Running an annual payroll update for tax withholding tables. Ran the update on each server. This is a prep step. We still have to go back through and add real numbers but it at least lets it keep going until we get that next step done. We have to do this every year.

Meeting with Shari O. and Cory. Going over plans and priorities. We talked about yearend stuff for payroll and 1099's. I'll be working on that here this week. We also talked about a quote that a client would like. It's joining PO's, flex attributes, and elements of time. We watched a 15-minute video that Cory and Kelly made with the requirements and requests. We may modify it a bit, but it looks like a good project. This one has more of a manufacturing type flavor to it.

Meeting with Bryan to go over some new code for a limited printable quote page. This is similar to a packing list and only has basic quote information, checkboxes per line, and quantities. No amounts, taxes, or costs. Just lines, quantities, and checkboxes. We already have something similar for invoices, just not for quotes. We did some light debugging and then merged in code and pushed it up to data 0 for testing.

Recording notes and then on to more 1099 forms and stuff for yearend payroll updates. Made some JavaScript changes and pushed up new code to populate the 1099-NEC and 1099-INT forms. Just the black and white versions at this point. Still need to go back and do the data overlays and the red forms.

Emails and then back on printable 1099's and red data overlay forms. Texting back and forth with Steve, Cory, and Shari O. about 1099 tax forms. Came up with a plan. Phone call with Will to help him with some questions on options for uploading images for customer websites. On the 1099's, we decided to not do the red magnetic ink forms this year. We pointed the users to file those online. We only have the printable black and white W-2's and 1099's on our site this year.

Nice work session with Shannon. We were working on the SWOT analysis report and document. We are currently working in the opportunities section. Spent time talking about recording notes for the sections on pricing, getting outside funding, and marketing ideas. See attached for our progress. It's still pretty rough, but making progress. Our current goal is to capture the ideas, flavor, and concepts. We'll refine it later on.

Meeting with Russell. We spent some time doing some training on JQuery and AJAX type interactions. We were building a small report that shows a list of banks. When you click on the banks, we are going to pull up the deposit counts and total deposit dollar value. We will eventually also pull up the last 10 deposits and then show more as you scroll down (continues data feed, based on page scroll position).

Testing and debugging on the fly. Slowly building the pages up. My sample files are in the extras folder on my local box.

Working on the payroll and yearend forms for tax year 2023. Spent quite a bit of time working on the new form 1096. This is just a data overlay (on top of a preprinted and red magnetic ink form). Lots of printing, testing, and micro tweaks to get the form fields to line up. The 1096 has a bunch of little checkboxes that have to be in the correct spots. Finished things up and pushed up code.

Merging in and pushing up new tax forms for the 1096 forms. Recording notes from the day.

Working with Shannon on the SWOT analysis. We are still going through the section on opportunities. So many options and opportunities. That is really cool. Sometimes we forget about all of the potential because we are so busy trying to fix the next little thing. See attached for our progress. Today we were going over opportunities dealing with marketing the system, offering more services, funding options, and API sockets and opening things up for all kinds of hybrid type apps and systems. Cool stuff. See attached.

Meeting with Bryan to go over reports and small discrepancies in some of the numbers. Steve jumped on the GoToMeeting for half an hour and had some questions about the horizontal time view, report options, and timeclock questions. He has a client that wants to do perfect job costing using elements of time and project timeclocks.

After Steve was done, Bryan and I jumped back in and did more testing, smaller queries, checking datasets, and even going line by line over hundreds of records to look for possible problems and inconsistencies. We got pretty deep. I've got some notes and samples that we were running. We found a few of the values and decided to re-hit it again on Monday, with fresh eyes and minds.

Research and checking into some possible bad data on data 10 for a client. Tons and tons of testing and writing queries against the database. We found 25 records from back in 2022 that had some bad data. Not sure how it got there, but we found it. Bryan is going to email the client and rep to get more information and possible answers. It took a while to find the bad data among hundreds of thousands of records. I have a full page of notes and queries to show our findings if needed.

Meeting with Cory and Shari O. on projects. We went over some yearend documents and forms and progress there. We spent quite a bit of time on some new quotes. One was a revamp on a prior quote. We added in some new requirements and needs for histories for flex attributes. Randomly enough, there were other requests for other hidden history records and reports. Some of our clients want us to watch almost every single place and record histories (some visual to the users and some that are hidden and only seen by administrators). I thought that was very interesting and something that we need to be on top of for fracture and adilas lite.

One of the places that they want us to watch was settings and who turns things on/off (like a gram controller for the shopping cart) and other setting changes. We also went over more requests to tie things to elements of time (like PO's and E/R's). We have some clients that are using elements of time for help with production runs and delivery options. Interesting what people need.

The last quote that we worked on was for a better or more standard report or export for the balance sheet, P&L (income statement), and general chart of accounts (deposit types and expense types and balance sheet types). The requests was for a report that showed each segment in a nice grid like fashion. On some of the existing reports, the values are all there, they are just hyphenated, the request was to break each data piece down and export it in a simplified grid, no other formatting. I think that the end goal is to pull it into Microsoft Excel and do some tweaking of the data and values there. Just guessing.

The last thing that I wanted to say was put in another plug for better aggregated data to help provide some better speed and business intelligence (BI). We have this planned as part of the fracture and adilas lite project, it just takes time and resources to get there. There is a whole project called the adilas value add-on core model where we will be working on these layers over and on top of the transactional core. Just for fun, here is a link with other references to the adilas value add-on core model.

Note form Cory about what the meeting was going to be about: Cannapages has been trying to connect to Leafly through our API. We have opened up two API's for them but they are still having issues. Steve suggested a quick meeting with you to help facilitate this.

Here are my notes from the call, conversation, and meeting:

- They, the Cannapages guys, are super into their own vertical. They had some deep questions about things that are very specific to their industry. We use a very general or generic tool that has lots of dynamics. That works great for our clients as they are able to setup whatever key datapoints that they need. That is not very good if you are trying to standardize things and play with economy of scale (lots of people doing the same thing). There is a need for things to be standardized.

- Lots of talk about setting standards for certain 3rd party solutions and integrations. We can allow our users to set them up or we could automate things and either lead them through a valid setup and/or force them to use certain attributes and flows. If things are more standard, it just helps downstream flow and data transfer and sharing. Basically, a way to get normalized data for a specific integration and/or 3rd party solution.

- Our developers have full access to the whole adilas database. Some of the outside developers have to use API sockets and connections to open up specific endpoints. That is great and all but can be very frustrating, if they don't know which endpoints to use (virtual windows and doors into the data and records). Lots of talk about documentation and ease of use, from an outside developer's point of view.

- What is the best or biggest value for our customers or for the people using it? Some of our customers are real clients and some are outside developers. Keep those different parties in mind when developing. They have different needs.

- There are costs to do industry specific hook-ups. There needs to be a plan, settings, requirements, and set standards per integration. Otherwise, the outside developers feel like they are chasing their tails.

- Making things human readable... Many of our API sockets (backend developer endpoints through the API) are coded to id numbers or techy look-ups. Some of these outside developers really want an easy way to get at the data (plain English vs techy id look-ups). We spent some time talking about building different attribute look-ups based on text or names vs id or control number stuff. That led to talks about requirements, possible mapping options, and making settings that help with setup and automation. Otherwise, there are too many variables.

- This 3rd party needs lots of specific and categorized data (called meta data). We talked a lot about meta publishing data and being able to construct the names and associated data values. We need to put the data in the correct columns and in the correct format (standards). That makes it easier for filtering and matching things. Eventually, things will get parsed or broken up into smaller and smaller parts and pieces. This allows for things to be tagged and flagged as certain things. Once again, getting clear down to the meta data level.

- They gave us a few wish lists for the existing API. Cory took some notes there. Basically, was to standardize things and make it go and flow faster for them.

- I didn't know this, but the Cannapages guys are actually building a standalone side project to help some of our clients. Imagine something like this... a bulk tool that takes raw inventory data from adilas, strips out what they need (for their industry), standardizes it, allows for bulk edits and classifications, and then takes the new data (in bulk) and adds it to their database. They then serve up that modified data to an outside 3rd party that does or has a key industry specific website and data filtration process. I didn't really know what they were doing until this meeting. We are not even as close to industry specific as these guys are. It's basically a 3rd party bulk tool to provide data to another 3rd party. Kinda interesting.

- The last major topic was data and views. We have data (what is needed and recorded) and views (what it looks like) for multiple different parties. We have to have views and data for employee/users, data and views for state compliance agencies, and data and views for outside or normal customers, clients, and patients. That's a lot of different data and possible views (what it looks like). All of that, based off of stored data that got stored and entered into the system. Pretty high requirements.

- Some of the above notes may apply to our future fracture and adilas lite build outs. Whether it is dealing with different views, industry specific skins, normalizing data, and making the API sockets and endpoints easier to use and consume (plain English vs techy id/number stuff). Lots of good lessons being learned by being in the trenches.

Paying bills, emails, and recording notes (1/8/24).

Great meeting with Shannon. Working on the opportunities section of the SWOT analysis. Lots of good topics today. We were going over outside usage of our systems, API sockets, wish lists, industry specific skins, white labels, and tons of talk about marketing and plans. See attached for where we are working.

Phone call with Steve. We were going over the state of things and talking about projects, plans, and what is going on. We spent quite a bit of time diving in deep on the datasource project. It has also been called world building and the bus to motorcycle project. Basically, we have a database that has a number of different corporations on it. Each main web server is linked with a single database server. We have duplicated this over time and have close to 20 pairs (40 servers) doing this right now. What we like to do is split up each corporation to have it's own database. We could then move them more easily once they are decoupled from the other corporations. Queries should run faster, we could monitory sizes (database storage) easier, and move things around as needed. We were talking about what that would look like and how we could go about doing that. We both seemed to be on the same page as to where we are going.

The other major topic was dealing with elements of time and what they can do and how they interact with other pieces of the application. We just made a quote for connecting elements of time (EOT's) to PO's (purchase orders). Steve is working on a project that connects expense/receipts (E/R's) with elements of time. Some of that is already done, he is just tweaking it out a little bit. We talked about simple project time clocks, virtual mini P&L (profit and loss) statements per element of time, and other tie-in connections. That's awesome, and that's what we made elements of time for. We wanted a business calendar, not just a simple calendar.

Steve is working on a page that will allow a user to clock in/out for payroll and also tie those values to sub dates and times for projects. Both payroll and project time clocks from the same entry. Fun stuff.

Lastly, we briefly talked about funding and sales. Mostly cash flow type stuff. Always a something going on.

Going over plans and research with Bryan. He would like to work on a new horizontal time view page. Instead of having people down the sides and times across the top (what we currently have), he would like to run locations down the side and days or dates across the top. Sounds great. We have some other ideas on elements of time # 8004 for more ideas on horizontal and vertical time or date views.

We also went over some feedback from Kelly and Cory on a report that was showing some data errors for sub inventory. Recording notes.

We jumped on a GoToMeeting session and went over some Bootstrap stuff. Hamid has been playing with some themes and templates. We got into some debugging and making sure that we had all of the supporting files and folders for the themes. We also did a little bit of work on hex colors and playing with CSS code and debugging within the browser inspect screens. Small work session on playing with Bootstrap templates and themes. Good session.

Going over emails. There were a couple different chains that needed some help and loving. One was a chain dealing with one company's data and sub inventory reporting. The other was an email chain about elements of time and online scheduling functionality. I spent quite a bit of time there. I reviewed a video, took some notes, recorded some notes on element of time # 2249 inside of adilas. I then tied element of time # 2249 (progress on some of the time settings and online scheduling) to the original campground GUI interface document (element of time # 1532). I also uploaded an email with tons of good feedback, ideas, and even a requirements list for what a client/user said that it would take to get adilas up and fully competitive in the campground and hospitality industry. Really good stuff.

Meeting with Russell and doing some training on using AJAX and JQuery. Working on playing with AJAX and coding the JavaScript to show the results. Our mini mock-up shows a list of banks. When you click a bank, it shows the deposit count and the deposit grand total. We ended the day working on also showing a list of 10 items and then helping it pull and format that data. Just playing and doing some continuing education training.

Three different meetings. First, I jumped on a meeting with Eric to look over some tip stuff. We ran an update on data 11. We also looked at a CFC (code and database queries) and I made some suggestions. Something was erroring out with invoices and combined tip amounts.

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Met with Cory for a bit to go over a new quote for Kelly. She really wants a new report format for both the balance sheet and the P&L (income statement). Her end goal is to get us closer to a consolidated report that she could mix and blend corporations and financials. She is calling it a chart of accounts report. That's kinda what it is, but we'll just go with it for now. We went over a video that Cory and Kelly recorded a few days ago. I took some notes. It was a pretty good video and really explained well what she was looking for. Her main goal was visibility and exportability.

Here are my notes: The video does a great job but Cory has that.

- kelly wants all existing columns in a full grid...

- combined view system generated and user-maintained items

- going clear back to the top level groupings

- they want to see destination, groupings, types, accounts, etc.

- visibility

- all three parts (bsi, p&l, expense types, deposit types, bsi types)

- destination, category, group, sub group, account/type (item name), system generated or user-maintained, drill-down - show everything

- they want chart of account numbers

- need balance sheet numbers

- show active and inactive

- show sort order

- working toward a consolidated report - multi corp - enterprise

- corp id and corp name

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At the end of the day, I was helping Bryan with some code. He needed something merged and pushed up to a server. We did and then tested. We ended up rolling it back. He will look deeper and we'll push it up later on. It was for a custom report and needed to be tested with actual live data.

Recording notes from the Rezzimax conference back in September. See EOT # 10257 in the shop. Some great stuff and fun observations. Also did some review of the notes that I already had written down. I've got a couple more pages, from my notebook, to record.

Good work session with Shannon. We spent a bunch of time working on the SWOT analysis and recording notes in the opportunities section. There really are so many great opportunities. We also spent some time going over MVP (minimal viable product, plan, person, etc.) as well as MVT (minimal viable team). Lots of prep work on the plan and how everything needs to come together. We often want to just start on the new code because it is shinny... however, we have to get in some of the other key pieces and projects if we really want it to go somewhere. See attached for where we are working.

Emails and light tech support for Cory. She needed some backend database values for a client who is using the API to do sub inventory reports. Reaching out to Alan to setup a time to meet and chat. He had reached out to me.

Merged in some code for Bryan and pushed it up to all servers. Had to resolve a merge conflict with the files. We then jumped on the phone and spent some time talking and verbally planning a project that will require PO's to be connected to elements of time (new relationship) for manufacturing and delivery stuff. We went over a number of things and talked through some of the new pieces. There are still some unknowns, we'll have to circle back around to figure those out. For now, Bryan has enough to get started.

Catch-up phone call with Alan. We talked about the current projects that we are on. We also setup a time to get back together to talk about ship B stuff. We are going to meet once a week to get things back on track. We got busy over the holidays and what not. Good phone call.

Recording notes from the last couple of days 1/11/24 to 1/13/24. Other little odds and ends.

Meeting with Cory and Shari O. to go over projects and questions. Shari O. had a request for being able to sell stock/units and special fees and presets (pack or specific fees or collected values for each sale). We currently allow for 5 preset items to go along with the sale of a stock/unit. She was requesting 10 (increase it by 5). We talked about options, and I gave them a rough quote what I thought it would take. If the client was tech savvy enough, they could recipes. That is unlimited and could be easily configured to add multiple (unlimited) items to a sale (into the shopping cart) from a single button or click. Anyways, just a free option that already exists.

We spent some time talking about payroll and the need for other states, more HR (human resources) options, and deeper payroll/HR functionality. That would be awesome, and we'd love to add that in. It just depends on who is paying for it.

The other main topic was going over some new reports that have been requested. Both for sub inventory and more accounting level stuff.

Looking at Will's pull request for the payee receipt search changes. Made a few changes and pushed up the code changes to the branch on the code repo.

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.

Emails and recording notes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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).

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 and finishing up entries from 1/16/24.

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

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).

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

More payroll updates.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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

Emails and recording notes.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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 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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.