Recording notes from the past couple of days (10/30/23 to 10/31/23).

A couple different sessions getting back into the discount engine project. Part way through I got a phone call from Steve. We chatted about designers, developers, projects, and where things are at (in general). Good phone call. He wanted a link to the project CSS theme. That's the one that we used to develop the snow owl theme for adilas. After the phone call, back on the re-vamp of the discount engine project. Most of my time was spent combing over the older discount engine page.

Meeting with Bryan. Going over his progress on the bigger CSV file builder stuff. He's working on sub pagination and breaking whole processes into smaller pieces. Small meeting touching base and checking direction.

Light prep for a Bear 100 radio folk meeting. Going over pages that they sent me with requests, requirements, and flow ideas. We then got on a GoToMeeting session with about 10 of the radio (HAM radio) folks. Good meeting. A guy by the name of Guy was leading the meeting. I took a bunch of notes. Bascially, the aid station workers were asking for limited access to the data. Previously, the only ones who had real access were what they called the data team. We may end up exposing a super small interface to allow the data team to check things (mini API socket or packet distribution). See attached for some notes.

Shannon wasn't feeling good. We decided to skip today. We'll hit it again next week.

Working with Bryan. We got into some of the loops within other loops. It can get pretty confusing. Anyways, we were doing way too much. We ended up checking to see how many database hits were happening to pull a certain number of records. I think that because the loops within loops were off, we were making the system work too hard.

We pushed up some code and did some testing. It was still a little bit crazy and we decided that tomorrow we would rewrite it and spend time going line by line vs just a quick review of the code. We even took some time to write what we were planning in plain English vs writing it in code. Sometimes that helps you see a better overall picture vs getting lost in the technical aspects of the code.

Meeting with Hamid over the GoToMeeting session. Touching base and then helping Hamid install ColdFusion on his local box. Small intro to ColdFusion with things like variables, lists, arrays, and URL parameters. Small training meeting.

Working with Bryan on the bigger reports and processes to make CSV files. We created a new branch and are going to be rewriting some of the deep looping logic. We spent the full session going over things and starting from the top of the page and rewriting things. Lots of testing, teaching, searching, and explaining. Small work/training session.

Recording notes from 11/1/23 to 11/4/23.

Updating time zones on all servers due to daylight savings changes.

Meeting with Cory and Shari O. - Going over projects and priorities. I'm going to be doing more work on the discount engine this week. We spent a bunch of time on possible solutions for recouping credit card processing fees. We talked about adding in an extra hanger on the main invoice, commandeering the tips options, increasing prices, adding a separate line item, running things through hidden line items, play with it like a tax, adding a connivence or administrative fee, and using multiple invoices to do the job. We also talked about bulk tools and reverse discounts (add to an invoice vs taking away). Lots of options.

We physically went in and played with some of the options. Cory is going to take the info back to the client and see what they want to do. Some of the options are free, meaning they already exist. Other options may include some development time.

Another topic that seems to be heating up is people are wanting to use our loyalty points and they want to transfer in data and/or upload things from outside sources. We talked about bulk external upload tools and how all of that works. We just made some of that code for a client last month. We plan on reusing that and making it able to upload multiple times without doubling things up. Recording some notes.

Spent time working with Bryan rebuilding and optimizing some sub queries. We worked on pagination, logic, and a number of sub look-ups for the bigger CSV files and reports. Lots of testing, pushing up code on data 0, drawing, and fixing small pieces. Big long work session today. We got through the crux of the report. Bryan is going to work on it tomorrow and we'll get back together to check it out. Some good learning going on today.

Brushing up on some skills and doing some training. Going over stuff from w3schools. Made a small change to the main adilas CSS. Later on, went in and added some new verbiage for the overviews on the adilas lite site for the adilas jellyfish model and the adilas lite videos and research.

Shannon was not feeling well. We did not meet today. I did however, take some of our past work and pushed up some stuff for the adilas lite website. We have been working on some overviews for the different projects.

Work session with Bryan. We were working on the CSV builder report. We had a huge work session yesterday for about 5.5 hours. Bryan made some other changes and we spent most of this session testing, debugging, and pushing up code to test on bigger and bigger datasets. Spent some time going over to do list items. We started out with ten and got it down to about four left. We will hit it again tomorrow. We pushed up the code so that some of our power users can start playing with it. Making progress!

Meeting with Bryan to finish up his bigger report process and CSV creation report. We went through a number of to do list items. Lots of testing. Made a few small tweaks and changes. We deleted 4 un-needed files and merged in the code with the master branch. I think it looks pretty tight, from what I can see.

Going through the older discount engine file and re-vamping the code. We need this file to use a new database column and keep working while we work on the new one. Going through the older file, line by line, and making changes. Small disclaimer, I had to physically skip certain sections and pieces. It was stuff that I don't know, mostly dealing with the style that it was written in. Anything that I could, I changed it to our normal (my normal) standard of code.

Looking at a video that Bryan made. Emails, phone calls, and recording notes. Going over plans with Cory for a client import for customer loyalty points. General stuff.

Shannon was not feeling well. No meeting took place.

Meeting with Bryan. Made a few small changes to fix a bug. Spent the rest of the time looking at data and trying to figure out why or what is going on for a data disconnect for a corp on data 8. We ran lots of behind the scenes queries to check po/invoice lines, parts, time sub inventory, and fiddled with different joins and filters.

After our work session, I was on a phone call with Eric talking about tips and a new data flow process that is coming down the pipeline. We went over a few questions and talked about some of the cause and effect trickle down as we change things. We made some plans to reconnect and work on it on Monday.

Spent half an hour combing data and looking at live data for a client. They sent us a CSV file with customer info and loyalty points on it. The data is kinda messy. We'll have to do some major gymnastics to really make it work. Light prep work.

Meeting with Hamid. We went through the steps to setup ColdFusion on his local box. We got it running and did some light training and practice. We went over variables, URL scope, and lightly what you can do with the FORM scope. I then showed him some practical application on how we, at adilas, combine variables, URLs, and Forms to make an entire application. Hopefully that makes it more real as compared to just practice stuff.

Meeting with Bryan. We spent the whole time looking at sub inventory data on data 8 for a single corporation. We are trying to look under the covers and see if we can see why two reports are giving different numbers. We ran query after query checking the data. We thought that it was dealing with our inner joins and left joins. We discovered some stuff dealing with how the relationships are made. Some of them are just plain one-to-one. Some are one-to-many, and some don't even exist. That makes it a little bit tougher to follow and get consistent info.

The crux of the problem seems to be dealing with the relationship between po/invoice lines items and sub inventory packages or sub ids. Anyways, we documented a bunch of the queries that we were running to keep track of our findings. Brandon has those queries on his local computer in a file.

Emails, paying bills, recording notes, and research on SQL tables and joins.

Great meeting with Russell. We spent the whole time going over management type topics (managing code developers and software guys/gals, and IT/Server type people). Here are some of my notes:

- Talking about being really up front and open, right off the bat. Firing people - giving them a chance to change. Having agreements and expectations in place. Russell, decided that he is going to start saying things (sooner). Learning lessons and then applying that knowledge. 

- We were talking about how to measure things. Get a project that was/is of equal complexity and then seeing how long it takes. Checking on productivity. Measuring hours and lines of code. Performance metrics. Tracking insertions and deletions (time divided by insertions). Other factors - such as: Was it exploratory? What was the difficulty? What kind of code type (language, type, mix)? How much pressure was there (timelines, budget, other)? Was it a new project, old (re-vamp or refactor), or research based? Were the tasks and direction known or unknown? Great questions.

- Talking about different topics - managers, code time, review, project management, decisions, complexity

- Things that help (in the bigger picture) - making code modular and having/doing tests - this allows you to be able to refactor things quickly.

- What do you want to be (as a company)? We are being forced down the big boy path. We are a SaaS company (software as a service). That requires project management, dev ops, budgets, senior devs, it/servers, order, etc.

- Looking at budget and charging more for our services. If you want this, this is custom.

- Other software costs a lot of money - for Fox Pest Control - they went with Salesforce - it was 80K build, 40k yearly, and 20k maintenance fee - those numbers didn't include project management and design. That was only one project.

- Going into old code may end up doubling your time - updating existing or going new into existing.

- Familiarity - do you know what is going on and where possible problems may be? That is huge.

- Standards and consistency - good coding practices

- Product managers and project managers - they are different. We could use both...

- Charging for projects and maintenance of those projects. Don't forget the maintenance - that is a huge part of the puzzle.

- If no one is managing... you have to accept the hodgepodge house.

- Hard to mix managing and coding - super hard to be both... Too much pressure. Who is the leader, who is out exploring, who is managing, who is coding?

- Who can handle the one-liners (self-exploratory projects) vs everything lined out - some people don't know what is needed or what is wanted. Sometimes we give them too much rope and they hang themselves. Certain people can handle the self-exploratory projects and others need to be guided - almost step-by-step.

- Consistency - little drips vs floods

Paying bills

Meeting with Cory and Shari O. Going over projects and priorities. Small updates on where each of the current projects stand. We talked quite a bit about the need for more special line items and maybe even making them more dynamic. Special line items are things that our clients get by default (things like labor, part number other, fee, shipping, freight, discount, supplies, etc.). They also have some special functionality that nothing else has as far as how they play, how they show up for roll call, and special grouping on certain reports. The other feature that Cory has been using recently is the percentage add-on feature that takes the cart total and then figures out a percentage to make that number stick and pass through the cart as a fee or whatever. We may end up doing a project to help with these features (dynamic special line items).

Toward the end of the meeting, we were talking about yearend payroll updates and changes that are needed (taxes, rules, forms, new rates and formulas). That comes up every year. One of our constant maintenance items for the adilas application.

Checking out some code from Will for a custom client website. Quick phone call with Steve and then merging in Will's branch of code. Texting back and forth with Will to answer questions.

Working with Eric. Going over a rollout plan for his tip stuff. His branch has 24 files, 2 current conflicts, and 15 cfc's (ColdFusion components). Lots of dependencies and internal changes. Tips sound pretty easy on the surface. It is going to get deep. It affects reports, invoices, math, deposits, payouts, balance sheet items, accounts receivable, etc.

We also talked quite a bit about USAePay (merchant gateway that we use). We have a need for some of our guys to have the actual hardware devices in their hands. We have some simulators, but the actual accounts and products are only available in a live environment. That adds a challenge. We talked about the need to better equip our developers with the correct hardware to help them in their coding and debugging processes. There is a cost to some of that. There is also a cost on the not having those pieces (more development time and even some guess work).

Anyways, we spent a little bit of time going over some ideas to help us out with R&D (research and development) type projects. We may look at getting our guys better hardware to test on and actual full or paid accounts vs just test accounts and simulators. It depends on the project. Anyways, at least having conversations about the needs there.

Bryan and I spent some time working on a small fix for some of his Authorize.net code. We pushed up some changes. We then flipped over and did some more work on the data disconnect on data 8 for a client and their sub inventory reports. We went in and ran a number of test queries, made some actual code changes and pushed up the new code. Bryan sent some emails out to let some of the power users know and to go in and try it out.

Emails and helping Chuck with some questions. Getting him going in a good direction.

Meeting with Shannon. We were going over the SWOT analysis document. Shannon had taken all of the pieces and put them together into a single document. See attached. It is very rough still, but a good start. Most of our session we were talking about plans and how we want to organize things. We decided to do two different SWOT analysis. One will be for the current - ship A - or adilas as it is right now. The other will be ship B - fracture or adilas lite - where we are headed. We also decided that we are going to do a small summary (quick and dirty) and then provide more for those who really want to read it. Not everybody likes to pour over all of the details.

Recording notes from the past couple of days (11/13-11/14).

Custom data import for a client. It was dealing with customer loyalty points. Their data was kinda messed up. Played with replacing phone numbers in queries by pulling data, looping, string manipulation, and then pushing that data back into the queries in memory. Spent time combing the data and started coding the upload page.

Finished up the loyalty points upload page. Ran the whole thing once without it making any database changes just to see if it would work. Got stats, counts, and a list of things that it skipped. Actually did the process for real and sent a message to the client letting them know how it went.

Fixing a bug on the calculate payroll page. The error was some older code that was doing a loop over a query with a grouping. That code used to work fine but doesn't seem compatible with the newer code. Bryan and I were working on this bug. We got stumped for a bit. I was trying things and running a series of tests. He put the errors into ChatGPT (AI or artificial intelligence bot). By the time we were done, we had a working solution. It took both of us to get a working page again. We pushed up code and Bryan sent an email out to Cory and others. 

Recording notes for 11/15/23.

Rereading and recording notes from an older conference and seminar. See notes from the Rezzimax conference back in September (EOT # 10257). Finding my place and getting back into it. Lots of good observations, reminders, and lessons.

Time working with Shannon on the SWOT analysis. We were going over strengths section and started getting into the weaknesses section. See attached for our progress. Still really rough but making progress.

Cory had a number of 3rd party solutions that needed to be looked into. We spent some time looking at their integrations and checking API sockets. The two companies were Dutchie and Headset. Made some small changes, looking around, and then showing Cory some other changes that we made.

Hamid has worked for Walmart for almost 20 years. He was talking to me about their online shopping options. He had been there long enough to see the start, changes, and current direction. Online shopping, pick-up, and delivery have been huge for Walmart. They are even doing special Black Friday type events that are only open on the online store. He was talking about how the online store is tied to your other in-store accounts and being able to help you repopulate your cart with items that you currently buy (personal purchase history stuff). We do some similar things but on a much smaller scale.

We talked about leveraging your data and helping to make things easier and easier for you to add things to the cart and get quick history or purchase history reports. That's some important data.

We are going to skip next week and then meet up the week after Thanksgiving. Hamid wants me to train him more on using ColdFusion and passing form data and values back and forth. Just for fun, we are going to work on a pizza ordering form for some training practice.

Met up with Chuck after hours to do some code review on the add/edit customers page. We did some catching up and I showed him around some of the adilas financials. He has been doing some after hours work and light moonlighting work for us here lately.

Small hot fix for the add/edit customer page. Got the hot fix from Chuck. It was missing a button.

Meeting with Cory and Shari O. going over projects and priorities. After that, we jumped in and went over an API socket connect for a company. Light tech support helping them get connected and going.

Code review with Bryan. Going over some advanced PO exports and reports. Just for fun, the page he is working on is called the advanced PO main flex line parent sub search. That's a mouthful. Not sure who named that, but that's okay. Little bit of code clean-up and light CSS formatting changes. Pushed up new code.

Going over the tip rollout plan with Eric. Talking about dependencies, plans, stages, and steps. We ended up running the first round of database updates. We then merged in some code and ran the updates on all servers. We may need Alan's expertise to help us push stuff to the next the level. We'll do what we can and then circle around.

Recording notes from end of last week (11/16 - 11/17).

Good session with Shannon and I going over Weaknesses on the SWOT analysis document. See attached for some of our notes. Not yet polished, just putting down ideas and general flavor. Great discussions. We did some work on figuring out billing for Shannon as well. One of my big takeaways from today was make sure and measure on the gain (how far we have come) vs the gap (what is still left). It's just so much more fulfilling to measure off of the gain. I love it. I'm going to try to remember that. Sometimes we have to learn lessons over and over again. All part of the battle and part of the plan.

Going over tips, rollout plan, and code review session with Eric on his tips project. We checked on some database transactions and database updates. We then pulled down his code branch to my computer and started doing some testing with me driving and Eric watching and telling me where to go. We found a few things to fix and I showed him some other places that he did not know about that tie into the accounting for the tips. We spent some time going over flow and user expectations. Making progress.

Jumped on a Zoom session with Cory to help give some advice on an API socket connection for a client. After that, I jumped on with Bryan on the GoToMeeting session. We did some planning on a new 3rd party API socket project. After we finished, I did some light research on running old Adobe Flash videos (.swf's) to see old content that never got updated to a newer version. I found a flash player called "Ruffle". I downloaded it and played around with it. I was able to watch some of the older flash videos.

Got an email from Wayne saying that we need to update our QR code generation library to a newer version. Emails and wrapping up the day.

Emails, tech support, and checking on the WordPress site and Cloudflare issues with the main site. Phone call with Steve talking about SG&A costs. Quick phone call with Cory to go over customer loyalty points. Quick GoToMeeting with Bryan to help with some questions. Recording notes from 11/20-11/22.

Working on a special bulk clear customer loyalty points tool. Building a new page/report and all of the logic. We will let the user look-up points and dollar values for any date. We will also allow them to select a date, enter some special bulk clear notes and submit the page for processing. Once finished, we will do some look-ups and loops behind the scenes to virtually clear the loyalty points by making a manual entry to bring the values to zero. Got most of the way through the page. Still working on the looping logic and actual clean-up portion.

Working on the bulk clear loyalty points project. Added some new buttons from different pages based on permissions and look-ups. Jotted down a few more to do list items for that project. Making progress.

Jumped on with Cory and Shari O. to show them some progress on my bulk clear loyalty points project. Small show and tell. We merged in a small branch for Chuck and then talked about some clean-up on pagination on certain pages that is needed (go to the next page - pagination). We talked about yearend stuff and getting the known pieces done before the end of the year. That one, yearend tax stuff, comes up every year. We have to update 1099's, W-2's, and other reports. We also have to add new tax withholding tables and update values. Maintenance stuff.

Meeting with Eric to go over plans and developments in the tip integration project. Looking over files, making changes, and then retesting on my local. Eric was making the changes, I would pull them down and then run the tests again. Good work session.

Tech support for our guys. Checking branches for Will. Phone call with Eric going over plans and updates. Switched over to the bulk clear customer loyalty points project. Fixing the page to work with both the classic theme and the snow owl theme (look and feel stuff). Merged in some code for Will and pushed it live on all serves. Emails.

Recording more notes from a conference back in September. See elements of time # 10257 for notes on the Rezzimax conference. Some good stuff there.

Good work session with Shannon. We were going over the SWOT analysis document. See attached for our progress. We are currently working through the weaknesses section. We had some great conversations and are definitely learning some great lessons and things. We are also trying to capture the story and history from ship A (original adilas) and trying to figure out what we want to do with fracture or adilas light (ship B or the next level of the adilas application, platform, and system).

- Just for fun. Here were a few things that I wrote down today. See attached for tons more notes and ideas.

- Adilas is like a buffet with access to a kitchen as well. Instead of just getting an all you can eat buffet, imagine the possibilities if you could arrange, cook, and alter what is provided. Kinda fun to think about it.

- Sometimes talking through things and about things helps bring clarity as we talk and have open and honest discussions on certain topics.

- Being real - sometimes not the most comfortable - being vulnerable and showing or admitting weaknesses.

I really enjoyed our session today. We are talking about things that we are learning that are normal everyday life lessons, not just adilas lessons. That's pretty cool!

Working with Bryan. He is working on a big API socket project for a 3rd party vendor. Going over a number of questions on where to get certain values. Kinda like mapping. They were requesting certain data or something and we may not call it that. Sort of an interpretation of this means that and what not. We also talked about ways to control access to certain API sockets and also control traffic loads (pagination or capping things at certain record count values).

Merging in code for Will for a custom website project on data 16. Including some new ecommerce files and settings. Working with Dustin on some custom error messages. Looking into a small error message on his branch but not showing up on the master code branch. Found some possible errors with another developer's code that was affecting Dustin's project.

Recording notes from 11/27 to 11/28.

I got a text from Dustin saying that he was on another meeting with a client. So, I did some emails and then switched over to the bulk clear customer loyalty points project. I'm working on creating forms for both the classic theme and the snow owl theme (look and feel stuff). After a bit, I got a text from Dustin and we jumped on a Zoom meeting. We are trying to fix an error that got introduced by another developer. We decided to setup a meeting with the other developer and pitch some ideas.

Work session with Eric. We were going over his new changes on his tip integration project. We did some light debugging. Added some better error handling on the database update script and talked about next steps. We planned a meeting for later today to push the next steps. That gave Eric some time to make a few new changes and check some things off of the to do list.

Quick meeting with Bryan to fix an error. It was the same error that Dustin was having. We made a quick fix and I told him that I would get back with him on the resolution.

Jumped on a meeting with both Dustin and Will. They had not met so we did some quick introductions. We then talked about a new method/function that was introduced and was causing some issues. We pitched some ideas and Will is going to make a few changes. We ended up getting into some deeper underlying code stuff. We think we have a plan, and we will get it all figured out.

Working with Eric to get everything ready to merge into our main repository. This is just a part of the branch (piece of a project) that will get entered into the master code branch. We are trying to deploy this bigger branch by breaking it up into pieces. We spent our time going over pages, code review, and going page by page, looking at things. I thought that we did a pretty good job! Merged the branch into master.

After I got done with Eric, I did some code review for Will on a new change that we talked about earlier today. We ended up moving a remote API socket function out of an older file and put it on its own. That solved the problem.

Emails and recording notes for yesterday (11/29/23).

Great work session with Shannon. We are working on the SWOT analysis. Still working in the weaknesses part of that report. This might sound random but it is fun to see your weaknesses and also see what you can do to make them better. It's no fun if there are no options but there are tons of potential options. That's encouraging. See attached for where we are working. I have really been enjoying some of our discussions.

Got a text from Cory to help look at a database issue on data 4. Jumped on a Zoom meeting and was working on debugging things. Eric joined us as well. With his help, we were able to find and fix the error. I was in the right area but was super focused on one particular part of the problem. I kept trying to fix a certain value to see if that is what the problem was. With Eric's help, we widened our view and were able to find the problem. The problem ended up being a lone parentheses that was in the wrong place.

I did some prep for some ColdFusion training. Once we jumped on, we looked at some bootstrap stuff that Hamid was working on. We then flipped over and did some ColdFusion training together. We will get more into it (dealing with web forms) next week.