Back after a week off. There were a bunch of guys on the morning meeting. Steve, Danny, Sean, Wayne, Dustin, and myself. Lots of random questions and getting direction from one another. Checking emails, pushing up new code for Steve. Wayne jumped on and we talked about code automation, FTP (file transfer protocol - pushing files to individual servers), and where we are headed.

Wayne was showing us some new changes based on the older Application.cfm files and the new Application.cfc (small file extension difference but it actually plays differently). The older .cfm files read from top to bottom (linear code). The newer .cfc are functions and methods and built-in classes (just in time code). 

We also spent some time going over new code and some of the new changes that are being made. We talked about different models of employees, independents, dependables, etc. We also talked about structure and even getting into different levels, calling trees, and deeper - more set - structure. We need to keep refining the process. Lots of new changes including paths and rotating variables.

Cory and Steve were on at 10 am, but this meeting didn't take place until 11 am. Talking with Cory about projects, bugs, and other questions. She does great and just goes through her list. We did some talking, drawing, and explaining of the different pieces.

There was also some new talk of corp-wide settings dealing with the cart and show/hide tax category settings. We keep getting more and more ideas and then try to keep grabbing those ideas to get them integrated into the system. That is a constant battle.

Sean from sales was on the meeting with us. He is busy learning the backend of the system and what it can do. He has been a frontend user for almost 10 years. We talked about how small tweaks on the user side can really make a difference.

Here is an idea from Sean. He thought that it would be nice if you could have a remove all checkbox on the cart to help remove all of the line items. Currently, you have to individually check each box to remove a line item.

Adilas is a huge idea farm... as part of that process, we need to keep harvesting the ideas that put out there.

After Sean and I got finished, Steve jumped on with me to chat about some options. We were talking about plans and where we are going. We also spent a little bit of time talking about structure and what we want to do and/or become.

Positive word of mouth is awesome advertising. Negative word of mouth is equally effective but in the opposite way. Currently, we are relying a lot on word of mouth. We want it to be positive. We are trying and striving for that.

Along with those other conversations, we were talking about leadership, plans, and helping to manage what is happening. We are growing, but along with that comes changes and other cause and effects and other trickle down effects.

8/3/2020: Bryan is changing their auto renew for their med cards from 12 months to 24 months. No charge at this time.

Meeting between Eric, Cory, and myself to talk about order of operations of getting items into the cart. We have a pretty advanced mix and we just need a way to virtually control the order of operations (what to do first and what has precedence to something else). For example: Say someone scans a child barcode. If we find a match do we add that to the cart or do we also check to see if that same child or parent is tied to a tiered pricing structure (my cart favorite buttons and smart groups)? If yes, do we auto add the perfect match or prompt for more info? Anyways, there are a number of decisions that need to be made. Also, not every company wants to play the same way. It comes back to settings and being able to virtually configure, even to the order of operations and/or logic tree, on how the application processes the calls and the data. Interesting stuff.

We got on a quick call and went over some API socket calls and values. They were really close. All we had to do was times a value by negative one to flip it's sign and everything else worked. Hopefully an easy fix. It looked good in the test that we did so hopefully that will help them down the road a bit.

Working with Bryan on the project to add media/content options to sub inventory. We got a few merge conflicts resolved and pushed up some database updates. We will have to wait until tomorrow to do the rest of the pieces. One step at a time.

Meeting with a client about plans, processes, and where we are headed. They wanted to make sure that we have disaster recovery plans in place and protocols to make sure that maximum up time is achieved. This is something that all of us would like.

Lots of talks about automated testing, public facing support tickets, and more transparency about the backend stats and processes. There were 8 people on the call/meeting.

Wayne did a great job and fielded well over three quarters of the questions pointed towards the adilas side. Great job.

The rest of the meeting got into logs, stats, monitors, upgrades, disaster recovery plans, and firming up our processes. Towards the end of the meeting, we switched from servers into other development and operational needs and what not. As a funny side note, one of the guys was talking about operational needs in the delivery and security realm. It seems that no mater which way we turn, there are constantly needs and wants, needs and wants. It just keeps going!

Dustin joined the meeting but the other meeting was going over a bit. We texted back and forth while the other meeting was going on. I pushed up a file for him while we were waiting.

The last half of the meeting was Steve, Alan, and others were talking about small projects, updates, and upcoming changes. Lots of moving parts.

Shannon jumped on from 11 to 12 and we did a work session on prepping a document for an upcoming meeting. It was somewhat of a business planning agenda of sorts. See attached for what we were working on. We know that we need to do some planning and get a more firm or concrete master plan in writing and make that public knowledge, at least within our own company. Right now, the vision resides in heads of a few of the cofounders. We would like to pull that knowledge out and put it in writing and/or make a plan. Once again, see attached for some questions to help get that process started.

1/19/21: This project has finally started. As of today, $274 toward project by BD

12/23/2020: Have asked client about this multiple times and also reached out to Naturetrak but haven't heard anything for months.
10/1/20: Add the NatureTrak to the adilas 3rd party solution. This will be the spot to turn things on/off. We will need to figure out which adilas API sockets that we need to turn on (our side). We are planning on having NatureTrak be able to pull the data that they need. This project is helping to turn the lights on and do some research on what else if needed. We will need to talk to the client to see exactly what data or end points are needed. Some of this research is part of the project.

- Once we know what is needed, we need to re-meet and decide what to do.

- Normal 3rd party stuff... logo, description, open/close the door, contact info, etc.

- As of right now, we are planning on letting them pull info from us. We need to check to see if they need any info pushed in their direction.

- Most likely, they are going to be looking for invoice sales information.

- The budget on this project is a max of 10 hours. If we start getting close to this, we need to check in with Cory.

- NatureTrak is a banking entity to make sure all is well - they are mostly comparing what was sold and what monies should be moving across. Somewhat of a second set of eyes on the sales transactions.

9/30/20: Have you heard back from the accounting system developer to get the manual upload for weekly report of sales integrated with NatureTrak?

8/4/2020: To start will charge $3,000. 

Bryan was on vacation but needed a project pushed up. We worked for a couple of hours to get things up and going. We ended up pushing up new changes for the media/content stuff (attaching files and web references to objects inside the system). The new changes extended the ability to attached files to sub or child packages for inventory items. Prior to this, you could only attach files to the parent items, not to the subs. With the new changes, files and media/content could now be assigned to subs underneath the main parents. Pretty cool.

Anyways, we got it pushed up and on all servers. I did have to make a few changes once things went live, but fairly smooth process overall. At the end of the block, I was doing emails and tech support stuff.

Emails and small to do list stuff and tasks.

Code changes for Steve dealing with variables and datasource names for queries.

Eric jumped on the meeting and had some questions. We were talking about auto associating tiered pricing with barcode scans (my cart favorite buttons - smart groups). Emails and tech support.

Chuck and I met to go over his current projects. We talked about the customer facing website for WanderWays (camp adilas project), colors and settings, being able to book generic sites for a category vs booking individual actual sites, and other customer reservation screens and processes. Chuck is making great progress. Next week, I'll grab some screenshots. I forgot until we got most of the way through his report.

Lots of talk about data driven toggles and other settings. Some of his new development is in what are called CSS/HTML cards and they will play right into toggle on/off settings. Kinda cool because the design is going to be prebuilt to match the settings. That will make it easier to code.

Chuck was also showing me some mock-ups that were in plain vanilla vs a skinned or mocked up version (tons of colors, logos, and deep look and feel). Seeing both the vanilla and the skinned versions help you see what was important vs just the visual look and feel.

We also spent some time looking over his internal docs and SOP's project (standard operating procedures). Things are looking good and this project will help us standardize things, including billing, checks, payments, code sign-off, style guides, and other internal docs and such.

Going over projects dealing with transitional invoices (work in progress, work orders, pre-paid invoices, layaway tickets, etc.). Alan has three projects in this area. We talked about splitting them up while launching things. The three projects will be new dates and times, restore transition invoices to the cart, new balance sheet reports. Good stuff.

We also briefly talked about some of the questions that Shannon and I sent out dealing with goals, direction, and where we are heading as a company. I asked Alan to help keep the meeting on Thursday (tomorrow) on task so that we didn't wander too far off the course.

8/5/2020: The second project was the EMV chip integration project. This project got to the point of where I got the go ahead to order the card reader and then they pulled me off because they weren't getting many people asking for it, so it has been sitting for over a year now. Still no card reader and zero development has been done. As far as project timeline goes, once I have a card reader and test card, it shouldn't take too long. Typically there are 3 stages:

Working with Danny on adding multiple corps to his local setup and development environment. Although we released this project, there is a bug on the monthly section dealing with multiple corps.

After that meeting, I did more emails and tech support stuff.

Two different phone calls. One with Steve and the other with Calvin.

Talking to Steve about plans for the group meeting on Thursday morning (tomorrow). He is going to help present some ideas and concepts on adilas as a trust. We also talked about goals, team work and collaboration. 45 minute call.

Calvin was calling to talk about some of the question on the adilas as a trust document. We talked about custom software and following the client dollars and money. We also talked about quality software and the value that brings. The conversation went into some politics and how often the politics tend to win out. Sad but true. Next, we talked about maintaining enough control and watching the back door (say you open things up too much, you have to then watch the back door).

We also talked about people errors, compliant issues, underlying and alternate plans of individuals and groups, and eventually cause and effect decisions and then the trickle down based on those decisions. Calvin recommended that we build in some checks and balances. We also talked about analogy of rowing a boat in a lake without any landmarks. Without the landmarks, you don't know if you are going in the right direction. We were relating this to goals and focused approaches.

As a fun story, Calvin and I talked about a raft flipping over and one of his sons getting caught under the boat. He couldn't get out without help. We talked about picking a single direction and trying to get out based on that single direction. Sometimes we over think it and second guess ourselves and virtually go in circles vs picking a direction and going for it.

Group meeting over the GoToMeeting session today. We had 14 of us on the call. See attached for a recording of the conversation. This group meeting was dealing with gathering ideas for a business plan and moving adilas into a trust type business model.

From Shannon - "Our business model may need to be as creative as our solution."

Russell and I were going to be meeting and going over projects and code. However, we switched gears and invited Chuck to join us and we did a small session on some vision for what we want our company to be and what kind of culture we would like. The notes below come from both a meeting with Chuck and Russell, as well as a meeting with Shannon to go over what these two had said. This is somewhat of a mix, but good stuff.

- From Russell and Chuck - What they want and/or are looking for:

- Group of people that we trust

- Able to express their ideas

- Big system - virtual floating orbital system/engine (see attached for a drawing from Russell) - Think of a floating city where there is enough room to build and build and each person could carve out their own space. Having said that, the whole (floating platform or city) is run off of a dynamic core engine and/or core structure. Once again, see the drawing.

- Each person could be as big as they wanted to be

- Platform

- Independent model

- Build what you want but help support the core or the core principles

- Feed yourself type model - this doesn't mean that you don't ever need help... it just means that you are a self starter and willing to work

- Incentives and benefits or year-end bonuses - health care, sick pay, vacation pay, new hardware, etc. Originally thinking bigger numbers like: $10K/per person >> 10 people on the team = $100K (original thoughts) - (stepping stones or later thoughts) $1K or $2K/per person >> 10 people on the team = $20K (after thoughts)

- Keep the freedom but also provide some of the other incentives that help keep people around - retention of good people

- Dreams... having dreams and being able to act on them... - From Chris Jonnie - We support people with dreams

- From Shannon - Almost like each person has their own freedom to run their own business, but they have the support and security of a small community - a fusion between owning and operating your own business and being an employee at the same time.

- Family comes first

- The guys liked that there was a limit to hours... just dealing with direct billing - you could still do your own thing - this includes management in the limit on hours per week. Stay in that healthy and maintainable realm - less burnout.

- Residual pay and reoccurring revenue

- For Steve - in order to help him - Question - How can we help to split your work load? - Maybe even doing a project to help with that.

- Sales - You've got to believe in it - what you are selling - Shannon and I were talking... Think about dad... he really believes in what he is pushing- He can pass on the excitement and the energy - even if it isn't quite soo cool (funny stories)

- Seeing a need or opportunity and being able to jump in you want to

- They loved - being able to think of something and then build a product or service or solution to match - still playing right along that platform type model - adilas creates all kinds of byproducts and byservices (pretend that is a new word).

- Training and keeping that model going... Maybe something like - work 10 hours, be able to do 1 hour of training. So, if you work 30 hours a week, that would be 3 hours of training that you could do. Keeping up on the new technologies - lots of self improvement options - all of these things build value.

- Our platform or our framework - some ownership or skin in the game

- Shannon and I - how can we focus on different places (departments or areas of need) within the adilas jelly fish model? - See the need and then help to point people in that correct direction - delegation at the bigger picture level

- Going back to helping Steve - how can we help pull some pieces off of him so that we don't burn him out. He is one of our greatest assets.

Shannon and I were bouncing over some notes from an earlier meeting with Chuck and Russell. See this entry for those notes.

Eric checked in about 3rd party solutions and helping clients transition over to our internal solutions.

Small summary of the concepts in the other notes: The power of ideas and dreams, building together off of a common business platform, giving back, incentives to be a part of the family/community, freedom, family, limits, reoccurring payments and revenue, sales, building solutions, training, and helping Steve lighten his load.

Recording notes and doing emails.

Met with Russell and did some code review, pushed up the new payee/user homepage code, and also went over a number of other projects in different phases of development. We looked at mock-ups, code, and finished products. Lots of good stuff coming down the pipeline.

Small notes about fracture and building a reusable platform. Imagine - any developer can succeed using this platform. When they succeed, we succeed. Russell was giving some analogies about a platform with a virtual city on top of the platform. The platform would be held up by a core or core engine (backend database, code, and software package). Developers could then build on to or off of that core. As they do, they have to help and support that core (a way to give back). 

Along those lines, we were talking about open source vs non open source. This is just a what if... what if the core was open source. We could then build out the adilas fracture core as a non open source project. Basically, stacking models on top of the core. It might be worth exploring those ideas.

If we share the load and help others to succeed, then we have less enemies and they, the other developers, help to support the core. Interesting ideas. See this link for other notes from today, dealing with backend offerings and structure.

Emails, paying bills, and recording notes.

Hosting reunion of Cotopaxi classmates at my cabin

Cory is booking this per Bryan who thought (3) 2 hour sessions would get Brandon through it. This is only one hour but I wanted to try to get this finished before Brandon was out for a week while it was still fresh. If not enough time I can book more after his vacation. :) Have fun!!

Steve McNew joining the meeting to meet Brandon, Alan and Wayne.

Internal audit meeting

Monday morning. There were 4 of us on the meeting to begin with. Later on, Wayne joined as well. Steve and Sean were talking about sales. Danny jumped on and has some questions about code repository stuff (Git and bit bucket). We also went over projects, touching base, server stats, sales tools and backend server stuff. As part of the sales stuff, Steve had me show Sean what we were working on for the presentation gallery and what the status of that project is or was. Good stuff.

Once Wayne joined, we jumped into a number of other topics including:

- Breaking up the databases and dealing with the single sign-in or single access login. World building and adilas café stuff.

- Manual and automated load balancing

- The concept of the value add-on core model - with different rings to denote the other levels of add-on value pieces. We have determined at least 5 levels as of right now. 1. Core, 2. Business vertical or industry specific, 3. Custom level, 4. BI or Business Intelligence level, and 5. Enterprise or multiple corp(s) level. Each of those value rings has to be purchased and serviced. You have to have the transactional data core to get it started, but anything beyond that, is extra or a value add-on piece. Very configurable.

- Speaking of configuration stuff - We need to be able to configure the servers in or at the enterprise level as to who they serve, how many instances per box, and where they point. All configuration type details, but on the server levels.

- Wayne was explaining a bunch of terms and how things work on the VPS (virtual private servers) realm. Somewhat of a controllable shared space based on settings, needs, and what not. As part of this discussion, Wayne used an analogy of a fleet of cars/vans/trucks for lease by a company. The company that is using them does have to worry about the tires, paint, and repairs, they just have to use them and pay for gas. We did a similar analogy with what we are offering on the server/IT/tech side of things. Our clients just want it to be done and handled, we have to figure out what the configuration is, for their IT/server needs. Is that 3 web servers and 2 database servers or is it a cluster of web servers, a dedicated content server, and a cluster of database servers. All configuration pieces. We need more control of what and how we set things up (server configuration options).

- Steve and Wayne got into monitoring servers and how that too could be a value add-on service. They spent some time inside of pingdom.com and talking about packages and options for both monitoring servers, uptime, and page/user specific processes and flow. Once again, it got back into value add-on services and being able to offer those add-on or add-in services.

- There was some talks about persons who could reset servers and some training that might be needed there. Trying to get everybody who needs it, ready to help.

- As we, adilas, incur a direct cost, we need to be able to pass those costs on to our clients. Wayne used the term "transfer" direct costs to our clients. More add-on service stuff.

- One of the next steps for us is in the performance and reliability side of things. We really want to be able to optimize our code and split up our databases. That would help a lot. Once again, more configuration options and settings on the code and server levels. 

Cory jumped in at 10 am, original time for the meeting, but the other meeting was still going. We got started around 11:15 am and went until about 12:30 pm. Cory had some questions and needed to go over new projects, existing projects, bugs, quotes, and other questions.

Towards the end of the meeting, Steve and Sean were talking about clients and their different needs, both standard and custom needs. As a funny side note, we keep getting great ideas from other clients who need the same tools and features that we, as a company, need. When that happens, we often have a reason to help build so that we can solve our own problems and get the gain and benefit that comes with creating custom tools for specific tasks.

The old principle of build once, use many - comes into play. If you look deeply, most of what our clients are asking for is a unified solution. It gets really hard to mix and match and do a virtual mash-up of tons of different products to get what you want. That's where we can help with an integrated system.

Sometimes we see the needs of others and it help us be more confident that we are on the right track. Sometime we will make a decision based on ideas that are brought up by other outside parties, if we can see a need and then try to fill that need. It is amazing how many of the pieces are needed by each different business. Sometimes in slightly different mixes, but most of the core pieces are needed by almost all businesses. That is awesome. That makes me think of a configurable platform and then go custom on top of that if needed.

The last topic of our discussion was centered around keep going. This could be drilling holes, poking around, turning over stones, and recording what we are learning. We are pretty good at that. No one really has all of the answers, we just have to keep going, trying, striving, and chipping away at things. By small and simple things, great things are brought to pass. 

8/10/2020: BSI doesn't pull into report. Nor does Time ID. They both export as 0. In the html report they show as N/A. Brandon thinks it's a bug. 

 receipt_line_item_list.xls

8/10/2020: 4 corps need new gram control for sub attributes and ids

8/10/20: Wayne will import items for 4 corps

Paying bills, emails, and recording notes.

Going over projects with Bryan. He is working on two projects, somewhat related, but slightly different. One is the show on the web version for the dynamic customer field name settings. The settings are used internal to the system for the normal add/edit customer pages. Basically, the user gets to say show/hide, rename, sort, require, and add any custom verbage and/or instructions. Well, it turns out that they, our users, want the same things to be populated clear out to the web/shop (ecommerce) interface. This subject/project is extending those settings out to the ecommerce or customer facing pages.

Along with the new show on the web settings for the customer field names and defaults, we also need to setup some new defaults for the show/hide on the web portion. If we just add a new table column or field, it doesn't know how to play. We have to go backwards and update all of the pieces that have already gone under the bridge (older data and settings) in order to show every field out in the shop or ecommerce realm.

The other project that Bryan is getting ready to work on is called flex attributes. I sent him a couple of links to help him look up some more info on the subjects. Here are the two research links that I sent him.

Research dealing with flex attributes and research dealing with real in-line database extensions.

Group meeting with Steve McNew. Steve is an independent auditor and project manager. He is currently retired and working on a number of volunteer and community projects. Steve Berkenkotter, from adilas knows Steve McNew from their early high school days. This was a preliminary meeting to start the process of flushing out some of the topics that need to be visited in an internal software audit.

Great meeting. It went for about 2 hours and we had 10 different people on the call. See attached for some of the notes that were taken. Some of the 10 people represented: users, power users, consultants, project managers, developers (coders), client IT departments, business investors, and systems admin and DBA's (database administrators). Good mix.

These were the topics set forth by Steve McNew:

My top 7 areas of focus for the audit:

1. System Architecture

2. Implementation Plan(s)

3. Metrics - system monitoring, key development metrics

4. Configuration Management

5. Root cause analysis

6. Risk management plan and process

7. Standards compliance, for example PCI

Other stuff:

1. Org Chart

2. V&V approach

3. Estimation methods

4. SW development methodologies

5. QA / QC approach and practices

Dustin joined right at 10 am. However, the other meeting was still in full swing. So Dustin listened in and we'll have to hit later. It was good for him to hear some of the subjects and topics being discussed.

Shannon and I started to work on putting together a master list of replies from our survey doc dealing with the adilas business plan and moving adilas into some kind of a trust type model. See attached for tons of different replies from the different users.

Small take away from what we are seeing - from what we've read so far... People are already playing in a certain way and filling some of the needed roles. The general theme seems to be - Let's keep going and refine some things but we want to continue with what is going on.

Recording notes, emails, and looking into a tech support question from the radio guys for the Bear 100 running race. Lots of little things.

I was supposed to be checking on the cross corp invoice to PO stuff. I couldn't get into it. Too big of a barrier to fully switch over to deep coding mode. Too many other little things. When I finished my little stuff, I only had about half an hour. That wasn't enough time to get in and do anything of use. So, I ended up doing more little things. It was easier.

Helped Russell do a merge and a push for some new changes to the corp-wide settings and corporation administrator page. Small merge and push. I also sent Russell some emails dealing with the internal audit and some of his responses from an internal survey. Russell sent me a 23 minute video and I had to convert what he was saying and showing into real text based answers. All part of the game.

Bryan and I were working on the show on the web settings for dynamic customer field names. We ran into a little snag with the social security number and being able to encrypt and decode for database storage. Everything else was on a dynamic loop, but that field needed some special attention. We also did some work on defaults for the show/hide on the web setting as part of a database update.

Spencer checked in and we did a light review of the simple cart or simple shopping cart project that he is working on. The cart has been called short and sweet and simple cart. We decided today that we would just call it the simple cart. We reviewed some code and made some plans. I also showed him some cautions and suggestions dealing with his current branch of code and how the actual code sign-off process will go down.

As a side note, Molly joined us right at the start. She and Spencer and I talked about memory management options for carts, sessions, and making sure that double clicks and duplicates didn't happen. I showed them a few of the things that we do on our carts to make sure that duplicates don't happen. They are going to look into their code and review things separately (Molly and Spencer).

To start out with, Chuck and I were on by ourselves at the beginning. We went over some settings and ways to configure some of the email options from inside of adilas. After that, Chuck reported on some of his current projects.

The later half of the meeting was somewhat of a group meeting. We had Russell, Alan, Chuck, Wayne, and myself on the meeting. The subject was dealing with internal documents and what is needed, wanted, and required. We covered code sign-off, frontend style guides, backend suggestions, and other protocols. Alan is going to produce a document dealing with the backend and database access structure. This will end up having outlines of our framework and dealing with pages calling services and services calling DAO's (database access objects) and those DAO's reporting back to the services and then back to the pages.

Wayne and Chuck (combo) will be creating and producing some test driven design docs and processes. Wayne requested Chuck's help to help with the actual writing and verbage. Wayne will show Chuck and Chuck will do the technical writing stuff.

See attached for a copy of some older work on some code sign-off ideas. This is more of a flavor vs a hard fast set of rules.

All 5 of us stayed on the call from the earlier adilas docs meeting (Wayne, Alan, Chuck, Russell, and myself). We switched gears and talked more about where we are headed and how that road will look. These are some of my notes and thoughts:

- We are not trying to redo all of the backend coding docs. We'll leave that up to the companies that provide the coding options and editors. We will however, do our own overviews and best practices docs and procedures and protocols.

- Dealing with training and internal documents, we want to follow a self-serve type model where the docs exists, a user or person may get to those resources at any time, and we have a standard place where they would look. That makes it so that they are not waiting for some other person or individual.

- Chuck is looking for content and will be flexible to add in the different pieces that we need, even if we don't know what those pieces are right now. A work in progress.

- Chuck can rewrite things and stuff as needed. He has some technical writing skills and a good background for that.

- We talked about using humor and how the use of humor in tech docs really helps (in the right places).

- We changed over to business models and how a trust might look and/or be setup. Wayne had some really good information about this. Wayne just got finished working for a ESOP trust in his old company and had some great insight on how that all works. An ESOP is an employee stock ownership plan. Just google ESOP trust and you will get some good info.

- After talking about the trust stuff, we switched over to some new code that Wayne is introducing and working on. The older model of ColdFusion (our backend programming or scripting language) uses a thing called an Application.cfm file. This was an auto include file where certain application or server wide variables were set and managed. The newer and more modern approach is using a thing called the Application.cfc (notice the small file extension change from .cfm to .cfc). The .cfc is a component or small library of preset and user defined functions. It allows for spanning, bridging, and extending classes and object oriented options vs the older A-Z linear code set of the .cfm files.

- We also talked about some new config files that will help the application switch between test and live without looking at the database and also how we are prepping the field to allow more than one site per server. Currently, the code just allows one site per server and just one main database connection. Where we are headed is allowing one server to be clustered (multiple servers doing the same thing), multiple sites per server if needed, and all kinds of other custom or special configuration. Lots of use of JSON (javascript object notation) files to help store and setup the config files for sites, servers, and even custom settings. Good stuff.

8/12/2020: Client can't even load this page.

8/12/2020:  Need to add the 'auto' to the code so when a new sub id is created in production, the sub barcode is auto-populated. 

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/custom/cannabis_package_build.cfm?mode=package&part_id=325640&dynamic_vendor_id=29073

Emails and recording notes.

Working with Bryan and Danny. Most of the work was done with Bryan. We worked on more code changes to bring the dynamic customer field settings out into ecommerce land. They already exist inside of the main secure environment, but this project is extending them out to the ecommerce pages. Heavy refactoring and major code changes. Most of our changes today were dealing with the session variables for customer logins through ecommerce. As a side note, there were multiple entry sports due to the nature of ecommerce (customer based) vs the secured environment (user based). We refactored 14 different pages that allowed for customer login type access based off of links, emails, and direct access. That may sound like a lot, but it was for things such as making a payment, viewing invoices, quotes, statements, viewing log files, etc. All of these areas have ways of allowing a link from an email to be clicked and with the correct credentials, you could basically skip certain steps in the login process. Time savers and shortcuts.

Danny's stuff was dealing with new custom labels for a client. Pushed up files and merged in the new code to the master code repository branch.

Copy and pasting files for a meeting tomorrow. See attached. Plans and ideas for the adilas business plan.

More copy and paste work to get the replies and ideas all into a single document. See earlier entry for the finished combined file.

We had a good group meeting this morning with 15 of us on the call/meeting. We went over a few things and talked about options of turning adilas into a trust of some kind. We had lots of good feedback and participation.

See attached for a link to the video recording and a page of notes.

As a side note, some of the notes on the bottom of the page (word doc) were recorded afterwards with just Russell, Alan, and Brandon still on the meeting. We ended up talking about pros and cons and cause and effect relationships for another hours or so after the original meeting. Lots of moving pieces. We'll get it all figured out. Some of the decisions have financial sides to them, emotional sides, and other cause and effect results. The word or phase crossroads kept coming up. Very interesting.

Shannon texted me and she needed the day off. She and her husband were packing up to go on a trip. Fun times. We'll hit it again next week.

8/13/2020: Handle this through the gram controller. It will make a call to METRC once the patient is added to the cart. It would be about 15 hours ($1500). Adilas is willing to pay for this once you land an account in Montana. 

8/13/2020: 5-10 hours. Could be Danny. Setting in e-commerce where you can show quantity ie grams per item.

8/13/2020: Wayne is writing code this week that will allow us to push to the next level. This will be the next step in the white label development, which deals with default log in parameters. 

Research on some prior meetings and direction.

Quick session with Bryan. We did some testing, looked at some of the new refactoring, and did some checks on some hidden form fields for the dynamic customer stuff out in the ecommerce land.

Meeting with Russell over a Zoom meeting. We ended up talking about this morning's group meeting. No special order, but here are some notes that I scribbled as we talked. Mostly, Russell was talking, almost consulting for me personally, and I was scribbling down notes.

- Russell would like to see us use more budgets and really stick by them.

- Russell just got done meeting with Marisa and talking with her about videos and direction. Small report there.

- If you get over extended, the stress level goes way up. Staying within that earning more than you burn ratio. Sometimes that is tough.

- If you choose the enterprise route, you are looking at a team of 50+ (most likely). If you choose the smaller to medium sized route, you are looking at a team of 5-15 people. Which would you rather have?

- Sadly, we may lose people either way we turn (corporate/enterprise or small/med corporations). That's not very fun to think about. Some of our team have completely different goals and direction.

- Eventually, you will need an enterprise level company to take care of enterprise level clients. Or you will need a mom and pop level company to take care of mom and pops (small to medium sized businesses).

- Sell what you have... We currently have a great transactional level core that has been built out pretty darn far...

- We talked about a whole new league. For example: moving from high school ball to college to professional ball. There are completely different leagues.

- Russell did a lot of drawing as we were talking. He drew a Y intersection on the screen. The upper road was enterprise level stuff. The lower road was more mom and pop (small to medium) sized businesses.

- Dealing with the Y intersection diagram... Russell said he thought that most of us will be happier on the lower route.

- Steve's main goal has always been to "feed his people..." - He always is looking out for our team and the relationships that are being built. I'm grateful that he does that.

- If we go down to the lower level, our team will be smaller.

- Living within a budget. It kept coming back up again and again. Currently, we don't have any real budgets, just some known values but no real budgets.

- The other crossroad, besides size of our company and who we choose to server (our client's size of their companies) is which vertical to choose. This has been a long standing debate. Our company is currently being very heavily pulled in the cannabis direction and space. That has been a huge blessing for us. However, we are seeing a polarization starting to happen as some of our team wants to pursue that avenue and others want to break off and into more traditional business verticals (business types).

- If we move away from the cannabis space, we will possibly lose clients, reps, consultants, revenue, and maybe even some of our developers. Having said that, we also lose some of the stress, pressure, and burden of the cannabis space.

- If we choose to stay as a smaller company, regardless of the business vertical, we may lose some clients. Sales could go down. We know that they will go back up, but things will definitely dip before they start raising back up again.

- Talks about life cycles and ecosystems. It is natural to go up and down and have different seasons of growth and decay. That is called life.

- Trying to become more stable.

- We would like to start saving and budgeting.

- Change is coming... we can be proactive or reactive. It is coming, whether or not we want to acknowledge it. I would love to have a choice vs being forced to do certain things.

- Cause and effect - effectual doors - choose your door and then deal with the consequences.

- Back to the Y intersection model - the upper road will require employees.

- The upper road also has more stress

- In order to service an enterprise level business, you will need to become an enterprise level solution.

- Our clients - seem to the ones that don't fit into a standard model and/or need that next step of custom or special functionality.

- Steve wants to help take care of his people. How can we help with that?

- Once we know were we are going, we will need to let other people know where we are going and heading.

- Idea from Russell - what if you sold a copy of the current adilas system and let someone else totally run the cannabis side of things. Basically, allow the company to split. We talked about some other ideas to go along with this, nothing super specific, just rolling ideas around.

- Y intersection analogy - upper road = bosses, stress, rules, employees, and more structure. Everything has to get bigger, more automated, and more structured. lower road = more freedom but also smaller size of team, revenue, etc. There are pros and cons to both. Or maybe a hybrid of sorts... ? Not sure what that would look like.

- Currently, I'm so swamped with meetings and putting out fires, I can't get to any of my goals right now. I sure would love to keep following my own dreams vs being pulled along in super fast moving current (minimal control - at least it feels that way).

- On the Y intersection, where do you want to go? Pick the general destination and then go for it! You have to choose a direction.

This was scheduled for Wednesday 7/22 but it didn't happen. Needed to reschedule it.

Cory is booking this per Bryan who thought (3) 2 hour sessions would get Brandon through it.

Spent a couple hours working on this project. I pushed up the pieces that I had done and and started to make notes and plans for the next round. This is a pretty deep project and involves invoices, vendors, parts (items), and even sub inventory items from one corporation to another corp. One does outbound pieces and the other does inbound pieces. There is a small feature that does this currently, but we are having problems with it. Most likely, too many moving pieces. We need to prep things a little bit better before just doing the cross corp actions.

There were 4 to 5 of us on the morning meeting. Wayne and Steve were talking about storage solutions and options there for client-specific storage (potentially even in different places per client). Apparently, they had been on a meeting since 8 am. As a fun side note, we need to make sure that each system could be configured to both store and retrieve stored content from different places. Currently, we push all images and scans to the local box on a per server basis. We also push all bigger files, graphics, PDF's, and other document out to the content server. What if we could configure both of those pieces per client? That would be super cool.

Along those lines, we could specify a location say on AWS where there images and content could be stored. We would then directly charge those clients for the storage of those files and assets. Currently, it is all part of the monthly fee but no one has been watching or monitoring how much storage space that really is. We have one client that has well over 200+ gigs of outside files that we are storing for them. To put this in perspective, google drive allows for 15 gig for free and then you have to pay. They are at 200+ gig. They add to it daily as well. We have other clients that have thousands and thousands of scans and images. Once again, unmonitored. We need to be able to configure the systems to handle those changes as well as pass those file storage and hosting fees on to the client. It's their data, they need to pay to store it (within reason). Also, some of the storage is stored over years and years.

There was also some talk about having active and inactive content and files (levels within the storage solution). For example, new files, images, scans, and media could stay active for a month (or whatever time range). Then they (the files) could be moved a little bit deeper but still exist. Think more of cold storage vs active or hot storage. This is all just a dream right now, but it may play into some of the configuration needs for fracture (upcoming adilas project).

Danny and Steve were talking with Wayne about labels and what not. We need to get Calvin's label tool fully online and working over the web. Currently, the adilas label builder is a custom Window's app. Things keep changing (for labels) on a constant basis. Danny wanted to make sure that Wayne knew about some of the label changes so that we didn't overwhelm him with tons of files and merge requests.

The guys were talking about adding in a fee for those clients who use Metrc - a state level 3rd party solution for sales and compliance. That would be great as it literally costs us around $20K per month to keep up with Metrc and their changes alone. Pretty crazy.

Sean is going to be reaching out to some of our current clients. Steve and Sean talked about some current and future plans to reach out to different clients to see what they need and how we can help them. Steve was talking about small custom homepages, or small dashboard type interfaces to help them get around and move around in the system efficiently.

There was also some great talks and ideas about doing live or on-sight training by our clients for new clients in the same or similar industries. Basically, instead of having an adilas rep train someone, have an active client in that same industry or line of work train the persons. That allows our clients to get the training, from the source, and our clients could make some money by charging to show and train the clients using their existing systems. Some cool ideas there. Use the client's facility and train other people in your same industry by charging them to train them.

The last main topic of the morning was dealing with servers, IT help, and server resets. Wayne and Steve are going to be looking into options of using the existing IT staff of our commercial web hosting companies to help with extended server and support issues. They already have full access to the servers and know the infrastructure at the hosting company. It would be so cool if we could sub some of that maintenance and hot fixes out to them. Both Steve and Wayne will be making calls and setting up meetings to advance that ball forward.

Steve was busy on another call, so just Cory, Sean, and I were on the call. Sean and Cory were going over options for existing customers and who was assigned to what adilas rep/consultant. Cory then switched and had a bunch of questions for me. Most of it was just follow-up on projects and touching base on things.

After our meeting, I reviewed a guy's resume and did some emails and recorded notes from our other meetings.

Original notes on the entry - Dustin's colleague is interested in working 10-20 hours a week with us. He is also a student.

Cory and I met with John and chatted and talked with him for about an hour and a half. John showed us some of his work, graphics, movie editing, and some of his code work. We would like to give him a chance and see what he can do. He is busy for the next week and a half but should be able to get with us again next week to see what the next steps might be. We also talked about how adilas works and what it would look like if he were an independent or sub contractor for us. As a fun side note, John is an adilas user and has worked with some companies that used adilas. That will really help.

Recording notes

We worked on a couple different projects. The main one was getting the dynamic customer field names stuff pushed up and merged in for the ecommerce area. That code already works in the main secure environment but is new out in the ecommerce area. Lots of back and forth, testing, debugging, database updates, and pushing up the files.

Steve, Sean, Cory, and I were on the morning meeting. Lots of different topics.

Here are Steve's top 3
1 - Servers
2 - Cash flow and sales
3 - Look and feel

- Passing those costs on to our clients - as we keep adding new features and options, we need be able to pass on those costs to our clients. Otherwise we get stuck with the bill.

- Get Steve a sales team - Steve, Sean, Marisa, Drea, Danny, etc.

- Wayne wants to help with code sign-off - that really really help. First, we have to get the servers all tweaked out and running smoothly.

- Brandon and Russell - Steve wants us to work on the header based receivables piece - technology to help get the payments from our clients in a timely manner.

- The whole team is helping to fill different roles - really cool

- Tons of cool outside funding on some of the projects - cory and steve and doing a great job billing and asking for help to fund projects, functionality, reports, and other features.

- Another round on the balance sheet, look-ups and drill-downs. lots of crazy deep moving pieces. We are seeing this topic coming up more and more. People really want to see where their stuff (data and values) are and how it plays into the balance sheet. Alan has been meeting with Kelly on some of these topics and needs. That is awesome.

Sadly, Dustin has been trying to get in now for a couple of weeks. Each time, the past two weeks, we've had other meeting that ran over and we couldn't get together. We got together today and did an hour and a half, testing, debugging, general code questions, and some review. He is working on the sub queue stuff and how that playing into delivery and reporting. One of the spots that we were struggling with was the multi-threading done in the submit cart. If we took that out, everything else worked as expected.

Shannon joined the meeting but I was still on with Dustin. We finished up and then Shannon and I did some talking. We are going to be reading over some of the group comments on some survey questions that we put out there. Most of the session today was just talking and going over some lessons learned and trying to keep going. Tiny bits of progress can help fuel the journey. It gets tough some times, really tough.

8/18/2020: Currently this look up is the same as the others for transition invoice- it takes you to the invoices. It would be much more useful to see a list of actual inventory in transition instead of another look at the invoices. This will help for live inventory counts.

Phone call with Eric. We also texted back and forth about some questions. He is working on a section dealing with the customer birth dates and how that plays into the mix. We talked about use (toggle switched) options, numeric birth dates, queries, calculations, and how that whole thing works. I gave him some places to look at that already have the logic done for the customer birth dates.

As a random side note, there is a thing called an off sheet balance sheet item that needs to play in with customer loyalty points and other special accounts stuff. We didn't get super deep, but this subject will be coming up more often in the future. An off sheet balance sheet item (or off balance sheet item) is one that fully has a value and sub details, but doesn't play into the normal math and mix of the normal balance sheet.

Eric needed some help with a project to help and search for sub inventory and sub barcodes. There already exists some code that does this. The new twist deals with smart group buttons or tiered pricing. We now need to search by barcodes and have it figure out if it should play into the smart group button stuff. Lots of back and forth and testing his code locally. He is getting super close. Good stuff.

Emails, tech support, and recording notes.

Danny checked in and had some questions about emailing attachments based on invoices, parts or items, and sub inventory. We would have to do a reverse look-up to find the invoice line items, then find which subs were used, then look-up any special media/content (files) that were attached to those subs. We also talked about sending a direct download link vs the actual files. You could get into trouble if the files were huge and you tried to send them all at once. Anyways, just going over options and what not.

Sean reported in and said that he went to visit Mel and Tish at the bowling pro shop. They had a good visit and might like us to build out a custom form or program for bowlers and their ball specs - drilling specs, hole sizes, positioning, weights, angles, and other technical bowling stuff. No problem, we just need to get the details and build the project. We also talked about ecommerce and images. Currently, they have lots of .png (called ping files or ping images - programable network graphics - png) and are trying to convert them into jpegs (different image formats). Our galleries are optimized for jpegs vs png files. We talked about options and I showed him a conversion process program. We also talked about using media/content or opening up the galleries to png files. If we had the time and money, I would recommend opening up the galleries to .png files as the best course of action.

Meeting with Chuck over a GoToMeeting session. We touched base and he reported on a few projects that he is working on. One of the projects is a new payee/user profile page and add/edit payee info page. The new page will also have roles, permissions, tabs, and sleek new interface. It is looking good. He and Russell are working on the new pages.

We then switched over the adilas docs project. Chuck is currently working on some of the code snippets, examples, and style guides. As part of the coding conventions, he is proposing that we use some special characters in our comments to mean certain things. For example: An at sign "@" means a section heading or top level indicator. The double pounds "##" indicate a sub section or sub topic. An exclamation point "!" means caution and/or possible problem. The keywords "TODO" indicate a to do list item. Before we launch things, we need to resolve all exclamations and to do list items. I thought it was a good idea.

Chuck would really like to help us stabilize and standardize our coding, including whitespaces and indenting. Each developer has their own style. The more we can come together, the better it will be later on as each of us will end up working on each others projects.

As our last topic, we went over some our our current priorities and where Chuck is focusing. We have helping Russell with some of the new snow owl layout changes, WanderWays, the adilas docs project, and the presentation gallery and sales tools. Those are Chuck's current priorities.

Alan reported in on a number of different projects. We talked about the transition invoices, new balance sheet drill-downs and reports, working with Kelly on some of those pieces, a new payroll and expense/receipt upload (CSV file stuff), and EMV chip readers for USAePay (merchant processing with chip reader technology). Alan reported on all of those projects and we are making progress there. Good stuff.

We also talked about some great break throughs with some of the other developers. Alan has been helping Bryan and Dustin out lately. Great progress there in their learning and comprehension. We also briefly talked about Steve's laid back leadership style. I tend to be too high strung, Steve tends to calm things down. That has been very helpful at different times. Our job is already plenty stressful.

8/19/2020: Dustin will be first point of contact for help/training/support and will bill Adilas for this time.

Met with Eric and helped him push up his new sub barcode setting. This new corp-wide setting allows a sub inventory barcode to be scanned and it checks to see if the parent or sub item is tied to a smart group button for tiered pricing. If yes, it prompts for a quantity to tie into the tiered pricing matrix. If not assigned to a smart group (tiered pricing), it just adds one to the cart, like normal.

Emails and tech support stuff.

Bryan and I met and went over the flex attributes project. He recorded a few different segments. We talked about what we have already got by way of other applications that have similar concepts. We also went over some planning and details. Here are some random notes - no particular order.

- Flex grid tie-ins already have 30 custom fields. They are already built out to play with and handle all 12 main application player groups. Flex grid is pretty cool but it lacks data types and it has grown to be pretty large. All of the custom fields are text or varchar characters vs real data types.

- We are looking for a cross and a hybrid between the power of the flex grid, the dynamics of sub inventory attributes, and make these new real in-line database extensions play throughout the entire application. Cool concept.

- Here are some pages that already have similar type code - places where we could harvest some ideas and code: All of these are in the top_secret/secure folder.
-- sub_inventory_template_home.cfm - Lists out all of the sub inventory attributes per part category. We would want to do something similar but for all 12 main player groups.
-- sub_inventory_templates.cfm - Add/edit page that deals with sub inventory attributes. Our would be for all 12 main player groups.
-- add_edit_flex_titles.cfm - This page lists all 12 main player groups, uses settings and custom naming, and also checks for permissions. We would love to mix this page with the lists from the sub_inventory_template_home.cfm page. Nice hybrid.
-- edit_sub_part.cfm - This page dynamically builds form fields for sub inventory attributes. Eventually, we will need something similar for all 12 main player groups.
-- sub_inventory_view.cfm - This page dynamically shows any extras or sub inventory attributes without the edit capability options.

- Existing tables to look at are: sub_inventory_attributes, app_types, custom_text, custom_numerics, custom_dates, custom_json, parent_attributes.

- As we were talking... we are thinking of a couple new tables... just ideas. One would be called flex_attributes and the other would be called flex_attribute_data - the data table would allow for text, numeric, and date values. Somewhat of a combo table as compared to custom_text, custom_numerics, and custom_dates tables.

- We asked some questions... shared tables or corp-specific tables? Auto populate and build or just in time? New tables vs old tables (add or modify existing)? Think of the number of servers, number of corps per servers, developer instances, etc. All of these deal with scope, maxes, mins, pros, and cons. Design decisions. As a fun side note, I challenged Bryan to spend a couple of hours and plan things out. I also challenged him to use Excel (spreadsheets) and do some mock-up data and get a feel for things that way before any code is written.

- We also talked about the database field settings project vs these real in-line database extensions and flex attributes project. The database fields settings is somewhat similar in the fact that you get to name, sort, add descriptions, create your own aliases, show/hide things, etc. The main difference is, the database field settings are already tied to real live database columns and fields. For example: Say in customer you have a field called terms. You could rename it, require it, and then search it. Even though you did all of that, the database still calls it "terms" as the actual field name. The real in-line database extensions or flex attributes creates a brand new field and gives it an id number. No matter what you call it, all of the new data is tied to that id number with whatever you want to call it. If you want to kill it, you can. It is not really part of the original table. Anyways, we went through some small differences between those projects.

- Lots of drawing and building out samples. One of the topics was special dev flags or special fields just for developers to use - (dev = developer). We talked about how dynamic this table will end up being. We may want to build in some special fields that allow us to flag and tag the data as needed. Basically, thinking beyond our current project to where it will be going.

All in all, a great session. I'm excited to see what Bryan comes up with. As a small side note, we may need to provide an instructions field for flex attributes, we may also need a flag to show/hide on the web. Very similar to the database field settings. I hope we keep building and learning from our current prototypes and experiments. That makes it fun.

Russell wanted to have a meeting dealing with the concepts of a business platform and/or a business ecosystem and how adilas would play into that model. Basically, things build onto or off of the adilas core and adilas platform. The meeting had 8 people involved. Pretty blunt conversations, ideas, and options. Definitely not sugarcoated. Russell ended up drawing and somewhat leading the discussion. I took notes - see attached, and the others all chimed in at one point or another. Busy and crazy times. We are definitely at a crossroads between big vs small and single niche industry vs a more open model. It sounds like an easy decision, but there are some intermingled cause and effects at play.

See attached for the meeting recording and some of the notes. As a general takeaway, it seems that people like what we are doing but want to see more organization and structure along those lines.

Danny ended up being on the other ecosystem meeting with us. We were going to be going over initial concepts, on how we see this working and which pages to condition - dealing with sending emails with either links to supporting documents or actual emails and actual physical attachments. This meeting didn't end up taking place. We were both on the other meeting, instead of this one.

Shannon joined at 11 am and we wrapped up the prior meeting. Eventually, only Wayne and Shannon were on the meeting. These are a couple of notes that I got from Wayne. He is hitting walls and boundaries on the servers. He wants to keep pushing them forward and tuning them, but he needs the following three projects done:

1. We have two really big tables that need to be pared down. He wants to consolidate some of the fields into objects of settings. Currently, we have hundreds of settings, all in their own database fields and columns. That is ok, but it makes the tables so big that we can't change the database table engine from MyISAM tables to InnoDB tables. This is all related to different table structures on the MySQL database model. MyISAM tables are an older model and if a lock happens, it locks the entire table. The InnoDB tables are more modern and if a lock happens, it is on a line by line level vs a full table lock. There are also some performance options as well as security pieces that differ between the database table engines. Long story made short, Wayne wants us to prep things in order to convert everything to InnoDB tables.

2. Some of our databases are getting huge... Gigs and Gigs worth of data. That is awesome and means that things are getting used, but because of the structure, we can't split and load balance things very easily. We have to physically pull systems off of one system and put them on their own system to do the load balancing right now. This is a very manual process. We have a project called the datasource project or splitting up the database (bus to motorcycles - world building) project. There have been multiple efforts in this direction, but we keep getting pulled off of things. This would be huge and would allow us to change the size and configuration of the databases. Small companies would only be dealing with their data vs being on a somewhat shared environment and dealing with all of the other bigger businesses traffic. You can't access the other companies data (virtual walls and sandbox type environments), but there is basically other traffic from neighbors who are on the same server. In order to grow, like we would like to, we need to fix this.

3. The way we store files, images, and media/content limits our growth model. We allow systems to store and record information directly back to our boxes. That works great for single servers. However, if you plan on clustering and/or stacking servers, to get more power, that placement of those files and assets needs to be addressed. There are tons of other entries in the developer's notebook about media/content, servers, paths, and storage locations. It works great right now, but it also is somewhat limited in the scalability of those pieces. A single company won't see the limits, but the more companies that you get on there and playing with some of the same resources, that's where you see some of the scalability issues starting to show up. Some of those same limiting factors also prevent the clustering, stacking, and auto load balancing pieces. We need to figure out a way to store the files, images, and media/content assets in a place that is configurable vs hardcoded or built in to the app or software package.

As a side note on the file storage stuff, Wayne has some code that he was working on when we were kicking around the AWS (amazon web services) stuff. We may be able to harness some of that work and effort to make this happen.

Wayne wanted to know what are plans are for these 3 projects. I told him that I would email Steve and Cory and see what they say. Without putting anybody under the bus... we've known about some of these projects for years. We push on them here and there, but we haven't really finished up any of them yet. That's where it gets hard. We can't control all of the other variables (time, money, other projects, other demands, etc.). It's a challenge.

////////////////////////////////

Switching other to what Shannon and I were going over...

Lots of moving pieces and we are getting internal pressure to stabilize and standardize certain pieces. We have had quite a few of our key players state that we've had meetings and meetings and keep rehashing the same pieces with no changes. That gets really frustrating.

Currently, Steve and I's approach has been to keep chipping away at things and wearing multiple hats, all at once. Another analogy is spinning plates on a stick... We spin what we can and hopefully the other plates keep spinning. Sadly, we are dropping some of the plates here and there. There is a disconnect between what is needed (on a management level) and who is playing and what time is available. We are doing the best we can, but we really need some help.

Shannon and I met and talked about maximizing vs optimizing. We tend toward the maximizing side of things. That is pretty natural. We also talked about setting up a MVP (minimal viable plan) dealing with our management structure and business model. Shannon and I are going to be working on a business plan, but that could take weeks and weeks (months) to tighten up and finalize. We may need an MVP type approach for the time being.

As part of that, we are thinking of proposing the adilas jelly fish model as the current plan. Our goal would be to keep firming it up and moving into a more structured environment. We would like to specify lead dependables and cofounders in certain areas. Those would be the adilas team leads for the different areas and/or virtual departments. I think we could establish this type of an MVP plan for our business model pretty quickly.

Shannon and I also talked about a couple of the current hang-ups that we are seeing and facing. There is pain in transitions some times. Nobody wants to take on the full load, if they really know what is going on, due to it's size. Shannon and I chatted about pairing people up and almost doing a buddy type system to help with managing the different areas. We may need to mix and blend to create our teams. Some of those teams already exist, but they are very loose level teams. The goal is to firm that or those pieces up a bit. I think that would help.

Sometime "titles" have become a barrier. For example: nobody wants to be the main boss, the top executive, the full owner, etc. We may need to stick with words and phrases like: founders, cofounders, advisors, mentors, trustees, dependables, etc. Along with this... Shannon said, you guys love to create new terminology, why not do the same thing for what position you hold.

Good ideas coming in from all of the people around us. We need to keep coming up with our own company structure. Along with that, we need to decide and try things. It's ok to change it up later on. Nothing is set in stone. Think phases, pick and choose, and try storming type mentalities.

Shannon and I reviewed this previous element of time (#5295) and the drawings attached (scans and handwritten notes) to get some notes and it helped us go through a great discussion.

8/20/20: This is the project ID # to act as a catch all to see how much we charge for labels.

Recording notes and pushing up videos from earlier today.

Zoom session with Russell. We started out and he showed me some of the new things that he is working on, including some dynamic help menus and smaller in-line help files for certain pages and features.

We got talking about mobile ready and responsive web pages and web apps. We also talked about native apps built for iOS and Android phones. As a note, even though some of our pages are mobile ready and built using responsive web pages, our main application is really designed for computer and desktop type environments. We require so much real estate to show and do what we do. You can do it on a phone, but it is easier on a laptop, tablet, or desktop system.

We may need to come up with and design a full mobile app that really slims things down - some of those screens have such small screen real estate.

Russell and I spent some time and ran queries on each server to get some counts and status on who is using what features. We were only looking at two of them, but it was interesting to see the differences between servers. After looking at the data, we decided that we could get rid of a couple of settings that aren't being used. It will simplify our code on certain pages.

Our final topic for the day was an overview of the summer projects that Russell and his team have been working on. I think it looks great. We got a new classic homepage, new corp admin page, new corp-wide settings page, new user homepage, and they are working on new payee/user profiles, permissions and stored roles projects. I think things are looking great. As part of the meeting, Russell and I went over some of the reports, dollars spent, and hours worked. We looked at some of his summary reports and chatted about things. Good meeting.

Recording notes and doing emails. Towards the end, there was a server issue with one of the servers.

Originally scheduled for 8/18/20 - had to push it out a couple of days. No time.

Danny and Steve were talking about sales and having a buddy along with you. If you are all by yourself, you tend to get depressed and demotivated - in some ways. A buddy really helps to pick you up and bounce things off of. You don't feel like you are alone.

Eric joined and was asking about building out some of the off balance sheet items and off sheet liabilities for customer loyalty points. Basically, a real liability but not part of the main math on the balance sheet. We also briefly talked about watchers, feeders, and triggers. See this link form some other research on the subject. They were also talking about how 3rd party integrations get really tough and you can't take them out the full way just because things get so deep.

Steve and Eric were talking about the pricing engine, the discount engine, tiered pricing - lots of options there. They were talking about expanding parent attributes, smart group buttons, dynamic QR codes, barcodes, and advanced label options. All tied in with pricing, labels, and tiered pricing.

The topic changed into some project management and project planning options. Including a list of requirements, scenarios, design options, and the whole meal deal. Looking beyond the current project and how it, the current project, plays into the bigger whole (system thinking). Once we know the project scope, we could then setup timelines and estimates. You have to have all of the pieces in order to really provide the whole meal deal.

After Eric left, Wayne, Alan, and myself were talking about frameworks and options for code and building code. A framework is a standard way of calling things, linking to things, ways of storing and organizing assets, and all the way into deeper hierarchical levels. They were talking about a product called ColdBox and how that may play into the mix. Most frameworks use some sort of MVC type model. Here are some other related topics to MVC (model view controller). An HMVC is a hierarchical model view controller.

Lots of pros and cons were being discussed. Including who will do the research, experimenting, deciding, training and teaching - once a decision is made? What do frameworks do? What do they not do? How can you customize them and what tasks fit nicely under a framework type model? We also talked about our existing, home grown framework and how that works. Alan had a number of really good questions and seemed very versed on the subject. Good discussion.

Our last topic for this meeting was an error with file uploads and images. Wayne is going to go in and add some logging and see if that helps us figure things out. It doesn't happen all the time, we are trying to figure out what it is that causes the errors. One of the tough ones...

Cory jumped on and had a few questions to go along with her projects and coordination stuff. We talked about a new table to store bowling pro shop drilling specs for bowling balls, figuring out where the adilas label builder project is at with Calvin, and some other small details. Going back to the adilas label builder app that Calvin made. It is currently a Windows application and we don't have any of the code. We would love to keep pushing it forward and make it into a full service web app (able to use by any of our clients). Currently, if anything needs to be tweaked and/or updated, we have to get with Calvin to get those changes made. Sometimes that is hard to find the time in his busy schedule. Because of that, we are feeling somewhat limited as to what we can do with that piece of the puzzle. We really want to get that code over on our side so that we could make changes and upgrades easier. We currently don't have a Windows developer on staff, other than Calvin, but we may need to look into different arrangements.

As part of this discussion, I think that it is important to note that many developers know that there may be maintenance on things that they build. What they don't count on, and we don't want to count on this either, is years and years worth of maintenance and upgrades. It drags out the projects. Also, it is no fun if someone else introduces something new and it breaks an older process what was working. Basically, sometimes, a new error may be introduced that affects older code making it appear that the older code was in correct. That may not be the fact, but the reality is, it breaks something going forward and there is a constant need to keep updating and doing maintenance on almost all code that gets written. Kinda like a shelf life for code. That is good to keep in mind.

Another thing that makes some of this code work hard is the number of ways things are used. That comes back to settings, configuration, and use cases. Sadly, yet kinda fun in some ways, we have users that use our products in ways we never would have imagined. That's tough to code to all of those use case scenarios. It sure keeps things interesting (good and bad).

Eric and I spent some time talking about off balance sheet items. These are virtually add-on's, adeniums, or items that are not part of the main ALE (asset, liability, and equity) math for the balance sheet. Thus the term off balance sheet item. These are things that are phantom costs, unknowns, or side-notes - meaning, they are below the bottom line type entries and items.

We were thinking about a new field on the balance sheet items that controls the special handling. These values would be normal (part of the normal ALE math for BSI's) or special - below the bottom line (virtual adeniums or extras). Good discussion, and we'll hit it again in a couple of days to see what else we can come up with.

8/24/2020: Project would require graphic mockup by Charles (roughly 8hrs). Turn to code- new data base table. Would be able to record data and add, edit and view.

Roughly 35 hours. 

8/24/2020: The datasource project and splitting up the databases – help with load balancing. 50-100 hrs. It could be more like 1,000 hours. Somewhat unknown.

This project is also known as the bus to motorcycle project, world building, or the datasource project. 

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=6726 - This is a list of 3 of the big projects that need to be done before we can get into database clustering and data server (web server) clustering.

8/24/2020:The image and media/content storage paths and actual asset storage locations. 50-100 hrs. We don't really know. It could take up to 10 times longer or closer to 1,000 hours. We know that we have 12 photo galleries, close to 40 servers, a number of custom pdf and csv storage options, as well as logos, watermarks, and other custom content that is not part of the master and user controlled.

Need more of a plan on this one.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=6726

8/24/2020: For Steve McNew time.

Emails. Phone call with Shari O. about Newtek servers. We also talked a bit about the adilas business model and how things are going and developing there. Here are a few of my notes:

- You have to suit up and show up at the table - over and over again. You can't just show up once and get your way.

- We tend towards a work in progress vs a fully finished and polished piece of art. That seems to be our style. We just keep building and refining.

- We really play well with most of the people who are key players. Shari O. was talking about personalities and mixing those together. She is a good mother hen and watches out for her virtual chicks or peeps. Along those same lines, we have a number of key players who are doing great in filling their roles and doing a great job. We would love to see more of the same and keep refining along the way.

- Similar fabric yet we have our differences.

- We want to worry about the whole client base vs just a smaller selection or portion - think big picture.

- Awesome discussion on checks and balances and how those can prevent misuse and dictator type influences. How can we build in some checks and balances into our business model? Cool concept.

- Finally, we got into servers, payables, and options. We have servers at Newtek, Hostek, and AWS. We are trying to keep it all tight and straight and don't want to pay for services or products that we are not using. This is turning into a fulltime job, just to keep track of all of the pieces, expenses, and services being offered and paid for.

Bryan and I looked into some code and samples for using the customer queue outside in ecommerce. Bryan is working on the API sockets for those features and options. They all exist inside the main system, we are just exposing them to the outside as API sockets.

We also pushed up some code and some changes for a small bug out in ecommerce land dealing with custom field name settings for customers. We made a few changes, did some testing, and pushed up a couple of new files.

Emails, tech support, recording notes, and clean-up from the day.

When I got on the call, Steve and Sean were already talking about sales. Sean said that as he was calling some our clients, they wanted an easy way to add multiple things at once to a PO. Basically an add bulk option. For example: Say you were adding in bowling balls and you entered the main bowling ball product name. It may show you the 6 pound balls, the 8 pound balls, and the 10 pound balls. Currently, you have to click on one and say - I got 3 of these. You then have to do the search again and click on the next ball and add those. They would like to be able to add multiple values at once.

As a side note, there has been mentioned earlier, options for PO's to be like a reverse shopping cart for PO's. Currently, the shopping cart allows for a simple search and multiple items may be added to the cart at once. We would love to make something similar for PO's. Just another request for such a feature.

The guys were talking about internal funding options and even selling some of the code and development for certain business verticals. Say for instance WanderWays (camp adilas). We have already put in $60K+ on that project. If we wanted to, we could virtually sell all of that prep work and R&D and then let someone else run with it. Basically, a way of pioneering ideas and concepts and then finding good owners for those pieces. All part of an adilas core platform and virtual ecosystem that rides on top of the business platform. Fun ideas and exploring.

As a side note, we keep talking about "fracture" as an upcoming project for adilas. In a way, it is already happening. Maybe we just need to keep letting it happen and help it along the way with some loving guidance with little tweaks here and there to make sure it fractures like we want it to. Just for fun, I have a post-it note on my desk with a date of 6/22/17 with a statement from Steve about fracture. He said that it might be a fun business name. Over three years later... it is already starting to happen. I'm also excited about the other ideas that we've been gathering up over the past months and years that go along with that. Good stuff.

Later on in the conversation, we started talking about checks and balances. We drew out a model with the US government and the three branches (legislative, judiciary, and executive) and talked about how they help to run checks and balances on each other. We, at adilas, would love to have some pieces in place that did similar things. They could run independently of each other but could also provide some checks and balances to each other. That would be really cool. Just for fun, see attached for a quick screenshot. We are still figuring out the adilas side of things, but we liked the concept.

We also talked about core pieces, outside 3rd party solutions, and inside 3rd party solutions (hybrids). Lots of options. Eventually everything that we have has to interact with the core or main platform. That's where we need to focus and put the correct checks and balances in place.

Dealing with sales, Steve and Sean were talking about Danny wanting to get CPA's (certified public accountants) on board and pitching our services. If a company gets help from their CPA, gets tax help, tax prep, and other consulting, it makes our product more sticky (in a good way). Fun discussion and conversation.

Going back to the adilas checks and balances, we offer a ton of different services. In a way, all of those services could fit under the adilas marketplace. That's not a for sure, but we wanted to record the idea.

The last concept we were talking about was the system core and platform and how we could virtually design what verticals go on that platform. As they get developed and designed out, we could find people (other businesses) that wanted to run those business verticals. If anything went wrong or whatever, we could always buy them back and run them from our internal teams. Lots of options. In a way, we help people and companies to build and run their own white labels. We have developers, a huge dynamic platform, and tons of other services. We also allow others to build their dreams and run it on our platform. Lots of options to mix and blend.

Dustin texted me and had to cancel today. No meeting took place.

Shannon and I jumped on our normal Tuesday meeting. Right as we started, we got a call from Russell and he wanted to show someone the things he was working on. Basically, a small breakthrough on his current project and just wanted an audience to bounce ideas off of. So, we invited him in to our meeting. As a side note, Shannon, Russell, and I are all brothers and sisters.

Anyways, Russell started showing us some of the new help file options that he is working on. The older system had one help file per page as a whole. Nothing super special and very much a set static page. Some of the new code that Russell is working on is a way to break the help files up into sections and dynamically make them popup and be more consumable. It also offers new options to put in business vertical, industry, or even corporation specific help options. All of the new stuff is there, hidden, but showable on demand without much effort. Light approach on the education mode that Jonathan Wells introduced in some of his prototype demos for the fracture project. Great stuff.

We ended up bouncing all over the place with Shannon, Russell, and I for the meeting. Here are some other notes:

- Help files can seem like a mountain of info... what if we could take those mountains and break them up in to smaller ice bergs of information. Once again, make it more consumable and a nicer presentation.

- Help files could be expanded into courses, videos, quick ticks, settings, and other help or education material. Don't limit yourself to just a plain old help file.

- Russell is prepping and paving the road for where we want to go and who we want to be. Some of that prep work will need others to help fill in the gaps but the virtual roads and ways will already be built. That's fun to think about.

- After Russell was done with his demo on new help files and options for helper sections, we switched and I pitched a few of the concepts that Steve, Sean, and I were talking about earlier today. See this element of time for those notes.

- Switching over to the adilas core platform concept (pretend that you have a floating platform that is supported by the adilas core - different businesses, industry specific options, modules, tools, features, and a virtual city with different buildings and structures resides on the floating platform)... Russell had a number of comments on this subject. He was going so fast that I couldn't catch everything. I should have recorded it. He has some great insight on this topic. Here is what I caught.

- If playing on the platform, what are my boundaries? What are the rules? How do I play? and What will all of this cost? These were questions that Russell wants to know and others who want to play will also want to know. A good starting place.

- Are there maintenance fees? commissions (possibly both ways), license fees, server fees, etc.? Put out and post all the specs that you can - help to sell it as a service. SaaS - software as a services and PaaS - platform as a service type models and mixing the two of them.

- If someone makes their own module, we would love them to be able resale it and/or offer it to others. Once again, what are the rules?

- Imagine being able to quickly choose from modules to build a custom or industry specific tool very easily. That would be awesome.

- What about getting a portion or percent of earnings for using the adilas platform? Just a thought.

- We need to charge based off the components that we offer and what they use. Be able to pass on certain client costs directly to our clients.

- What if there was a certain fee to get in there and play? This could be a service type contract or whatever. Just spitting out ideas right now.

- Back to rules and costs for certain things... servers, domain names, databases, storage, files, images, scans, documents and files, throughput, API socket calls, different modules, components, other pass along charges, 3rd party prices, etc. List it out.

- We could make it profitable by building it, supporting it, selling it, or even pitching it. Lots of options.

- We could also offer other services (virtual marketplace of services). One of which could be consulting for other companies.

- This is a side note, but we have said over and over again, that the services that are needed are more than 10 times the value of the actual product (adilas software). Whoever owns and/or participates in that part of the puzzle will be doing well. Just a small side note.

- If we build it correctly and publicize it correctly, people will come to us and say... Can I do this or that? I want to play.

- It came back to being able to make the application into quick plug and play modules that could interconnect, interact, and turned on/off very easily.

- We talked about pitching ideas... in multiple directions. People pitching us ideas and we, as a company, pitching ideas their way.

- We want really generic tools that may be mixed and blended as needed. Yet, being generic, you could also put a spin or small tweak on it to make it custom in a heartbeat. Quick and dirty changes.

- Help others realize their dreams. Have the ecosystem ready for those dreams to be built and realized. Russell kept saying, people will come to us, once they realize what they can do.

- Speaking about frameworks, conventions, and prepping for growth in different areas. Make it easy, pretty, and powerful. Prep the way...

- Endless possibilities, being able to mix and match to get the perfect flow or perfect mix of tech, ease, and power.

- If we open up our model, we could potentially even buy some of our clients products and pieces if we see merit, need, or wants. Open model.

- Both internal and external modules need to be able to play together.

- We did talk some about IP (intellectual property) and who owns what. It all needs to be spelled out in the rules and how you play the game.

- Think of Legos (kid's (big and small) building blocks - that interconnect) - We may need to make certain things opensource and standard plug-and-play type technology.

- Small talks about limiting and protecting our clients. We may certain limits in order to protect all parties. No limits sounds awesome, but that usually means that someone will abuse things and possibly harm other players. We also talked about ownership and other intellectual property stuff here as well.

- Just some ideas for core pieces that we, as a company, may want to bring up... adilas core, adilas platform, adilas shop (development), adilas services, adilas market, adilas university, etc. "See a need, fill a need" - Robots the animated movie.

As a funny side note... Russell was talking and I was scribbling notes as fast as I could. Front and back of multiple post-it notes. We may want to record the next session, Russell has some great ideas along these lines. Fun.

8/25/2020: Special Limited format invoice. 

See attached quote and images.

8/25/2020: Printable view for subs_internal build PO.

See attached for more information.

8/25/2020: Currently when you type in an item to add to a PO, it brings up all similar items, but it only allows for adding one item at a time. You must re-enter the name to get the next parent item onto the PO. This would function similarly to when you add items to the shopping cart, and have a field where you can add quantity to multiple items at one time.

On a Zoom meeting with Calvin going over the adilas label builder and needs and wants there. We ended up doing some debugging and walking through the code together. We also made some notes of other possible hang-ups. Especially with sub inventory and different sub attributes per part category. That gets really deep.

Tech support and backend database changes for a client. Fixed a bug dealing with voiding out expense/receipts with subs and negative or credit memos. That was kinda deep due to the fact that voiding things out makes you unroll other actions and a credit memo (negative expense) is not a normal flow thing (kinda special treatment).

Quick meeting to talk about customer queue API sockets out in the ecommerce land area. Small tweaks and changes. Bryan seems to be going in the right direction.

Recording notes into the developer's notebook.

Quiet morning meeting today. Sean jumped on and we chatted about clients and gathering ideas as we talk to different people. Adilas truly is a giant virtual idea farm. We get ideas, we record them, and then we slowly try to implement those ideas. As part of our discussion, we jumped online and popped into a couple accounts to illustrate how different clients use the system. That was kinda fun. Light show and tell demo between the two of us.

Emails, recording notes, and paying bills.

Recording scenarios for the cross corp invoice to PO project.

Chuck and I had to meet a little bit later today. He was having Internet problems. We started out and he showed me some of the stuff that he and Russell are working on. They are revamping the whole user/payee/employee profile section. This includes a new layout, changes for permissions, and the addition of roles and templates for users and permission. It is looking good.

We also talked a little bit about the WanderWays project and how we approached it. We did some mock-ups, did some coding on the frontend, did a customer facing website, and then some other pieces. We basically ran out of money before we could really get it all wired up. It is still going, but we had to slow down on it. Anyways, we talked about that approach - the older way being what we already did, and we also talked about some new options and approach strategies. Good ideas and conversation. One of the key pieces was spending more time on the frontend to really show the product in a virtual working mock-up type prototype in order to get better buy in for the whole project. Basically, build out the full concept to see if you get more takers (meaning people wanting to own and/or fund the project further). We are constantly exploring our realm... just like pioneers.

At the end, Chuck and I went over some our priorities and projects that are in front of us. We also spent some time and just chatted about life and being well rounded, in general.

Eric and I spent a session talking and working on the off balance sheet items or options. We broke things down into 2 main projects. One was the flagging of data. Should I show up in the normal ALE (assets, liabilities, or equity) math portion of the balance sheet or should I show up below the bottom line - aka the off balance sheet items? The second project was dealing with how the math is done and getting into a combo or hybrid type model. This could include automating what we can, and also allowing for possible manual entries and/or adjustments. We went over a bunch of scenarios and talked about pros and cons of each.

On the new settings, we wanted to make it positive - meaning, yes, show up for normal ALE math vs no, don't show up - special below the bottom line or off balance sheet items.

More talks about hybrid BSI items and sub calcs. We talked a lot about outside watchers and feeders and triggers. Those are some deeper topics and things that are on our virtual wish list. Without going too deep, a watcher or feeder could be a known data source or place where data exists. We could then query or sum up some of that data to provide values and info back to a bigger picture. For example: Say sales tax stuff. It is held on thousands and thousands of invoice line items, but if we could sum it up, it would be a great piece for a balance sheet tax liability. there are tons of things like that... We are making progress, but there are tons of pieces that could be automated and mapped but have not yet been.

Making a plan for PDF's and a custom project that looks things up, merges PDF files, and then allows those merged files to be downloaded and/or printed. Danny and I wrote down some simple steps and did some light use cases as part of our meeting. We also looking into some older code that did similar processes and took some notes on what is the same and what would be different for this current project.

As part of the process, we talked about needs, requirements, budget, and even some clean-up functions to make the whole project go smoother without adding too much weight to the file storage and retrieval processes.

More work on the customer queues out in ecommerce land through API sockets. We did some tweaks to the documentation, light debugging, and changed up the samples that are stored for the API socket calls.

Most of the morning meeting was spent today talking about balance sheet rules and regulations. New mandates have come out dealing with customer loyalty points and how things need to be tracked and shown. Steve and Eric were talking about options, next steps, and how we want to handle things. Some of their discussion was centered around the topic of off sheet balance sheet items (things that are not part of the normal balance sheet math or ALE - assets, liabilities, and equity). The off sheet or off balance sheet item would show up below the main math and basically be a reminder type item. Some of these things are hard to really put a finger on due to redemption rates, redemption follow through, and other phantom type issues. Coupons and other things are similar. You start getting into the phantom realm of accounting and perceived liability.

Steve McNew gave me a call and we chatted for just over half an hour. He is working on doing an internal audit of how we run things. See attached for some of his questions that he sent over to me prior to the main meeting. As a funny side note, I read through the questions and virtually gave myself an "F" or a failing grade if I had to answer the questions as I perceive them. Having said that, as Steve McNew and I were talking, we actually do a ton of those things, we just do them in our own way that works for our size and style of business.

One thing that I thought was interesting was how Steve approached the questions and my answers. He seemed very open minded and really seems to want to mix the solution to match the customer (us) vs just forcing certain things. I really enjoyed that in our conversation. Also, the more we talked about it, my failing grade went way up, just in our style and format vs a huge super funded development shop. I think that there is hope.

After the meeting with Steve, Wayne and I jumped on the GoToMeeting session to chat about some things. We talked about the content server, new files, and options for a date purge project that needs some loving. Good conversation and we hopefully figured out where we are headed. He is doing a great job and has taken tons of pressure off of me.

As a side note, while I was talking to Steve about our processes, he asked - what is a topic that needs more attention? I said "depth" meaning depth to our staffing. Currently, if anyone were to die, get hurt, or have some sort of major issue, we would be in some trouble. There are great people working with us, but we don't have a ton of depth in who can take over if something goes wrong.

Another couple things that I wanted to record were some random thoughts from my conversation with Steve.

- We tend to expand and add on to projects so that they will fit more than one person or need - this often requires settings, named aliases, and other rules and/or parameters vs just hard coding things.

- We are very flexible and come in as a low cost solution. For example: $5K with a big company may not even get you in the door... where as $5K with us gets you a full meal - per say.

- Systems thinking - because we have all of the underlying pieces, we can mix and bled together really well. Having the whole system allows us to play differently than other software solutions. We have 12 main players, 12 primary business functions, and are built on tons of core unchanging principles. I love it. adilas formula 101.

- Because we are a web based tool, we can be very quick and nimble. Instead of having one huge program that needs to recompiled and be deployed as a huge piece, we have thousands of smaller dynamic web pages that make up the whole. Those smaller pieces allow us to go in and make changes quickly and deploy them daily. Some see that as negative, but we love it and use those dynamic pieces every day. Lots of smaller interconnected building pieces (Legos).

- Our whole infrastructure and location of where we play changes every day... we have to be somewhat dynamic in order to keep going. If we were too rigid, we may break. Granted that we need some more polishing and refinement, but we bend with the wind pretty well and that is important where we play and how we play.

- We are striving to be our own style. That is important. We have fun and have a burning passion for what we are doing and trying to capture our own dreams and allow for the dreams of others. We truly have a stable and dynamic business platform. And, we keep building and refining it everyday. That is awesome!

Shannon was a great sounding board for me today. She often takes on that role and does a great job. Earlier this morning we had meetings on rules and regulations for accounting, a small question and answer session with an internal auditor, and a meeting dealing with servers, configuration, and custom project requests and needs. All over the place.

Here are some notes from our meeting today. It was pretty much all over the place as well. I guess that is us...

- Rules are part of the checks and balances. Having those rules in place create the checks and balances. Those rules help our company and culture to out live us. As needed, it is ok to keep changing the rules. Sometimes we feel like we have to nail it perfectly the first time... not so, we get to keep playing and playing and practicing as we go. That is super important.

- We play the game on a dynamic and changing playground - everyday.

- Talking about a rigid structure, like the internal audit we are conducting, do we want to be really structured or on purpose, be a more open type model?

- If we are trying to compare... our virtual boxes (where you store things and say, yes, that is done) are not a one and done type of box... our boxes sometimes takes days, weeks, months, and even years (plural).

- We are doing a lot of great things right now. Maybe just keep polishing and refining. A phrase that works for us is "tweaking" or micro adjustments.

- Often we try to be a perfectionist. That's hard for anyone to fill those shoes.

- A couple different models that are somewhat similar, if you look deep enough. The city on a floating platform powered by a core engine, a town that has a railroad or tracks helping to setup a town (a railroad town), the adilas jelly fish model (a cap of the monthly reoccurring business platform and all of the services that are needed to support that reoccurring monthly entity (code, design, consulting, training, project management, hardware, servers, data entry, other services). All of these models have a primary element that brings everything else together. Without the primary element, all of the other pieces would only exist by themselves as smaller independent pieces, there would be no need for grouping or combing assets and resources. That primary element is a big key to the puzzle.

- Shannon and I were talking about opposites. We said that a structured or linear format was one side of the puzzle. The other side of the puzzle was round or more all inclusive. Shannon kept using the word "sphere". Just for fun... think of one eternal round - not climbing a ladder but working and refining things all over the place - a sphere or data sphere type model.

- Going back to world building... If that is our goal, then a model of a sphere is perfect. Lots of different levels and pieces.

- What are our priorities?

- Seeking happiness vs full compliance. We talked about what drives people to work or do certain things. We brought up the points: some people work for money (pretty simple), some people may even work harder for other people (doing something for someone else), and some people may even work the hardest when they are driven by a cause (some form of deep passionate form of motivation more that other people and money).

- Our next few topics got into some mental factors that sometimes get overlooked. Such as fulfillment, progression, being able to take away comparison, and being ok with our own skin. That word comparison sure can add a lot of stress and pressure.

- Going back to the sphere concept, not an up or down, able to work on different levels and layers of the whole. All of the pieces of the puzzle are important.

- Concepts of the data assembly line - time based, checkpoints, flex bubbles, depth, permissions, advancing the ball as needed, ability to add in flex.

- Compassion to self and others - that is a huge thing. Be a little kinder, show some compassion.

This is sort of silly... but Shannon and I talk a lot about adilas and business principles in our meetings. We also end up talking a lot about just life in general. Maybe that's why we enjoy these meeting so much. It's a great time to reflect, learn, and express where things are at. Good stuff. I wouldn't trade it. I love it.

On the phone with Calvin going over some adilas label stuff. Talking about the content server and small bugs. Working through things.

Emails and tech support stuff.

Recording notes

Danny jumped on and we helped him out with some logic pieces.

Bryan joined and we worked on API socket documentation, samples, and code for customer queues being used through API sockets out in ecommerce land. We worked on cascading new settings to all servers.

Reviewing user templates and user roles with Russell. This is a new project that is getting close to being done. The first round, round one, will be the ability to setup and edit a user template (what permissions each person gets based off a template). The user roles, coming soon, will be a tighter version of the templates and will auto cascade user permissions. The templates (round 1) will only allow you to name a template, set the correct permissions, and then apply those permissions and settings in bulk as needed. Basically, the user templates are somewhat manual and the user roles will be more automated. The future project of user roles will be tighter and more locked down.

As part of our review, we spent a lot of time going over both client-side validation and server-side validation. We try to mix the two wherever possible. It just makes things more solid and stable.

Recording notes. Lots of stuff going on.

I woke up and had some ideas for paring down a big huge corp-wide settings table. I recorded some of my thoughts on the project for paring down the tables. See this element of time for details (extra comments and notes).

After that, I jumped on the GoToMeeting to check on some servers and voicemail that I had. Once I got on, I was able to help with some server migration questions and changes. I was on the main GoToMeeting for a couple of hours. By the time I got ready to leave, there were 10 of the adilas players on the meeting. All helping and virtually cheering Wayne on as he was in the hot seat and we were trying to restore one certain database table.

This is kinda funny, but I got a call from Russell letting me know that there was an error. We told him that we knew about it and were working on it. Just for fun, I asked how he knew about it. Apparently, his name and phone number was on the error page. So, some of our users had called him. After a few calls, he logged in and checked it out and tried to get a hold of us. Kinda funny. That error message, that people were getting was an old relic from days gone by, but because a certain database table was missing, it was kicking out this 5 year old error message, that had been completely forgotten about. Kinda funny.

Wayne got things fixed, Shari O., Steve, Alan, and tons of others helped.

Later on, Eric and I spent time on a Zoom session and over the phone going over some logic for ACV (actual cash value) on customer loyalty points, off balance sheet items, phantom liabilities, and a switch from basing the loyalty points off a pure point value to the ACV value of the points. Pretty deep accounting things, changes, and logic changes. A lot of what we talked about were the auto clean-up routines and reconciliation processes. If you add in cross-corp loyalty points, things get even deeper.

JM: 115.16

12/27/21: 14 hrs

12/21: 31 hours

12/3/21: BD: 26 hrs

11/22/21:9hrs BD

9/29/2020: Meeting to define scope with Steve, Eric and Brandon. Decided best way to move forward is for Eric to meet with Alan to get some info.

Phase 1= Control parent core values on items: Item Number, Item Type, Item Category, Description, Reference #, Cost per item, Salesprice, Use Mark-up, Unit of Measurement, Default Tax Category, Weight, Bin Number, Barcode Number, RFID number, Allow Discounts, Item Status. 

Web core values: show item on the web, show price on the web, shipping type, shipping cost per item, weight, Dimensions, Web long description, web reviews, web specs and additional information, web video link, web alternate message, web related items.

Parent attributes, Flex grid, Photos

Phase 2=

8/29/2020: Will follow Vendor Aggregation project.

8/29/2020: Automating "recipes" to add cost to items up to the day they are sold.

Danny was on the morning meeting, but we did not do anything super special other that look at some logic dealing with sub inventory and custom labels.

Cory jumped in and was checking in and asking some questions. Danny had some questions on sub inventory and we went over things and even did some backend database stuff to do some show and tell on the subject. Steve and Sean were talking about sales stuff.

After everybody else left, Steve and Sean and I were talking about sales.

- Where is the sweet spot? If you find that, that could make all of the difference. Steve is seeing the sweet spot a little bit above mom and pop shops and even up into multiple locations or multiple corporations. That seems to be our niche (what we we can tell right now).

- The other major needs are in the high level operations and high level accounting. As a side note, Steve and Cory are working with a CPA firm and they are actively funding a number of projects - meaning the CPA firm.

- We currently have a small internal audit going on for code, processes, and procedures. We are excited to see what that turns over. We are hoping nothing too crazy but hopefully a focus point and/or a way to make things better and better.

- Lots of talks about figuring things out and being your own style.

- We are where we are, size wise, and will keep growing, as naturally as possible.

- Using that old notion to use other people's money to fund your business. We would like to keep working on getting other clients to keep putting in money to help pay for our development efforts. They get what they want and we keep pushing things forward.

- Steve would like to keep expanding our model like we have the custom code and development side. We have made some great strides there in the last six months. For the record, it has taken about 5 years to get here but things are really starting to click and lightbulbs are starting to go off (ideas and comprehension).

- Being able to offer a robust solution and allowing for our customers to customize and add customization seems to be a good mix for us.

- There was some talk about being able to show our current clients what we have to offer. Sometimes we or they get so busy, they may not even know that new features are available and may help them in their business and/or solve a current need. It comes down to communication and being able to help and show those things. It gets pretty deep some times.

- Steve and Sean were talking about menu boards and other tech stuff. It just keeps going. There was also some talks on hardware/software bundles and what not.

- Pain is a good indicator of where we need to focus.

- One of the things that we do well is trying to figure things out and tweaking what we've got to make that happen. We also try to tweak and figure things out based on what our users are saying and what we are finding out.

- Steve is making business decisions. Our top three priorities have been: 1. Servers and stability, 2. Cash flow and sales, and 3. Look and feel. Not done yet, but the servers are getting close to being done. That is awesome. The next one, cash flow and sales, is starting to move up the priority list.

- Aggregation and talking about where we want to go... Right now, we lean very heavily on the transactional data structure. We would love to add different levels of aggregation and moving out of the current dependence on the transactional data level. As a thought... think about daily transactional data being aggregated into daily records, weekly records, monthly records, and then annual records. Think how fast some of that data could be searched vs millions of transactional data with table joins, indexes, and crazy deep stacking and logic. Get those numbers out on their own and become quick and searchable. That would save tons of horsepower and server usage. Currently, we have a virtual super highway built directly to the transactional data. It works, but that is not the long-term solution. The long-term solution is to get into aggregation.

- Things are already fracturing (fracture) by us cutting things into smaller and smaller pieces. We want to keep that going. We are working hard to figure out our model and where best to focus.

- Our mission statement, from Steve, is to help our customers succeed. That is pretty simple.

- If a project is part of accounting or operations, cool, we are interested and open to discussion.

- We are just a big toolset.

- Dealing with tools, JSON (javascript object notation) is a tool but somewhat of a lightweight tool for retrieval and searching. It is great to store things but not so easy to use in high availability type models where everything needs to be edited, searched, and tied together. Make sure and only use it where it makes sense. We've been burned there before. JSON works great if you need to store something and then you only need it on a 1 to 1 ratio (no joins, no cross ties, and/or no dynamic searching). There are other tools that have performance and built-in options that are better.

- Predictive use of data - The more we can prep and get things ready, what is close at hand, the quicker we could make things. This almost gets into AI (artificial intelligence) and guessing what the user or client will need next. Prep with a purpose. Think of an artist and their working pallet, they surely have tons of supplies, brushes, paint, rules, pencils, etc. However, they know what project they are currently doing and thus adjust their virtual artist's pallet to match that job. As the job/tasks changes, they may need to alter what their pallet contains. That is totally ok.

- How do we help solve some of these needs... We aggregate, we split, we divide, we are trying to move into predictive realms, etc. Things are fracturing right under us but that is part of what we are trying to do and/or capitalize on.

- Our current model is very heavy on the transactional side or transaction based level. Eventually, we want to keep pushing into aggregate or enterprise type levels. Think of master lists, master catalogs, summing up data, quick stats (totals, counts, graphs, etc.), normalizing data, and being more effective at higher levels. 

- Our model seems to be moving more into a customizable reoccurring monthly platform as a service (PaaS) with all of the underlying services that help and support that model. We have dished things off for years to outside 3rd parties and independent contractors. We are seeing that we could provide both, the dynamic business platform as well as the supportive services that go along with that. This is funny side note, but Brandon has often said that whoever controls the service side of the business will be 10 times (10x) more value than the actual platform itself. The business platform is the catalyst and keeps things linked together, but the services help keep it going, building, and create the level of satisfaction that is needed. In Steve's words, it makes companies sticky - meaning they want and rely on our products, services, and business platform.

- People play in these areas... a reason, a season, and a life time.

- Growth and progression over time.

- Super glad for the water that went under the bridge - aka lessons learned.

- Delegation and association - In an employee model, they use delegation a lot. In an independent type model, you may end up using association more than direct delegation. Small but interesting word play.

Code review on permission templates for users with Russell.

- CRUD - standard database actions - C=create, R=read, U=update, and D=delete. In real SQL it is insert, select, update, and delete - but CRUD sounds better.

- We are starting to duplicate a lot of code due to older classic stuff, newer snow owl theme stuff, and the mix between the two. It isn't out of control, but there are becoming more and more duplicated sections due to the different views or GUI or UI (graphical user interface or just plain user interface).

Meeting with Calvin. He was reporting on some bug fixes in the adilas label builder app. Small side note, some times good comments in your code really help. Eventually you may need to go back and fix things... Sometimes months and months or even years later... Why did you do what you did... Without good comments, sometimes that is hard to tell. We were running into that on some of the code that we were looking at.

We ended up finding the problem and it was dealing with case sensitivity and switching servers (hosting environments).

Eric and I jumped on a meeting after Calvin and I were finished. We were going over new ACV (actual cash value) math and accounting for customer loyalty points. We can take it to certain levels, but at some point, you have let the users make decisions. Lots of talk about our responsibilities and due diligence on our part - helping the users make good decisions.

We did some testing and were getting good results. After that, back to more emails and such. That is constant.

Code sign-off with Russell. We were looking into event handlers and listeners. We got into some advanced JavaScript and JQuery code.

After that I was recording some notes from the day. Bryan needed some help so we jumped on a quick session. He is working on a custom payment solution for a company called Hypur. We already allow and are integrated with Hypur payments inside the secured environment. The new code will be outside the secured environment and will be part of the mobile friendly ecommerce package. Slightly different flow. We did some talking and planning on the project.