

Quick meeting with Cory. We went over a small recap and small check-up on how things were going on different projects. We talked about some of the next and upcoming projects. Super short meeting.

Quick meeting with Bryan. Reviewing his progress on tying in PO's and flex attributes to elements of time. Conversation about classic vs snow owl (visual themes inside of adilas).

Switched over to payroll stuff. Working on payroll and pub-15 tax withholdings for 2024. Working on entering withholding tables.

Working with Shannon.

- Whatever brings us to certain points... lots of ways and similarities (commonality and overlap).

- Going over the working genius results with Shannon.

- Overviews for the value add-on core model.

- Concept of boundaries. Boundaries are different than rules. Self-ruling... only able to create those for yourself.

- My personal limits or ways to keep myself in check when things get crazy.

- General and culture specific norms.

- Personal boundaries are set by you... allowing for flex, when needed.

- It's not the hours... it's what is going on during those hours.

- Markers - if, then's - looking through the lens... (how am I doing?)

- Cycles

- I get to define the areas and parameters

- Power to make a change and make a different choice.

- I don't like to be micromanaged - personally.

- If this starts to happen, I need to take this course of action...

- It's more about what I'm planning to do.

- Practice and learning.

Working with Bryan. Small code review and manual merge. Pushed up files for testing. This is for a 3rd party API socket. Fixed a small error on the time homepage (query problem). Fixed a small tip error on the receivables report (payments not yet deposited - put a null error in an if statement). Small tweaks.

Meeting with Russell. Going over all kinds of stuff. Here are some of my notes:

- Notion (software) and setting up his own performance metrics.

- Experiencing all sides of it (meaning programming, managing, admin, planning, design, DevOps, etc.).

- Russell likes the frontend to the backend vs backend to the frontend.

- Talking about different roles, within a company

- Tech lead and/or managing over developer teams mixed with project management

- Make the developers plan it out and then run it through you

- High cognitive loads all day saps or drains your energy

- Talking about the working genius - took the evaluation/exam - https://www.workinggenius.com/

- Talking with Russell about some of the working genius concepts.

- We got my eval back and looked over it. Light back and forth talking about it.

We then jumped into Adobe XD to start working on a new mock-up (our little baby project). Starting with generic boxes and basic layouts (in XD). We had a rough drawing that we were working off of. We then started to mock-up and create placeholders for all of the pieces. Russell was putting info and details off to the side of the different places and/or placeholders. The design was really clean, the details were on the canvas (off to the side). Explaining what each thing does or needs, without putting any details on the actual design.

Russell was doing research to look-up what he wanted invoices to look like (google image search). Basically, look up ideas on the internet and detailing it out (what do we really need or want?). He also used the canvas area (in XD) to put other ideas and then even make choices/options. Dream big... then pull it back (budget scope). Lightly labeling the layout as it got more define. List of requirements. How does this work, what do I want, etc. - for me - see the snipping tool mock-up from adobe XD, just the concept.

Lunch meeting with Bryan. Spent most of the time talking about adilas and where things are at and/or going, at least as far as we can see. Good meeting.

Bunch of random stuff. New branch and patch from Wayne dealing with a local without an SSL and port number. Helping Drew from high valley bike and Eric with tips and change due stuff. Eric would like to keep working with adilas. He and I were talking about how Eric talks to other businesses and what angle he takes. He asks them if they could help him with development efforts by telling him what they like or don't like about their current systems.

I then spent some time looking over some adilas financials to help Eric see where things were at. Small history... Eric started out building the shopper app for a client. We talked about old code, in-line code, and adding things right into the main pages. We then did some light black box code. He knows that he is needed. He would really like to be a part of the team. Talking about managing the situation (growth or maintaining or shrinking). Sometimes shrinking is actually a valuable move to get things in or back in control. Going over growing pains (lots of them). We are both working odd hours based on family stuff.

Back-up files for elements of time. Going through months and months, years and years of notes and saving things out as a pdf on to my local hard drive. I was using the file called https://data0.adilas.biz/temp/print_elements_of_time.cfm

Working with Bryan - API method - searchCustomerInvoices - linking to tables (joins) that we don't need - complicating the results for an output. - copy and paste errors (trimmed a query down from 59 columns to 17 columns.

Emails and internal tech support - Wayne had questions and Shari O. was reporting on yearend stuff. Checking out yearend documents and financials.

Working with Shannon. We talked about it (meaning adilas work) getting personally too expensive (for all of the team members). No one coordinating creates more chaos. Ideally, we want to let Steve decide and make some decisions. Shannon and I were talking about a possible compromise for doing sales (current request) but with the plan of making and working on the plan (together). We need to determine the highest priority. Triage - fix the worst things first (head wound vs a cut on the finger).

I showed Shannon a small acronym "RAPD" (like the word wrapped) from the children and youth booklet. This is a process that we go through to help us decide and develop our talents and work on things. R=Reflect, A=Act, P=Plan, and D=Discover. Ideally, the process works best if you go in this order DPAR but I liked the acronym RAPD better. It's a cycle...1. You discover that something needs to change. 2. You make a plan. 3. You act on that plan. and 4. You reflect on how you did or what worked and/or didn't work. It keeps going, over and over again.

This is a note for myself... I'm currently seeing that a plan needs to be made. What if we acted and helped Steve out knowing that we will circle back around to the planning phase? For me again, maybe I'm doing too much planning. Sometimes we get stuck in survival mode. This makes you desperate. You are willing to try everything that you (I) can just to try to get some traction (almost out of control). Most of us tend to go back to what you (I) know. If you are in a panic mode, thinking that everything is over my head (feeling overwhelmed), that becomes a full drain mode. It affects everything. In relationships, we tend to think... if other people would get their act together, it would solve my (your) problems.

Shannon and I spent some time talking about books dealing with change and psychology. That was kinda fun.

Book by Jordan B. Peterson - "12 Rules For Life, An Antidote For Chaos"

Adult version - For older audiences - Chapters
1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back
2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
3. Make friends with people who want the best for you
4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
8. Tell the truth - or - at least don't lie
9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something that you don't
10. Be precise in your speech
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

Kid version
1. Tell the truth
2. Communicate precisely
3. Learn from others
4. Take care of myself too
5. Don't compare myself to others
6. Pause to appreciate
7. Take control of myself before taking on the world
8. Do meaningful things
9. Don't be afraid to fail
10. Keep good company
11. Act like my best self
12. Bring honor to my family

Other notes from our meeting:

- Humor - what a great antidote

- Aligning our lives - Alignment - I really like that topic

- Shannon was talking about a doctor and what they do before taking a case... looking back (timelines and what happened - gives some understanding)

- I am wondering if Steve is feeling abandoned? Ship A and Ship B stuff (back in June of 2023).

- Real hurt there (feeling abandoned)

- Reactions to not match the input - emotionally - there may be a deeper wound

- How to acknowledge hurt without putting yourself back into the pain spot

- Play with better boundaries

- Once a problem gets so big... a disruption - sets everything else off of balance

- Relief becomes the ultimate goal - it may not be solving the real issue

- What to do if someone else is stuck in a bad place - how to help them

- Looking at the long-term solutions

- The pain of the problem needs to more than the pain of the solution - this forces changes

- Just for the record, these are some things that Steve has been saying for quite some time. They are kinda related but slightly different. "Ringing the bell, the bell is broken" - "Go get some firewood - stop staying around the fire and go get some firewood" - "I'm so sick of the plan, people just need to do something" - "We have enough cool-aid, let's sell some cool-aid" - This may not fit here, but most of these are dealing with sales and the need to get out there and sell our product.

- Balance between planning and acting

- Concepts - boundaries

- I imagine that I drive him crazy that I write things down

- Seeing patterns and taking time to look at things

Working with Steve. He was having problems with local machine/box. We had to force to https and change the port numbers. I sent a text to Wayne. After that, we were looking at labels. Spent the rest of the time following logic and debugging the bulk print labels stuff. We ended up finding a small black box logic piece that was playing through (from times past) that was interrupting our current flow. We put some logic around the special include and got it working again.

Working with Bryan to merge in code for assigning elements to time to other main players. Fixed some merge conflicts and did a light code review with Bryan. Pushed up files on data 0 and did some live testing. Flipped over to a zoom meeting to do some more planning. Working on phase 2 of tying things between flex attributes and elements of time. I was drawing and having Bryan take notes on new changes.

Closing elements of time behind the scenes for Cory and Kelly for a demo corp on the Herbo server. Spent some time working on the pub-15 for 2024 - entering withholding table data.

Working with Eric and doing database updates. Pushed up some new code and ran updates on all systems. Talking about chart of accounts reports.

We have a client who wants to use the main adilas ecommerce site and do their own SEO (search engine optimization) and web stuff. Super advanced black box and dynamic page building for our clients and their web addresses. Basically, taking what we already have and adding a reverse look-up based on a SEO parent attribute. Then taking that dynamic data and building a special page to help with the SEO for the client. Light database talks and going over options. Drawing and going over sub inventory and parent attributes. Talking about possible bug on our local boxes for https and port numbers (test is different than the live sites).

Working with Eric and Cory and trying to merge and push code. Merge conflicts between Wayne and Eric's code.

Meeting with Cory. Fixed a few elements of time to help close them up. On retention (potential adilas department - upcoming), Cory and I were joking around on who is going to take what. Going over other projects and rehashing to do lists for Eric, Bryan, and myself. We spent a lot of time talking about the chart of accounts project for Kelly. I was pitching a certain thing, and we were trying to see if it would meet her needs.

Emails and recording notes.

Payroll updates based on new pub-15 values. Entering new look-up table values.

Meeting with Bryan. We were talking about a 2-week notice and plan. We need to wrap up some development projects and switch over to doing some sales stuff. Bryan Dayton was talking about setting up a meeting with Brian Mowris. He works for a company that helps and supports other small businesses.

Bryan Dayton and I were talking about options to help auto updated inventory (other systems - circle B - speed and access to data). Other topics were independent website design, knowledge that we have learned along the way, and then doing a code review with Bryan. We found a few small things, fixed some merge conflicts, and other small changes.

Working with Eric on the chart of accounts project. Light history about how and why we built what we built. Proposing a tabular view for the P&L and the balance sheet.

Meeting with Shannon. One of the goals is helping Steve out with sales. On our overviews... for the adilas lite and fracture project, we would like to cut things down to the top 3 main pieces or topics. Maybe simplify the adilas lite model (web pages - take off the accordions and make it really simple...).  What are the three main points? Less is more. Focused and to the point. We did some comparing between the old and the new. When we can, some of the new graphics are going to be worth a thousand words.

Meeting between Steve, Alan, and Brandon. From a previous meeting, we had some assignments. When we started today, we let Alan start. He knocked it out of the park. Great job! Here are some of my notes:

- From Alan - Regularly scheduled intervals

-- Weekly/bi-weekly - Group meeting (15-30 min)

-- Monthly - budget meeting w/ admin/billing (30 min)

-- Quarterly - in-depth goal/vision meeting (1-2 hrs)

-- Annually/Semi-annually - co-owner meeting (30 min)

- Agendas - Alan

- Rotate facilitator - who is leading the meetings

- Small budget talks from Alan - he had worked up some plans

- More salary type options - Alan would like to see us get away from hourly and do more of a salary type approach

- Paid time off

- Get files from Alan - he has some great stuff

- He even did some great work on goals, mission statements, and budgets

- Keeping true to - all data is live and searchable - acronym for adilas

- Monitoring usage and helping to automate things - use technology to see where most people are going and then help speed up those places or parts of the system.

- Getting to an automated free version (trial version) - easy onboarding and setup type scenario - let people try it out

- Following up on people who use or try the free version - sales leads

- Demos, videos, and ways to learn the system

- Working backwards - what do we have already, fill in the gaps, and make it better as we go - different way at looking at the system. Instead of saying, we need to rewrite the whole thing, look at what we have, find the gaps, and then fill in those gaps.

- Updates and videos to help with training for new features

- Cutting costs - lots of talks here

- It got kinda ugly - small internal finger pointing session... everybody is feeling pressure at different levels. Not very good :( (frowny face) but... we had a small little war. It got a little bit heated.

- The subject switched from cutting costs and HR problems to sales and getting out and making sales - everybody, developers included

- Get out and talk to people - slow down and sell it - finding people who fit

- Who should we be selling to? Who are we looking for?

- From Steve - Firewood and analogy of going out, leaving the fire, and looking for firewood

- Changing the approach - we are developers - get ideas from other people and just talk to people - as you talk to people, things will just open up and you'll get a chance to talk to them about what you are doing or hope to be doing. Just open your mouth.

- Eye opening, if you get out there - If you are out and about, you will be amazed at what is out there.

Meeting with Bryan to do some code review. Tying elements of time to other system players (main id). Fixed a merge conflict, light code review, and pushed up database update files.

Working with Russell. We were talking about using chatGPT (AI bot) and getting suggestions on code. We then worked on some AJAX and infinite scrolling reload. Planning for a new project. See assignment below.

- Assignment for Russell and I - Start with Adobe XD - design a dashboard, chart, deposits, drill-downs, invoices, modal pop-up (with options for edit, view, print), time/projects and dynamic search - When we build it, the dashboard, it will be... I (Russ) do, we (both) do, you (me) do. Training exercise.

More payroll updates.

Working on payroll updates. Printed out pages from the new Pub-15 for tax withholdings. Matching up numbers, look-up tables, and reading through instructions.

Back on the data upload for a client on data 7.

Meeting with Shari O. over the phone. We went over questions on yearend payables, math questions, and also what about different payments for different things (interest and commissions). She saves results and documents things with spreadsheets (full audit trail). After talking about work stuff, we switched gears. We had some conversations about honesty issues - what stresses us out - what is the correct way (legal way) - our levels of job satisfaction - team stuff - etc. Good conversation. Shari O. and I can talk pretty openly about all kinds of subjects. That is nice.

Emails. Small label builder grid size fix. Looking into a customer inventory items upload.

This never happened. We were going to talk about the advanced sub inventory search and simulating some bad data.

Going over meeting notes from this morning (# 10813). Light training on customer affiliate programs for invoices, ecommerce, and customers. After that, we chatted and talked about some other internal needs and ideas. See notes below:

- A lot of the meeting kept coming back to - what are the rules? How do we define things?

- That is something we are really missing and what is needed in defining some structure.

- Efficiency - how can we create more efficiency?

- Retention - clients, users, internal, more??? Retention may need to include all of those pieces of the puzzle. We need help internally, Brandon wants to help to keep sharing the vision and helping other people succeed as they try to define and implement more structure.

- Make a new graphic to show the structure... this could go along way...

- If working in different departments, report to the correct supervisor based on the project and/or task.

- Helping people know who they are accountable to report back to.

- Start with simple budgets - incentives, bonuses, etc.

- Flex grid to help track budgets - super simple

- Easing pain points

- Guidelines on budgets - make up some rules

- Budgets - start right off or wait? could go either way.

- Staffing - prioritize the biggest needs

- Understanding the biggest pain points

- Biggest resources - other people who are already doing those things

- Get some feedback and input from others - help them invest in the solution

- People are one of your best assets

- Customer support - Sean, Cory, and Shari O.

- Counseling with others - Getting that input from others - Perspective changes - May take a little bit longer

- Communication - Getting people on the same page, then getting it going, then helping it keep going

- Leadership and defining roles

- Processes - plans - what does that look like?

- Talk in person - setup a time to meet, call, text, etc. somehow meet

- Micro meetings

- Department text thread (quick blast) or department email - Group communication format

- Following protocols - Going up the chain - Somehow making a note or list of items to talk about

- Discussion and re-defining expectations - Softer conversation first - If it becomes reoccurring, escalate it

- If we need to, we could use the advisory board to help make hard decisions

- Finding and seeking out good talent

- Not everybody is a leader, that's ok

- Apply my areas of expertise to customers, users, and internal people - training, consulting, support, setup, planning

- Retention Department - Responsible for things such as: Training, Setup, Customer support, Consulting, Adilas University, and their own research & development

Meeting with both Steve and Alan. Originally we were going to be discussing some ideas on company structure and where things are headed. We got a little bit sidetracked and ended up covering a number of other topics. These are some of the notes.

- We spent some time doing a general catch-up. It's been awhile since we have met as a group.

- Steve was talking about some of his friends that are teachers and have been forced to do online school (prison camp for the teachers). They, the teachers are being watched super closely. They, the teachers, almost feel like it's a prison camp type atmosphere (too tight).

- Advances in software

- Age of our kids, they are growing up

- Business, everyday wondering what you will do today and tomorrow

- Kelly has been pushing hard on us

- Master/slave relationship

- The squeeze - by clients, internal owners/users, and in general. We are feeling it!

- Analogy of a bug vs windshield - which one are we?

- How do we find our way forward? Plan and vision

- Super loose structure - our current plan is very loose

- Wild west thing - our current mode of operation - minimal rules, laws, expectations, or structure

- Getting spread thin

- Alan was talking about teams for projects but no one takes ownership

- Still dealing with teams, they didn't want to be left out but didn't want to really participate

- So much to do but the turnaround is so slow (how quick we can get the projects across the finish line)

- Frustrating/mental health

- Building and not finishing things

- MVP (minimal viable product) - Leaving stuff that is still flapping in the wind

- Whirlwind (bouncing all over)

- Discussions on funding and a centralized office

- Drift & culture

- Deadlines and nobody caring about it

- Why don't you care?

- Managers of Steve's stores - back in the Morning Start Automotive, Inc. days - They really kept things rocking and rolling

- Not taking any crap and rolling some heads if needed

- In the replacement business (people) - When you deal with employees, you tend to be in the replacement business (from past expierence)

- Reviewing peoples work and making sure that people are on task

- How big can you get before it implodes on itself? Experimenting...

- Managers and assistant managers

- Employees and workman's comp

- Payments, lawsuits, HR stuff, discrimination - more employee/employer stuff

- Filling in the gaps

- Start with a manager

- Manual of what your duties are - put it in writing

- Defining roles

- Part-time or variable working schedules

- Part-timer's may end up costing you money

- Scheduling and who is working when

- Missing the employee/manager piece

- Independent contractors and putting requirements on them

- We are all part owners but what does that mean?

- Alan had some questions like - Co-owners and having to pay to be paid? How does that work. Basically, we had to pay money to become a co-owner and then we get paid by the company for doing work. Just trying to figure things out.

- How does joint ownership work?

- Defining responsibilities

- Who wants that management position?

- We (humans) know right from wrong

- Too much oversight or pampering

- Learning curve

- Moving on

- You could always get someone better - or not - That's a variable

- We can't hire people that need help all the time

- Avoiding things

- We have all been trying really hard

- Good guy/bad guy and letting people go

- Fitting virtues to the jobs that they can do

- Efficiency

- 1 person can manage 5 or less people

- Are our people remote or local

- Going over some possible structure options

- Getting the managers setup

- Being able to crisscross over departments (some flexibility)

- Each department does their own R&D

- Able to switch things up (bring new life)

- We have so much stuff that our clients could use but we don't do the client retention stuff (letting them know about stuff like gift cards, loyalty points, new carts, etc.)

- Each department could use a programmer

- On purpose, rotate people around

- Bare bones - What do we need, right this minute?

Phone call with Bryan. Going over things and making plans for tomorrow. Emails and then recording notes and doing some prep work. Recorded some issues in our known issue file.

I've been stewing over some things for the past few days dealing with how to help structure the adilas company structure. My daughter came home from being up at the college for classes and I was asking her some questions as she had a snack.

I was asking her, what would you do if you had a situation like... (fill in the blank) and just started asking her questions. It took a bit of prep work but once we got on the same page, it was kinda insightful. Here are a couple of my notes:

- Talking about company structure - it's not a challenge of leadership skills - it is more of a question about use of resources, time, and who is managing certain aspects.

- If certain things aren't being done, who do we get to fill in the gaps? We may need a leader and a helper (fill in the gap person).

- Certain roles are just too much for one person.

- Time management

- Burnout

- Dedicated people to help in certain places

- Employees - possible trauma or bad experiences

- Everybody has too much or too many roles and expectations

- Investing in mental health and wellness for our team and crew by getting someone to help with certain roles

Going over new reports and who is going to work on those reports (assignments out to developers for certain projects). We talked about coming up with a solution to our bad data issue that we were going over this morning (a corp on data 10 from over 1.5 years ago). We came up with two possible solutions. We are going to be running a limited number of records through on a testing server. We will then go in and manipulate the testing data to simulate the bad data that we found. We will then figure out how to fix that data and make it correct and/or correctable.

Sharing info with Cory and Shari O. on some ideas for changing our main company structure. I referred them to some documents and brainstorming sessions from last week (1/15/24 to 1/20/24). Shari O. was really emphasizing the need for open communication between key players. We have been having some issues with communication channels.

Meeting with Kelly and Cory and Shari O. over a Zoom meeting. The main goal of the meeting was to look at some bad data for a client on data 10. We can't make it happen again, it was data from well over 1.5 years ago, and everything since then has been good. I'm just being silly, but it was a bit of a beat-up drill and a brow lashing of sorts. The good thing is we found the issue (limited number of bad records). At least we have a starting point to work from. We do not have a plan yet but that will come.

I was pitching the idea of a known issues report. Instead of just showing data (normal reports), we could actually look for bad data or errors in our code or data mismatches. That would be a small level of AI (artificial intelligence) on the reporting side. Imagine a report that said... check this and that... these things are known to be off the rails. That would be super cool. Side note, we actually started a known issues report way back (3/11/09)... at least listing out known areas that might have trouble. We just haven't been able to get around to building out that report. The actual report is in our code at this location... (top_secret/secure/known_issues.cfm). It has a huge list of possible problem areas, date mismatches, flow problems (something happened out of order or out of normal flow), and id/relationship possible problems.

As soon as we get a chance, it would be super cool to help uncover these and other possible problems and issues. Kelly had the idea of working backwards to help find the errors and exceptions.

One big take away, and something that we want to keep in mind for fracture (adilas lite) are these key pillars... We track money, inventory, finances, and full histories (Kelly was saying that those pieces are huge keys to what makes adilas awesome).

Recording notes from earlier in the week. See notes in the shop for 1/17/24 to 1/20/24.

Recording notes and finishing up entries from 1/16/24.

Training session with Hamid. He showed me some progress on his bootstrap training and then we jumped into an Adobe ColdFusion training session. Nothing too fancy, working on forms, URL's, variables, and simple if statements. I showed Hamid a little bit about XSS (cross site scripting) and how to help prevent that type of thing (web security for URL's and form values). Fun session.

Recording notes. Then going over the sounding board doc from Shannon and I, from a couple of days ago. See elements of time # 10777 for details and a copy of the document (both original and modified version).

Planning meeting with Bryan. Going over progress on the tie-in between elements of time and PO's. We decided to broaden it out to allow any of the 12 main players to tie directly into elements of time. We are harnessing code from flex grid tie-ins, linking main id's and app types. Good stuff.

He is going to create a function that will populate any dynamic link between any of the main 12 players. We already have code in place, but it is hardcoded (embedded into one or more pages). The new function will take an app type id (one of the 12 players) and a main id. It will then generate all of the code and verbiage to make that dynamic hyper link.

Meeting with Shannon to go over ideas for the adilas company structure. We spent the whole time putting together a two-page proposal on where we would like to go with the adilas team, an admin advisory board, and four internal departments. See attached.

We got some of our info from element of time id # 2284 inside of adilas. These were notes from Brandon and Alan as they were doing some brainstorming. Basically, Shannon and I took some of that and put together the small proposal. It still needs a little bit of work but has a good flavor, in my opinion.

Debugging the add/edit customers page with Cory. Jumped on a client meeting with Wayne, Steve, Cory, and the clients (a few different people). They, this other 3rd party solution was wanting some custom ecommerce (menu) type stuff. Including a new sub domain pointer, ability to inject meta data, and customer headers on existing ecommerce pages and websites. The whole thing is for more or better SEO (search engine optimization).

Wayne did a great job explaining what we do and how we do it. He also mentioned full take overs on ecommerce pages and ways to interject custom code without rewriting everything. I thought that he did a great job. Good stuff!

Work and continuing education session with Russell. Quote from Russell, "Design Determines Functionality". We were talking about how design (web or interface design) can sometimes make or force certain backend functionality based on those designs and how things look and act.

We were working on some AJAX training. Today we spent time populating the drill-down data lists and appending that data to the current code. Started working on the infinite scroll functionality. This is where you pull in records (limited record set), as you scroll, you pull in more records (pull in next set of records), up to a certain point. We didn't quite finish it, we will circle back around next week. Good conversations and good learning session.

Jumped on a meeting with Eric. Debugging some code and running some tests for stock/units and wholesale carts for his tip project. As we were working, it was amazing how many places (code pages) that this little project hit. Over 48 pages that needed changes. That is just adding tips to invoices. Cause and effect to statements, deposits, accounts receivable, accounts payable, balance sheets, tons of different invoice versions (pdf, mini, printable, add/edit pages), reports, searches, logic, etc.

Lots of moving parts.

Meeting with Steve. We started out talking about some projects for one of the developers and what is still hanging out there. Will is working on a three-page website, bi-directional messaging out in ecommerce, and a new specific ecommerce shopping cart.

We, Steve and I, went over some things that Shannon and I were talking about yesterday (1/16/24). We had some great back and forth pitching ideas and being pitched to. That was fun. Pros and cons, ideas, internal struggles, laws of business, etc. We know that most of our clients are looking for ways to be more efficient or looking for features that help them with efficiency.

We got into talking about how difficult sales are in real life. You have to jump through a lot of hoops.

This might sound silly, but we talked about how many times we have to have virtual little talks with ourselves - should I, yes, no, shouldn't I do this or that, yes, no, etc. It's not all cut and dry. We have to daily keep pushing the ball down the road.

As part of our conversation, we have decided that one of our biggest goals is to figure out our company structure and really make some plans there. That is huge, for us.

Towards the end of the meeting, Steve had some code questions. We got him figured out and going in the right direction. Good conversation and making progress. I think the fact that we are acknowledging that we need a bit more structure is huge for adilas. I'm excited to see where everything goes.

Emails and recording notes for the day (1/16/24). Lots of good break throughs for me today. See notes for date listed.

Our original plan was to work more on the SWOT analysis today. It ended up being a sounding board session. I was talking and telling Shannon what was going on and she was recording notes. See attached. Lots of fun ideas and concepts. It does repeat itself a lot but overall, great little brainstorming session. The cool thing is that we have some great take aways from our session. Here are just a couple. See the notes for deeper thoughts and ideas.

- AI (artificial intelligence) - Trends and observations

- Who? - Lots of talk about who will oversee and manage what

- Plans

- Marketing - Ideas including being able to cover over 85% of any business. Also some great ideas on marketing adilas' AI (artificial intelligence) aspects

- Company Structure - We really want to nail this down

- Value Add-On Core Model - Industry specific skins and quick aggregates (counts, sums, totals, etc.)

------

New note - added on 1/19/24 - see attached for a new or updated version of our sounding board notes. Small edits and tweaks made by Brandon, after the fact. See attached.

Meeting with Alan. It's been a while since we have met. We started out doing a little bit of catch-up. We were talking about direction and goals. It feels like we are sort of scattered and don't have a focus. Alan and I are planning to meet to start working on small goals and projects at least once a week. I was mostly talking and drawing (on the screen) and Alan was chiming in and giving feedback. Here are a few things that I remember - I should have written other topics down as we talked about them.

- What are our main goals? Lots of time spent here hashing over things and lightly stating some of our goals.

- How big do we want to get? How big are we? Are we the right size or do we need to grow or shrink?

- Efficiency - pros and cons to that. Not everything is done purely on efficiency and that's ok, if there is a reason for that. We would love to be more efficient but that is not the total main goal. It will be a mix.

- We need a plan!

- Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew or take on too much. We need to break things into smaller pieces. Basically, get some things across the finish line, even if they are small. That's better than trying to take on a huge monster/elephant and not getting any of it across the finish line.

- We have 10 or so projects that are half baked (or some percentage done but not fully completed). Maybe Alan and I can circle back around and work on some of those projects together as a small team. Just an idea. Maybe plan a day or a time and then chip away at those things. Currently, we are all working on our own or individual projects.

- Talks about teams and sprints, vs individuals and solo projects.

- Cycles and phases - We tend to build up, then have to trim down when things are tight due to a money crunch or money crunches (plural). We recover for a bit and then tend to build up again. We then repeat the cycle. It seems to be a reoccurring theme.

- We are a general business tool. That's who we are. We then try to get too specific and that kills us. We spent time and resources trying to tweak things out for a single client. We have spent tons here, virtually chasing little rabbits. Just being silly, but an old proverb says... A fox who chases two rabbits catches neither. What about a fox who chases 10 rabbits? Just being silly!

- Looking into our goals and direction - where do we see ourselves in 5 years, 10 years, 2 years, 1 year? Really taking stock of what we are doing and where we are heading.

Great little meeting. We are going to meet next week and push on setting some goals and defining our direction. Then chip away at that. I'm excited to see where things go.

Meeting with Mike from Cannapages (3rd party vendor) to see what they were missing on the API endpoint side of things. We found two main attribute lists (parent attributes and sub inventory attributes) that were missing. They can look-up the data and values, but they were missing the master list of what to loop over. We built a quick couple of pages (web forms) and pushed them up to data 7. We will build out the API sockets that go with these. That takes more time. This was just a quick band-aid. They should be good to go for tonight.

Research on cfmodule and custom tags inside of Adobe ColdFusion. Looking over Will's new code and pages. Checking into how he is building out a custom modal popup window using custom tags. Good code reuse.

Working on some project planning with Bryan for phase one of connecting the PO's (purchase orders) to elements of time. Going over ideas and touching pages where new code and changes are needed. Bryan was taking notes. We went through the pages, the display options, the database fields, and even some code samples. This was all done with showing screens, talking about things, and Bryan taking some notes. This is phase one, adding a good landing spot to connect the two main players together (PO's and EOT's). Once we have this done and stable, we'll circle back around and do phase two, where we automate things from the PO side to the elements of time side. One thing at a time.

Emails and recording notes.

Phone call with Steve. Talking about plans, where we are heading, options, sales, developers, and other staffing areas. We covered a bunch of topics. Here is a quick list of topics.

- AI (artificial intelligence) and what that look like in our industry. We talked about trends that we are seeing and speed to market that other companies are gaining from on their products. This seems like it (AI) is here to stay and really making some waves. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. In my mind, I think that AI will be used as a tool, not a complete takeover option. That is just my opinion.

- External Reps and how to help manage them and their clients. If we try to support them using our internal people, we get in trouble. But at some point, the external reps will get maxed out and can't help all of the clients. It can get tricky.

- Developers (coders) and who is doing what. We have a number of projects that are 3/4 baked but not yet finished. That makes it really tough to hang your hat on those things. We get super far along, but it becomes hard to really get it across the finish line. We have a number of these projects. Some of deals with testing, dependencies, and rollout/integration plans. Other times we get to a certain point and funding runs out or whatever. We just need to get these things over that virtual hump. Some good stuff to still come down the pipeline.

- Sales, investments, cash flow, and where we are heading - bouncing between topics and just generally doing some catch up. We have a bigger client that was waving some big carrots but hasn't paid us anything. We did tons of work for them and when it came down to us actually giving them a bill, they wont pay it. That is rough and tough... Some lessons learned.

Good chat! We'll keep trying to figure things out and just keep taking the next step. That's about all we can do right now.