Working with Abby and Russell. Talking about the concept of a platform (adilas) and then supporting and building a floating city on top of that platform (system or application). Russell did a couple of drawings and Abby took some screenshots. The underlying pieces that connect everything are through the platform and/or API socket level connections. We then flipped back into working on JavaScript and CSS for the documentation project. We are trying to detail out the search options. We got the search fixed up. Much better now. Other small changes. Some manual and some AI augmented changes. Good work session. As a side note, Russell and I are helping to train Abby, as much as we can, while working on this project. Lots of little teaching opportunities while debugging, testing, or experimenting.

Working with Russell and Abby. Back working on the search look-up for the documentation project stuff. We were deep in indexes and counts to show the correct search results and setup the deep linking correctly (page and subpage navigation). We got stuck on some JavaScript and looping over sections and showing/displaying the correct search results. Manual changes and checking console logs for index numbers and flow. Deep JavaScript debugging. As we are going along, there is some teaching happening and helping Abby understand why we are doing what we are doing.

Working with Russell and Abby on the documentation project. Talking about traffic control and helping to regulate flow and usage - the job of developers. Making small changes with AI for small tasks in our project. Some good, some bad. Russell keeps using multiple AIs to improve the prompts for the other AI agent. We got to a point that we decided to manually change some of the code. It took a while to find out what it, the AI, had written. We only got as far as flagging some places to check for next time. We did force some values and got it to work, we just need to be able to either pass those dynamic values or have it recalculate them on the fly. We are dealing with search results and correctly showing and highlighting the correct search results within a page or sub section. The code deals with deep linking, highlighting search text, navigation, and setting the correct search index counters to the correct values (result 1 of 5 or 2 of 10 - etc.). Interesting, we weren't making as quick of progress today. There was a little bit of spinning our wheels - going back and forth with AI. We are in pretty deep.

Working with Russell and Abby. Planning and checking existing code on a small project that we are working on together. Slowing moving the ball forward. It takes time. Trying to have it, AI help us, do some code syntax highlighting. It wasn't able to do that. We rolled back the code. We then tried to have it do a text search function on sub HTML pages. That worked pretty good. Working on project prompts, and how to refine and use those. We were working with Russell as he would do a new prompt and then switch between the different AI applications. Talking about assigning tasks and starting a conversation with other developers. The task is not the end all, all it does is start the deeper conversation of what is needed, wanted, required, expected, etc. Working on the search function. Doing some detail work. Good work session. Abby and I are learning tons by working with and watching Russell.

The other part of the adilas glossary (A-J) is on element of time # 4030 in the adilas university site. Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=4030

K

• Keep - This is usually some sort of an action where you are maintaining or keeping something for later use. It could also involve something that you do continuously - for instance keep clicking on this, keep drilling down, keep refreshing, keep checking back, etc. Saying either save that or continue on that path. 
• Kill - This is a general term usually meaning to delete, destroy, make inactive, hide, etc. It is a general term that means to get rid of something. Other times you might talk about if it is going to kill the system meaning too heavy of a load, too intense, too many sub details, etc. 
• Knock knock - Who's there? It could be a joke but actually we use it in computer speaking when we are trying to gain access to API sockets. You play knock knock with the server. The server responds who are you? What do you want? Then you have to respond that those questions/requests. It is kind of a back and forth protocol.
• Knox Report - Special sales report for invoices and payments made. It has the ability to show quick stats, counts, and other math totals. You can also run comparisons on different date ranges if wanted. The original report, and all of the columns and/or numbers, were requested by an operations manager named Phillip Knox, out of Canada. Thus the name. It's really just an awesome sales report.
• KPI or Key Performance Indicators - These are a set of values (totals, counts, averages, sums, etc.) that are used to determine how things (people, processes, or campaigns) are doing. Some of these KPI's are used on reports, dashboards, and in other areas. Basically, someone setups up a rule and and benchmark goal. Then things are evaluated based on those key performance indicators.
• Kush Cart - This is a version of the internal shopping cart. The three main versions are the classic cart, the Kush cart, and the mini scan cart.

L

• Labels - Can be printed via browser settings from multiple locations in the database. Item labels can be used to add items to the shopping cart, item labels can be printed from within the shopping cart for certain industries, labels can be printed for plants from the cultivation homepage.
• Label Builder - Special application and/or functionality to help with custom labels. Inside the system, there are various label builders. Some are very basic (auto linked from specific pages to the label generator) and other allow for all kinds of drawing, graphics, dynamic text, colors, rotation, barcodes, QR codes, custom naming, saving, etc. Multiple versions, based on needs.
• Liabilities - Financial obligations of a company. Tracked on the balance sheet.
• Line Items - "Meat and potatoes of a form." Can be inventory items on a PO, expenses on an expense receipt, and invoice sales on a deposit.
• Link - A link could be an actual web link where you go from page to page. These are often used in navigation or drill-downs. A link could also be things that get connected or tied in. Such as an invoice might be linked with a customer or an item is linked with a PO. Another definition for link is an item within a chain of a process. What are the links that it needs to go through?
• Locations - Way to sort inventory, allocate sales tax rates, organize operations in the database. Completely dynamic.
• Lock - A lock usually means that something becomes more secure. It could be locking people out, locking things down, it could be advancing something so that people with lower permissions cannot access or see it. Another example could be a system being put or going on lock down - like the system or a database table. A lock is used to inhibit access. 
• Logout - Function that allows a user to leave the database. Once logged out, another user can log in from that computer. Note.. logging out does not clock out the user.
• Logs - Associated with customers/clients. Area where notes may be kept for historical reference.
• Look and Feel - Basically this deals with what you see. Your interface colors, your color choices, your navigation buttons, your interface layout design, your defaults, your style, etc. The software system allows for all kinds of dynamic colors, fonts, watermarks, graphics, logos, and styling to help with your look and feel. 
• Look Back Date - Usually this means that we are going back in time to look at data or content. Very common for inventory levels, sales, and balance sheet items.
• Loyalty Points - This is the process of assigning points and values (dollars) to a customer or client who purchases from you. These loyalty points can have ratios (how many points for how many dollars spent), date rules, redemption rules, etc. Inside the system, you have to turn it on, but the system will automate this process for you (checkout, accumulation, redemption, etc.). The bigger section is called special accounts and deals with things like loyalty points, gift cards, vendor credits, in-store credits, etc. The use of loyalty points, in the system if built-in, once turned on at no extra charge.
• LPI (Lines Per Inch) - This is a printing term that deals with resolution. Another common one for this is DPI which is dots per inch. Often computer screens and printers deal with DPI where LPI is for professional print shops.

M

• Main - The software application uses the term main in multiple different ways. It could be main homepage, main navigation, main or core logic. The word main might also refer to sub homepages such as main customer homepage, main invoice homepage, main deposit homepage. Going deeper the word main could also mean the starting of the object. Anything that can hold subs is a main. For instance the main invoice details or main element of time. We end up adding sub details, such as line items and payments, to a main bucket, item, or container. It is very common within the application to see the words edit main. This deals with going directly to edit the details required to start or initiate a new object within the system. 
• Make/Model - This is tied to serialized or stock/unit inventory. The make is usually similar to a brand name. Then the model is usually some sort of a sub division within that, that has some known attributes or pieces. In the system we allow you to define the makes/models and the underlying presets that go along with those. These are set up into one to many relationships where one make can have an unlimited number of models.  
• Manager's Time Clock - This is a permission/section that allows a user to oversee time clock records for departments that have been assigned to that manager. Time clocks have three different levels. You have the user level which is easy to add but you cannot edit anything. Then manager's time clock which allows you to add and edit but only at a certain level. Then admin time clock that allows for corporation wide adds, edits, and reports. 
• Mark-up - This usually deals with a pricing model where you take a value and you multiple it by a cost to arrive at a new price. Depending on if you are doing widget (small, bulk) type inventory or serialized (stock/unit) inventory there may be multiple levels of mark-up. Another way that mark-up is used is sometimes on coding language. A mark-up language is where certain things have tags, attributes, and parameters. 
• Media Content - Technically media/content is any kind of file, which could be spreadsheets, text documents, PDFs, graphics, photos, scans, audio files, video files, etc. that may be added to the system. Inside of the application we allow media/content to be added to any of the 12 main items, any of the 12 main player groups, or just generically to the system as a whole. Basically this is your paperless office function. 
• Merchant Processing - This is a general term used to talk about credit card transactions, authorizations, and processing. The system acts as the client side or software piece. It sends transactions over to a gateway which authorizes, confirms, and holds secure data. The merchant part of it deals with converting that data into real monies that will get pushed into the company's bank account.
• Meta Data - This is data about the data. Usually used for database or describing things. Say you have a PDF document. The meta data might be things like the title, the category, the feature it explains or is part of, who created it, the date, the last date modified, the page length, etc. This is just one sample. It is basically any side data that describes or helps categorize the main data. It is used in web technologies all the time. Meta data helps the browsers and search engines know what the page either contains or is for.
• Metrc - This is a state compliance agency that tracks regulated items through the chain of custody and uses their own RFID tags and subsequent system to help in that tracking and training process. Metrc is pronounced "metric", like the measurement standard.
• Mini Conversions - A conversion is where something gets converted into something else. Usually it deals with units of measure. For example gallons of water, liters of water, cups of water, drops of water, etc. The reason we use the word mini conversions is that we are trying to track a semblance of what is happening instead of a full conversion that might be unalterable. These mini conversions are simulating the breakdown or conversion into smaller or bigger groupings.
• Mini Scan Cart - This is a version of the main internal shopping cart. The three main versions are the classic cart, the Kush cart, and the mini scan cart. The mini scan cart is the most flexible and customizable of all of the shopping carts. It has a number of toggle on/off settings, you can rename buttons and even show/hide different possible functionality add-ons. This shopping cart also has a number of touch screen specific options and settings.
• Mix - This could be the mix that you have on your sales floor (what inventory items you have in-stock - example: what's your mix or let me show you my mix) or it could be the act of blending one or more pieces together. Often the word mix is used to mean some sort of combination or process to get a result. Inside of adilas, we often are mixing and blending different business functions or technologies together. The goal is something different than what or where you started.
• Mobile - This could mean mobile as in on a mobile device where the sizing or layout changes based on screen size. It could also mean the ability to carry, transport, or move around. It may also mean the ability to transfer pieces between things - the data can become mobile. The ability of the data to transfer between places such as to different corps, other software, different places in the application, etc. Often you might hear the words mobile app or mobile ready - that usually means a software system that runs natively on android or iOS devices.
• Modal - This is a special popup window that is used in or on a web page. It appears to be a new window, but actually, it is just a layer that sits on top of the other browser window. Without getting super technical, a modal helps show/hide additional information so that the page can remain less cluttered.
• Money Types - Options for making and receiving payments.
• Money Type Settings - List that shows all existing options for making and receiving payments. Boxes may be selected or deselected to customize payment options based on form (Invoice, Shopping Cart, Deposit, Expense)
• More Options - Button provides access to links that are associated with the page in use. At the top of most pages.
• My Cart Favorites - Custom preset buttons that determine how items assigned to those buttons are sold.
• My Settings - This deals with access to user level settings within the software application. This could be anything from password and profile information to default cart types, expense types, Flash buttons, etc.

N

• Ctrl N - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for creating a new tab in your browser window. Often you can do the same thing by right clicking a tab and clicking new or duplicate, etc. 
• News & Updates - Updates and how to's are posted here to alert users of new functionality within the system.
• Normal Parts/Items - The word "parts" is used to mean any item that is tracked as a group (including labor and services). It is also important to note that the words "parts" and "part number" are editable on a per corporation basis from the corp-wide settings. Specific items are called units or stock numbers (serialized units) and are handled through a different section (usually bigger ticket items). Sometimes the word normal parts applies itself to how things are tracked meaning tracking things in and out.
• Nxtlinq - AI technologies company. The Nxtlinq group helped to make the adilas.biz AI agent "Adi". They are a 3rd party solution in the AI technology space.

O

• One to Many - This is a database concept and usually deals with some main element that may have subs, children, add-ons, additions, or some unlimited number of connections. Some examples could be one customer has multiple invoices or each invoice has multiple line items. We use the concept of one to many to talk way beyond just database things but that is where it came from. 
• One to One - This is also a database concept and usually what it means is a direct relationship. It's the opposite of a one to many. Often a one to one indicates a switch, a toggle, an additional value that may be conditional, an option of being turned on or invoked. 
• Online Bill Pay - This is where a customer would actually get a button, a link, or an email where they could go pay for a statement online using a credit card. 
• Open/Opened - This is a common term that we use to talk about being engaged, active, selected, etc. An example might be open this package, meaning make it active or current. Or open the invoice homepage, meaning go to that page and open it. Or you may hear someone say tell me what tabs you have opened, meaning what do you have showing. 

P

• Ctrl P - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for printing a certain page.
• Packages - This is used in a number of different ways. Often it deals with batches for sub inventory. Sometimes they are called packages or child packages where you get into parent or child relationship. Packages could get into shipping. Packages could also be used for a certain set of features. For example if you were in a certain industry and wanted to buy the extended package that would be a set of extended features. Sometimes it is also used in the recipe/build area if you are creating certain recipes to create a package, or a kit, or some sort of group. 
• Page Settings - These settings deal with what happens on a single page. As a note there are corporation or world-level settings. There are group level settings such as invoices or PO settings. There are individual settings, there are also these page settings which deal with just how certain pages act, interact, show/hide, react, etc. 
• Parent - This usually refers to inventory and kind of a parent-child relationship. The parent is usually the main element or place holder. We then refer to the parent as the main item and the subsequent children are those related to that parent.  
• Parent Attributes - These are optional but these are classifications and categories that can be associated with different inventory items. These are ways to group and flag your inventories. This can help with sales and filtering of items/products. These are unlimited and often help in categorizing or searching or sub-filtering pieces together. As an example, say you bought outdoor equipment from a wholesaler but you really wanted to make sure that things were known for their brand. Not necessarily the vendor you purchased them from but the brand. This could be one example of a parent attribute but there are unlimited possibilities.
• Parent/Child or Parent - Child - This is a relationship for inventory items. The parent is the main item. If there are differences or a need to track sub data, special descriptions, changing costs, alternate prices, and other attributes, we use child or sub inventory. Super flexible and powerful but does require some additional steps as compared to normal or parent inventory tracking. Not required.
• Parent Inventory - Inventory items. May be sold as is (status active) or may be set up not to be sold (allow subs only) but to act as name holders for sub inventory (see sub inventory). May also be set to inactive if no longer needed for sales.
• Parts - Items or services that are sold. The name 'part' can be changed to reflect the 'widget' inventory and or services. 
• Part Category/Categories - Organizes items into a subset. Technically a part category helps in searches, in your reports, and on your financials. It also helps if you are going to be setting up any sub inventory attributes. Most of your sales reports are done by category at the top level and then by item. 
• Parts Homepage - Main inventory homepage. May search for inventory by vendor, category, or item. Printable views also accessed from this homepage, as well as a multitude of advanced searches.
• Patient - System default is customer- patient is an example of a choice for renaming 
• Payee - Refers to individual or business being paid, either vendor or employee.
• Payments Not Yet Deposited - As invoices are created, payments are applied. This verbiage stands for the state of these payments. They are 'waiting' to be included on a deposit.
• PDF-Portable Document Format - a file format that is used to share data. Many pages in the system may be exported to PDF through the click of a button.
• Percentage Calculator - This is a feature that allows you to calculate a percentage based off of either the cart total or a line total. Once the percentage is calculated, you have an option to alter or change any verbiage that is needed before adding the item to the cart. Often this is done to help cover credit card fees or some other percentage calculation. Normally used as part of the POS (point of sale) interface. Only companies that use this feature need to know about it. Normal retail actions don't use this special calculator.
• Permissions - Over 150 rules that allow or block access to functions within the database.
• Plant Tags - This is a term meaning an RFID tag for monitored items. Usually used in cultivation and harvesting processes.
• PNG Image - Portable Network Graphic- type of image file that is accepted for upload under the Media/Content link located on most forms in the database.
• PO's - This abbreviation stands for both Purchase Order, used to receive inventory and Production Order, used to record and track light manufactured items.
• Post - A post has a couple different things that it could be. One, any time a form is submitted it is called a post in technical terms. A post in accounting usually means let's lock it down and make it tight, also meaning lock it down from lower permission users. A post could also mean when you take smaller details and combine them into a summed entry, this entry can also be called a post. If you are talking about fences, it's the big tall thing. :)
• Presentation Gallery - This is a small web-site devoted to quick sales and marketing slides. The full set is around 50 sides that cover main topics of what we do at adilas. There are sections for essential business functions, application player groups, and core concepts. https://news.adilas.biz/sales-gallery/adilas-advert-index.html
• Printable - View of data that is condensed in order to print more succinctly. Editing is unavailable in the printable view.
• Printer Friendly - This is a term for certain pages and reports. Printer friendly means that minimal navigation or header/footer values exists. Usually, you have to go to that page, say an invoice or quote, and then click a button that says printer friendly. There are printer friendly options for multiple areas within the site.

Q

• Quick Search - This function appears on each page and allows one to quickly search for any element.
• Quote - The step prior to creating an invoice. Can be skipped if desired or created and turned into an invoice.
• QR Code - A two dimensional barcode that holds more data than a one dimensional barcode. 
  
  

R

• Raster Image - This is also sometimes called a bitmap image. Usually what this means is that there are little blocks of color to make the image. If it is blown up to big it can become pixelated. For example, people who work in PhotoShop deal with raster images all the time. The opposite of a raster image is what is called a vector image, which deals with smooth mathematical lines, arcs, and curves. Vector images scale very well because they are mathematically based. 
• Recipe/Builds - Method of selling items grouped together into a 'kit' or 'recipe'. Pulls inventory onto the invoice in set quantities.
• Reflexive Flex Grid - This is a piece of flex grid or flex grid tie-in that goes in the opposite direction. A normal piece of flex grid connects a single record to a source (say one of the main 12 application player groups). A reflexive piece of flex grid does a reverse connection from sub to main vs main to sub. Here is a quick example: Say you have a customer that needs a refund, you could go from the expense to the customer or from the customer to the expense. Either way. The goal is that the items are connected or have a relationship. If you use reflexive flex grid, you only have to make one connection, and the system will do both directions for you. You are trying to tell the story of what happened. Time saver.
• Refresh Queue - A queue is basically a digital line. This could be used for projects, people waiting, people who need to be served, etc. Refreshing the queue typically just means what is the current status or order of these people or things waiting. Some of the pages actually have settings so that the queue will refresh itself at an interval the company has selected.
• Refund - This is the act of returning or giving back an amount for something that was purchased. Inside the system, if you need to issue a refund, you will do a negative quantity (I'm getting something back). Not all refunds deal with items. Sometimes is just money trading hands. Depending on the side of the equation you are on, a refund could be monies going out (someone is asking for a refund) or you could be asking for monies coming in (I was a refund).
• REI's - This is short for a reimbursement. A reimbursement is money that was paid out of a person's pocket that needs to be paid back directly to that person. These are very common in the expense/receipt side of the application. For example, say I was out and bought a new broom and wanted to have the company reimburse me for buying the broom. On a technical side reimbursements in the system must be paid back in full. There is something called a split in the system that you can chip away at an expense and make payments to it but a reimbursement must be paid in full. There are tools in the systems to combine or pay reimbursements in bulk. 
• Reoccurring Elements of Time - Often you will have things that you want to reoccur over and over again such as company meetings, a set/reoccurring due date, even a person's schedule - things that happen over and over again. Inside the system you have to create one primary element of time that exists by itself, then you can tell it to reoccur or choose how to reoccurs. The master needs to be created first and then you can duplicate that master to create the further elements for reoccurring. 
• Reoccurring Expense Receipts - This is some sort of a bill or expense that happens over and over again. This is very common for rent, insurance, draws, auto-transfers from banks, etc. You set up the master and then you can tell it when to duplicate itself and advance it's dates for creating the additional expense/receipts. 
• Reoccurring Invoices - This is charging a customer over and over again in some kind of a reoccurring subscription, or repetitive purchases, etc. Once a single invoice is setup it could be set to reoccurring if there is some sort of constant, regular billing. If the invoice amount changes you may not want to go this route. This is best used for the same items/services and amount reoccurring on a regular interval. Once again you have to have a master invoice and then it knows what to copy. This section inside of the system can do it both automatically and as a manual reminder in case things need to change. 
• Request PO - This PO type is used for ordering, requesting, or getting quotes from vendors. This PO type records all of the main PO info without taking it to the next step (receiving). The PO request may easily be turned into a "Basic Live" PO by switching the PO type. When this happens, the request will hold all of it's original info and becomes received (actual or live). At this point, it will function just as a basic live PO would (inventory counts and payables). This PO type is vendor specific. See corp-wide settings for custom naming.
• Responsive - This has a couple of general meanings. One of the most modern ones is called a responsive webpage, meaning it sizes well for different devices. The layout will change depending on the size of the screen, that is called responsive. Another use of the word responsive is talking about clients getting back with you, vendors, or even the server - such as the server is not responsive meaning that it is not responding to requests presently which could mean it may be asleep or dead for a bit.
• Restore to Cart - This means you are taking something, usually a quote, and putting it back into the flexible shopping cart mode where you can add, edit, change, and use the bulk tools in the shopping cart. As a note, restore to cart is from quotes but there is also an option to duplicate to cart which is taking a completed invoice and restoring it to the cart. 
• Results - This is also a general term. It could mean a goal - what are you desired results. It could mean results of a query - what came back from a search. It could also deal with testing results for something such as new code. Results are also trying to find what you are looking for. What do you get out of this thing that you are looking for.
• Retail - The term retail usually means something along the lines of sales or selling something. Inside the system, retail could be a name of a certain interface or dashboard - retail dashboard, retail homepage, retail interface (POS interface), retail sales report, etc. Retail usually means taxes, where wholesale means non taxed, at the current time of the transaction.
• RFID - Radio frequency identifiers - Used in the cannabis industry to track all inventory and plants. Unique number associated with inventory items.
• Rounding - Rounding deals with the level of accuracy, usually with number. This could be decimals to decimals or decimals to integers. It is also important to know that the deeper you split something apart there might be virtual saw dust or shavings which is referred to as rounding error - trying to get it split apart or broken down as close as you can. Rounding is often used in taxes, discounts, and eventually needs to be equated into money if you are dealing with dollars and cents. Sometimes inside of the system we allow things to be flexible up to 5 decimal points - the term we use for this in the application is the dewy decimal system - this is not related to libraries.   

S

• Sales And Profit - This is a term to show what has been sold (sales) and what the profit or difference between the price and cost are. Sometimes, this is used as a term to mean, how did we do? Inside the system, there are special invoice-based sales report that show this information. The P&L (profit and loss or income statement) also show this kind of information. Sometime the sales are called revenue and the profit is calculated based off of a salesprice minus the cost of goods sold (COGS). Discounts may or may not be included, depending on what you are looking for. Often taxes are left out of this calculation.
• Sales Tax Settings - All settings are dynamic and can be entered on the location homepage. 
• Server (what server are you on?) - All corps are assigned a server that houses all their data. Server number is visible in URL ie. https://data4.adilas.biz
• Settings - Settings are usually some sort of user preferences or default values to help a page or a function configure itself. Inside of the system there are four main types of settings. We have corporation or world level settings. We have group or system player settings - for example invoices, parts, customers, etc. We also have what are called page settings which deal with a specific page function, flow, or process. The lastly we also have a thing called individual or user settings - this is where an individual or user gets to set some preferences such as default types, navigation, other presets and defaults. 
• Shopping Cart - Where sales happen in the database (see also Cart).  The shopping cart is how you sell your stuff. It is the interface between your customers and the entire rest of the system. The shopping cart eventually helps you to create your invoices and quotes. It is literally tied to almost everything in the system. If you took out this piece of the puzzle, not much would be happening. This is the "interface" piece.
• Show/Hide Search Criteria - This is usually a button or a link that helps you collapse or expand search forms. Often pages or reports needs user inputs or filters but showing that right off the bat takes up valuable real estate on the page. So the show/hide search criteria allows you to expand or collapse that when you need to interact with the input, filter, and searching section.  
• Signature or E-Signature - This usually deals with a sales receipt or invoice. A signature is a special written name or approval. An e-signature usually means some sort of digital signature or approval. There are a number of signature settings for invoices, inside the system, including e-signature options.
• Smart Group - Basically, a smart group button is a my cart favorite button that contains all of the functionality of the normal cart favorite buttons plus it allows for pre-set pricing structures (quantities, weights, and prices) to be assigned or connected to one or more inventory items. Smart group buttons allow for both assignments (who gets to play) and rules (how things interact or play) to be set up.
• Snow Owl - This is a look and feel theme or motif. Snow Owl is a series of header, footers, options, settings, and styling for the pages. Originally developed by Russell Moore in 2017. Additional changes have been made. This theme currently has the most modern features, access to tools, functions, settings, and more. Sometimes we talk about Snow Owl in a general sense but this encompasses hundreds of settings, features, and options that are part of running Snow Owl. 
• Software - This is a term meaning any kind of code or program that is installed on a machine. Often software deals with licenses, updates, versioning, etc. Some of it's family members are hardware, firmware, freeware, shareware, and even sometimes vaporware. Even though the system is a web application it is sometimes generically called software. 
• Special Accounts - These are things inside of the system that take on the role of a miniature account of sorts. We use the term special accounts for things like loyalty points, gift cards, gift certificates, vendor credits, in-store credits, punch cards, account balances, etc.
• Special Line Items - These deal with the hardcoded part numbers or "special line items" that are used within the application. Many of them have special uses and special code that is built in to the main application. These are things such as labor, fee, discount, verbiage, other, shipping, trade-ins, and more. Basically these are special parts or items that can be attached to an invoice or PO and some of them even have special treatment on how they are tracked financially on the P&L and Balance Sheet.  
• Special Live PO - PO used to bring in inventory from multiple vendors. This PO type allows the main vendor to be set as the payable (who will get paid), and the line items may contain bulk, generic, or non-vendor specific items. These PO types are used by companies that buy the same item from multiple vendors and don't want certain items to be tracked on a per vendor basis. The items become a bulk or general usage item and are usually maintained under a special internal vendor. 
• Special Parts - This can be two different things, it can refer to unlimited items that don't track quantity such as labor or services, or it can refer to the special built-in application items.
• Special Request - This is the request side of the special live PO's. Very similar to a basic request except it allows multi and mixed vendors. See description of special live PO's above for more info. Once received, all special request PO's will need to be flipped over to the special live PO status in order to show up and become real or live. 
• Specific - Specific basically limits the scope. We use it as a general term and it could mean specific in reference to talking about a specific item or a specific relationship. We also use it when referring to things like corp specific, vendor specific, location specific, user specific etc. Once again it takes that general topic and narrows it down to that scope. 
• Split Cart - Feature that allows user to view shopping cart and my cart favorite buttons on the same screen simultaneously (see M for My cart favorite).
• Split/Splits - This has a number of different features associated with the word splits. This could be split payments - which is typically dealing with multiple locations where you may have to split or divide payments. A general term called splits in the system is a term used for payments that are on account. This is used when you need to pay a vendor and you may owe a larger sum than you can pay right then. You can attribute whatever monies you would like to that vendor's account and it will pay off or satisfy those expenses. Sometimes split can refer to split screen functionality that diverges or splits. If you are dividing revenue sharing you might create some sort of a split.
• Spread - This could mean a spread of what you have (like inventory items or options) or it could be the act of distributing something across multiple areas. The term areas could mean whatever, bills, invoices, payments, security, outreach, etc.
• Start New Cart - Function that allows user to begin a sale.
• Statements - a time stamped report or "snapshot" of who owes you what.
• Status - This term could me a number of things. A status is usually a state of being of some sort. Often, inside the system, a status is either active (use/show) or inactive (don't use/delete/hide). Sometimes the term status could also mean a state of readiness.
• Stock/Unit Cust - A restricted view of serialized inventory. The view is 'customer' friendly, hence the name 'Cust.'
• Stock/Unit Full - A full view of serialized inventory. Includes cost and other info that should be hidden from customers.
• Students - Technically a student is a person who learns. There is a corp wide setting that you can use for your customers and if you happen to be engaged with people who are called students you may change your customer name to student. This can also deal with people who are learning from your media files or procedures. 
• Sub Attributes - Unique information associated with a sub inventory item. This information is driven by sub inventory templates that are created based on the tracking needs of the business (see sub attribute templates).
• Sub Attribute Templates - Templates that carry the unique data assigned to sub inventory items. These are assigned by the business based on tracking needs.
• Sub Inventory - Items in the database that can be sold. Connected to a parent item (parent inventory) which carries the name and some information. Sub inventory is unique and can carry much more unique information (see also Child).
• Switch Corp - If a business has more than one corp they can switch between them without logging out.
• System Assets - Contains all company assets. Deposits, Accounts Receivable, Invoices etc.
• System Basics - Basic permissions and links to preform calculations.
• System Liabilities - Contains all company liabilities. In general all payables that your company owes.
• System-Maintained BSI - Item on the balance sheet that are automatically generated and updated by the database.
• System Maintenance - Section that contains homepages that allow the user to maintain different functions.
• System Management - High security level that allows the user to maintain corp-wide settings and user permissions.
• System Reports - General reports to help you know and understand the company finances, inventory levels and historical data.
• System Time & Requests - Inter company calendar. Used to schedule any 'element of time.'

T

• Templates - Templates are typically grouped settings or presets. It could be a number of settings or permissions that are configured or options that are toggled on and off. Sometimes we use templates in things like sub inventory attributes, elements of time templates (master time templates), we also could potentially use templates to set up corporations on a more global scale - like setting presets for certain industries or jobs, etc. 
• Themes - A theme is similar to a template except it deals with look and feel or what we call a theme. A theme is something that has a reoccurring or overarching premises to it. We do often use this with look and feel and you can see a patter with this, some of these are the classic theme, geometry, Snow Owl, etc.
• Threshold - A threshold is a limit either on the top or bottom of an amount. For example: Say you sell a certain widget item, you may set a max threshold of 50 and minimum threshold of 10. The goal is to stay within your boundaries or thresholds.
• Tiered Pricing - This is the act of automatically applying a price break as the quantity goes up. Inside the system, there are tiered pricing options in the my cart favorite buttons (smart groups) or inside of the parent attributes applied to items for ecommerce sales. Often tiered pricing deals with rules and assignments to different items (assignments) and price breaks (rules).
• Time - Refers to an 'Element of Time.' The object that tracks any data related to time. These are the basis of the calendar and scheduling.
• Time Clock - Time clocks have three different levels. You have the user level which is easy to add but you cannot edit anything. Then manager's time clock which allows you to add and edit but only at a certain level. Then admin time clock that allows for corporation wide adds, edits, and reports. 
• Time Templates - The time templates or master time templates control what the time elements are called. They also control what they allow as far as subs, add-on's, default settings, and functions of time. Think of a time template as a cookie cutter for the actual elements of time. 
• Touch or Touch Screen - Touch can mean a number of different things. It could be an action - who touched my customer log notes? Often, there are system histories to show who touched what parts, pieces, and/or records. It could also mean touch or the act of using a touch screen. This is very common in the POS (point of sale) interface. Certain settings are specifically setup to allow for easier touch options (big buttons or finger related interfaces).
• Transfer - This is another general term. One of the most common usages is what we call an invoice transfer where you are moving product from location to location. Internally we call that a transfer invoice. Another use for transfer is when we talk about a bank transfer - moving money from one account to another account. There may be other uses for the word transfer like transfer of ownership or documents. It generally means something is in movement or there is a change in ownership.
• Transition Invoice - A transition means something that is in-between things. For general purposes a transition invoice is between a quote and a real invoice. We actually allow you to name it whatever you would like. Some common ones might be work in progress, work order, layaway, prepaid invoice, etc. Basically it is something that may not fully be done or finished but we already need to start contributing inventory and payments to the order. On transition invoices some of your normal financial pieces are deferred until it gets changed to an actual customer invoice.
• Try Storming - Similar to brainstorming but with the knowledge that you will be circling back around. You still plan things out, do whatever you are going to do, make your best effort, and then you - on purpose - circle back around. Keep repeating until you have what you want.
• Type - This is a very general term. It is basically a way to organize or flag certain data. A couple of examples might be invoice types, PO types, customer types, etc. We also use virtual chart of account buckets called deposit types and expense types. It is all for categorizing and organizing your data. Another common term for a type is either a category or grouping. Sometimes these can all be used interchangeably and indicate some sort of organization or flagging. 

U

• Universe - Universe inside of the system usually deals with all of the different servers, the different corporations or worlds, and all of the different entities that play together under this larger umbrella. Along this line sometimes we also use the word universal which can mean globally/generally accepted and adapted across the system. 
• Units of Measure - A unit of measure is some sort of a standard way of noting a measurement, a weight, or a length. Common ones might be something like ounces, grams, tons, liters, gallons, dozens, boxes, each, etc. A unit of measurement is assigned to every inventory item. This controls how the items are reduced from inventory and how price is determined in the shopping cart. Units of measure may be broken down further into what are called mini conversions. This is where you have a certain amount of one measurement that creates or equals a certain amount of another measurement. 
• Unlimited Parts/Items - Each inventory item may be specified as either normal, where we count quantities in and out. Or unlimited where we allow it to sell as many as we want, such as services where we don't limit it to an actual inventory value. 
• Update - Update is a general term. Usually it deals with some sort of a database type change where a record gets edited or updated. It is also very possible to update things that are held in memory without hitting the database but usually update refers to some sort of a change, or something new being presented, a feature being updated, or some news and updates letting you know about current or upcoming functionality. 
• Update Cart - Allows user to push new information into the shopping cart during a sale.
• Update Inventory - Function that allows user to update entire inventory via one purchase order (see Update PO).
• Update PO - PO used to update inventory regardless of vendor (see Update Inventory).
• Upload - This is an action. Usually this means a push from one computer to another computer or server. Uploading usually deals with files, images, media/content, or even potential lists of data. 
• URL - A URL is another name for the web address. A web address is usually in the top of your browser and is used for hyperlinks, form submission, and general web navigation. Technically it stands for a Uniform Resource Locator but it is basically just a web address. 
• USAePay - Available merchant processing gateway for internal shopping carts, online bill pay, and ecommerce transactions.
• User-Maintained BSI - Item on the balance sheet that is created by the user and maintained by the user (not automatically updated by the database).
• User Settings - These are settings that are changeable on a per user basis. These could be things like default location, default homepage, a specific invoice type you like to use, if you are paying expenses it could be a certain payment type you typically use, a default shopping cart, etc. Basically they are setting that are changeable to make your user flow more customized and helpful for the user. The number of user settings continues to increase and there are also places that you can setup your own custom navigation, links, buttons, and more to come.  

V

• Ctrl V - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for pasting a certain selection held in memory. Either Ctrl C or Ctrl X are the ways of copying something to memory. 
• Validation - This usually means that certain data meets or matches certain criteria before being accepted. The system actually uses a number of forms of validation. You can have local validation which happens before anything even gets submitted. You also have server side validation where things get checked on the server before they are able to be used, advanced, or edited. There are also things called validation routines which means multiple steps of validation to help walk through a process. 
• Vendor Catalog - This is a term that is used at an enterprise level. Meaning, a list of vendors that may be added or go up/down the chain for multiple locations, entities, or corporation. It is basically a library of vendor information that exists at a high level and then may be pushed down to sub entities.
• Vendor Credit - This is an amount that a vendor allows as a discount or value that does not need to be paid. For example: Say you bought some things and the items weren't quite right. The vendor may issue you a credit or vendor credit. That means that the next bill or things that you pay for will be less money due to the vendor credit (an I owe you from the vendor). Inside the system, these are tracked as subs of the special accounts functionality.
• Vendors - Any person, business or entity that your company purchases services or items from.
• Verify - Verify usually means a second approval. Dealing with banks on expense and deposits, verifying means that the bank shows that same value. There are tools that allow for what we call bulk verify/verification, posting, etc. A lot of this deals with ways of advancing the ball (data) and saying that it is still good and can move on to the next step. ,    
• View Cart - Shows user current shopping cart information. If a shopping cart exists it will be held in memory and often we use the term view cart to get back to that process. Carts are just saved in memory until you actually submit the cart and create an invoice or a quote. There is usually some sort of button or icon in your header that will help you get back to the cart if it actually exists. 
• View Only - This is a state or status of what is being viewed or shown. The view only status or state means you may look but not touch. Inside the system, there are a number of silver permissions (specialty permission) that allow users to search and view things but not add or edit them.
• View Register - Shows user  current bank information.
• VIN/Serial Num - The unique number/letter id of a serialized item.
• Void Options (all the options) - The act of voiding means you negate or return everything to an original state or a state of zeros. The four main places that things are voided are on invoice, deposits, expenses, and PO's. Once things are voided all of those inventory items or payments are reverted back as if they never happened. Almost every other thing in the system has a status, such as active or inactive, which can virtually be like voiding it or making it go away as well to make something inactive. 

W

• Wholesale - This is normally a sale to another retailer or distributor where tax is not part of this transaction. Tax is attributed on later transactions to the actual customer. Wholesale also sometimes deals in bulk. It has its own special rules and regulations. Sometimes wholesale could also mean a reduction in price or selling things lower than a standard retail environment. 
• Widget - A widget is a general term. Widget could mean a small computer application such as a Flash widget, an HTML widget, a mobile widget, etc. This is also a general term used to talk about general inventory items or non-classified items. For example, you might need to update your widget inventory to show the new prices. 
• With Tax Included - This is a tax setting where the company sets a fixed price out the door and then the system back figures what the tax should be to make the price plus the taxes that out the door pricing. The brother to this setting is called normal taxable and that takes the item price plus the tax which then comes up with a new total. 
• World - This is a general term. Often it denotes some sort of sphere or area that has certain characteristics. Another synonymous term is something like land where we might say eCommerce land, invoice land, or invoice world - denoting when you are in separate areas. Another definition for a world is a corporation or an entity. Often we use this when talking about world building. When we talk about your world it is your business entity. 
• World Building - World building is the act of gathering all of the different pieces and putting them into play in a system that simulates your world. Disclaimer: the term world building is used by authors and those in film to build a world with characters, cause and effect relationships, some sort of trouble or problems, and some sort of a goal that ties these things together. This creates a symbiotic relationship. 

X

• Ctrl X - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for cutting a certain selection and putting it on the clipboard for future use. Ctrl V is used to paste.
• X-axis - Part of a 3D model. Time is the x axis (bottom or horizontal side to side). Time goes in both known directions (forward and backward).
• X-out - This is usually a quick way to say X out of that, X that, close that, kill that, remove that, etc.  

Y

• Ctrl Y - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for redoing something that has been undone. It's brother command is Ctrl Z or undo.
• Y-axis - Part of a 3D model. Money is the y axis (vertical or up and down). The y axis may also be referred to as resources. Not all resources are money but they do go up and down as things happen and business flows. 
• Yearly/Year - This is a term denoting the time period of a fiscal year (accounting) or a physical year (general time period).

Z

• Ctrl Z - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for undoing a previous action. It's brother command is Ctrl Y or redo.  
• Z-axis - Part of a 3D model. Space is the z axis (depth, front to back and/or layering). This axis deals with additional details. What is happening? Are things moving? Are these things part of some other piece? What are the additional details that give more depth and understanding, that make it a rich story.

Phone call with Steve. We had to play a little bit of phone tag, due to connections. Once we got connected, we had a good conversation. The main things that we were talking about were dealing with removing friction and rub on the client side of the equation. Making things easier and easier. We talked briefly spoke about some current projects like Metrc updates, merchant processing, and CardPointe and Clover server issues and threading. Here are some of my other notes:

- One of Steve's biggest goals is to get AI fully integrated into the adilas system. Almost to the point of a simple chat-based system that could handle and process natural language and then be able to help the user do anything inside of the adilas system. Not just navigation, education, training, and consulting, but actual physical tasks. Instead of clicking buttons, navigating, and running reports, you could just talk with the system, and it would be able to help you. That is one of his main goals. It may take some steps to get there, but a cool vision.

- Along with the idea above, of a system that could do anything (AI super system), he was talking about a flow process like this... From left to right... Something comes in, it could be a bill, receiving inventory, doing a sales transaction, whatever... The middle would be the chat window and super simple interface (almost nothing structured). You tell the system what you want to do and it helps you do it. If it needs more information, it would just prompt you and help hold your hand. Then on the right, or the output window, you could get your results and/or confirmation that the task was completed. The results don't even have to be reports that we have programmed. It, the output and/or results, could flex, based on what was asked and/or being worked on.

- I was expressing that I liked the idea, and I could see how it could really help in some situations. This is just me, but I don't think that every person wants that. Yes, it could be an awesome option and could speed certain things up. However, if it was a repeated process, that would be a pain to keep telling it what to do. It might take longer to explain it than it would to click two quick buttons (from a pre-built interface). There are a lot of assumptions being made. One, it (AI) would have to have a super deep knowledge of the system and all of its possibilities. Someone would have to help set things up. We would need to record those instructions in order to repeat those processes. Things change as time goes by, someone would have to be able to edit things, etc. We would also want it to keep learning on the fly. Technically, each person, even across the same business, would have specific needs.

- Without being a "Debbie Downer", I could see something like this being possible as a phase 4 or 5 of working with the AI agents. Phase 1 would be integration and doing simple existing navigation and use of tools. Phase 2 would include education and training on existing pieces. Phase 3 could be where we start letting the AI agent have access to raw data through API's and special AI tooling. Phase 4 we would have to introduce ways of creating some kind of assembly or package for the AI agent to follow (recipe/build type mentality). Then maybe a phase 5 where the system is trained and enabled to help with all kinds of stuff. This could be super deep. Say a person has a picture of something. Do they want to enter it into the system, store info, check something off, etc. It's a little too open right now. This is my take on it... but it would have to be a phase 5 ish type thing.

- As Steve and I were talking, we were talking about AI, bots, robots, agents, etc. Steve was saying that they are all combining into just the AI (artificial intelligence). The words bots, agents, etc. may go away. They are somewhat merging (lines are blurring). There is some mixing going on.

- I loved his ideas on helping our clients get rid of heavy learning curves, manuals, processes, etc. Decrease the friction and the rub. I love that. It just takes time and money and development (and a plan) to get there.

- We talked about the fact that some (most) people don't want to watch a hundred videos or read a huge, big user guide. They want it to be easy.

- Some of what we were talking about might even be the next steps (future) beyond the value add-on core model and/or the fracture UI buildout.

- Trying to listen to what our clients are saying and telling us. That is important. This came from Russell, long ago - Our clients want something that is easy, powerful, and looks nice. If they can get those three things, it will sell.

- I wanted to record these ideas... part of the idea farming stuff that we are doing. We record things, plant them in the ground (sit on them or think about them), and then finally roll around to see if we can make something out of the ideas. Ideally, we get more and more activity on certain things and that helps us know what is being asked for and/or required. Fun process, but it does take time and feedback loops (over and over again).

- For me, when I got home, I scribbled down some notes and drew some funnels, mixing of tools, and even possible stacked or reverse funnels. All of this deals with getting something, mixing it together, using possible tools, and then getting an output (of some sort). Sometimes, once you get an output or result, you have to remix it or send it through another funnel to get what you really want. Break it down, transform it, summarize it, expand it, or whatever... some kind of action to either pull, mix, create, and/or alter something. As a note for me, I have some old graphics that I was working on back when I was doing some developer intern training. These guys had to produce something (desired output or a result), but the starting spot varied. They could use tools and then produce the desired output. I might tie back into that concept.

- Dealing with the concepts for the developers (listed above - inputs, funnels, mixing, blending, and getting outputs). I found some of the old entries. They were in 2/14/2015 and then again on 3/6/2015. If you want, check out these entries and look at the image galleries for expanded visuals. I also added some of the old handwritten notes and scans to this element of time. These entries also include some concepting on the 3D calendar. All playing through around the same time. Kinda fun. Enjoy!

Working with Abby and Russell on the web documentation project. We were doing some code tasks and modifying logos for the new web layout. We were having it (Claude AI) add in some new CSS variables to help with primary colors and highlighting to help tie-in light modes and dark modes better. We added a copy code button to the code block section. This allows us to show something like some text or a code snippet, and then have a quick copy button to help a user copy the content. All of those changes went pretty well. We then tried to get it to help with adding in color coding (syntax highlighting) for the code blocks. It really struggled on that. We just rolled it back and will keep going next week. Fun to see both the successes and the failures. It does take time, but it can also save time, when it works. Fun exercises.

Adilas Key Contributors:

Steve Berkenkotter - Main owner and business partner - original ideas, concepts, and training - sales, relationships, dreamer, visionary, custom code, coordinator, builder of the first industry specific skin, and the list goes on. Huge player in the adilas story and timeline. One of the original owners in Moring Star Automotive - where the system came from. There are three known Steve's in the system notes. Most of them are this Steve (99 out of 100 times). He won't admit it, but adilas was his brainchild.

David Berkenkotter - Steve's brother and business partner in Morning Star Automotive. David was a system user and helped us create the adilas quick search. He liked using that feature, the quick search, but it only existed on one page originally. He wanted us to put it on every page. That ended up being in the header. He was also one of the original partners in adilas. Power user in the system. Sadly, he passed away due to cancer.

Shari Olin - Commonly known as "Shari O.". She worked in the accounting department back in the Morning Star days. She has been somewhat of a mother hen to help all of us crazy chickens keep going. She helps with customer support, training, payroll, bill collection, and tons of backend office functions. Major power user. Just being silly, but she can have the mouth of a sailor but the heart of an angel. Part of the adilas admin team and a great friend.

Craig Leitner - Also part of the original Morning Star team. Craig was the automotive floorplan and bank guy. He is a power user in the system and does a lot of bank reconciliation and other tasks. He currently works with Steve and asks as the adilas controller (money flow guy).

Cory Warden - Originally an adilas rep and consultant. Cory become part of the team after being a rep for quite some time. She helps with customer care, client support, project management, and keeping the team on track. She also does all of the news and updates and other training material. Cory does tons of oversight type services for our clients. Power user and part of the admin team.

Sean Carlton - Sean was a manager at a Cannabis dispensary in Colorado that used adilas for years and years until they sold. Steve recruited Sean to help with sales, deployment, and training. Sean brings lots of usage experience. Often, he is one of the helpers if we need to send someone onsite to help with a deployment or training session. Power user.

Brandon Moore - I'm one of the guys that writes most of the developer's notebook entries. Originally, I was hired by Morning Star, the automotive dealership, to help with data entry, accounting, and website stuff. I ended up being one of the main adilas developers and architects. I build content, write code, help other developers and team members, and help with training. Helped start the project back in 2001 under the Morning Star name.

Chris Dunsey - One of the first adilas interns (developers). Helped with a number of projects. Ended up being somewhat of a consultant later on.

Shawn Curtis - Kinda a funny story. He was taking a developer's class at Bridgerland. He knew my brother Russell. He asked to join our developer class and became one of the first interns along with Chris Dunsey. Shawn ended up helping with payroll and other projects. Some of the photo galleries in the system came from Shawn's help. He also worked on the media/content (file upload) pieces. Later on, he did more payroll work and acted as a buddy to Brandon and did some consulting work. We worked together for years and years.

Russell Moore - Russell is my younger brother. Originally, he was added to the group because of his graphic skills. He ended up being a great backend developer and project manager. He has also acted as a trainer and mentor for Brandon along the way. Much of the current system came from projects and efforts that Russell was involved with. He has also been Brandon's AI tutor in recent years. Great help to the system. Huge contribution.

Chris Johnnie - He is an entrepreneur who teamed up with Russell to help create a company called "Adilas For Business" or "AFB". Eventually, both Russell and Chris sold their pieces back to adilas. They were honestly the first ones to really try to run as a white label of adilas. This was back in 2015 and 2016. Chris really helped to push the product to the next level along with Russell's help.

Danny Shuford - Longtime friend of Steve's. Danny helped with some website design, sales, and videos for adilas. He even got into creating custom PDF labels for clients. Light development work.

Marisa Shaw - She is Danny's daughter. Danny brought her to an adilas training event in Denver, CO. Marisa was the star student. She ended up helping with some graphics, flyers, marketing material, teaching, instruction, and planning. Power user. Very helpful.

Shannon Scoffield - Shannon is Brandon and Russell's sister. Her maiden name is Shannon Moore. Huge help and virtual assistant to Brandon. She has helped with training, project management, and content creation. Most of the major content sessions were or have been with Brandon and Shannon working together. When they, Brandon and Shannon, were traveling, Shannon was one of the primary adilas instructors. If she was teaching Brandon was taking notes. If Brandon was teaching, Shannon was taking notes. Power user.

Cheryl Moore - Cheryl is my mom. What an asset. She owns a small business and has owed a few different ones. When we were doing training sessions, she came to every one of them. She asked wonderful questions and was a great supporter. Sometime, I would use her as a test subject - can my mom do this? If yes, we are good. If not, we may need to keep tweaking it. Thanks mom!

Wayne Moore - Wayne is my dad. He was my hiking buddy and more than willing to talk about ideas and concepts on our walks and hikes. He helped out with video stuff and was a great coordinator for making other connections. He worked at Bridgerland (technical college) and helped us get setup with classrooms, computer labs, and other great connections. Huge cheerleader! There is another Wayne, Wayne Andersen, he is a backend developer, systems guy, and database guy.

Wayne Andersen - This Wayne lives in Portugal and helps with all of the backend security, server, and code testing. Major skills, writes code, helps push all of us to new technologies, partially retired but loves to play with tech stuff. If you search for Wayne and it deals with concepts and coordination stuff, that's my dad, Wayne Moore. If you search for Wayne and it sounds like a master backend guy, that's Wayne Andersen.

Alan Williams - One of the lead developer's at adilas.biz. Alan joined us in 2015 and quickly came up through the ranks. Trainer, CTO, team lead, master developer, prototyper, and system architect. Alan has helped with many projects and features over the years. He also helped Brandon with some of the prep work for the adilas lite (fracture) plans and project. Sometimes called "Dr. Alan" by the other developers. Example: This might be a project for Dr. Alan.

Bryan Dayton - Bryan has been one of the most versatile guys on our team. Originally, he joined a development class out of curiosity. He and Brandon live in the same town and know each other from church. Bryan has done more custom code or small system projects than almost any other developer. He also joined the team in 2015. He helps with sales, custom projects, pushing on projects that he thinks will yield a return. Lots of work on the adilas lite and fracture project. Very hard working and versatile.

Dustin Siegel - Developer who helped with numerous cannabis and cultivation type projects. He worked directly under Steve to help with that business vertical. Many of the original pages that Steve built were taken over and remade by Dustin.

Eric Tauer - Developer and custom code guy. Originally, Eric knew Steve and lived in Salida, CO. As a note, adilas is Salida spelled backwards. Eric has a background in database work and data warehousing. Eric has done tons of custom systems for clients. Often, Eric would pioneer certain features or logic, as custom code, and then we would bring those features into the main adilas application.

Garrett Kirschbaum - Adilas intern and then full developer back in 2015. Stressful time of building and expansion. He and others helped run the adilas shop with Brandon's help. Garrett was a great developer and helped us standardize a number of tools and features. He was the first developer to work on sub inventory, back in the day. He also did other projects and helped with some developer management stuff.

Charles or "Chuck" Swann - Charles was an instructor at Bridgerland for web development. He builds custom websites, does amazing mock-ups, prototypes, and is a CSS master (styling a website using code). Chuck worked with Russell to help with redesign work, projects, and vision. Chuck worked fulltime for a number of years and now works and coordinates work done by a small hand-picked design and development team. Anything that needs some design loving gets passed over the Chuck and his small team.

Steve McNew - Friend of Steve Berkenkotter's. This Steve helped prep some whitepaper documents to help with getting adilas standardized and some internal audit type stuff. Mostly white papers and putting things down on paper. He ended up getting hired by the local school district and wasn't able to finish the process, but he got it started. He asked some great questions, and we had some good conversations.

Abby Elkins - Abby is Brandon's daughter. Her maiden name was Abby Moore. Abby, when she was little (10-12 years old) helped with some of the original concept artwork for adilas. Later on, she helped with content for the presentation gallery and then the adilas lite plans (fracture). Currently, she is working graphic artwork for different adilas pages. She's now in her mid 20's and has some awesome art and content skills.

Aspen Moore - Aspen is Abby's younger sister and Brandon's daughter. Aspen helped Brandon with some planning and counseling (mental help). Aspen also did some general business consulting with her dad Brandon.

John Maestas - Developer, backend server guys, and designer. John came to us through Dustin. John was uses as a jack of all trades on the backend and frontend. He did numerous projects, documentation, payroll, and page redesign projects. John was also very help to Brandon in working on the notes and comments on the SWOT analysis document. Many other projects as well. Good vision of the future.

Kiva Berkenkotter - Steve's wife. She helped Steve with various projects and planning sessions. At one point, she was in charge of paying commissions and collecting monthly reoccurring payments. Huge supporter to Steve!

Heather Moore - Heather is Brandon's wife. What a trooper. Cheerleader, support, ideas, and consulting. Huge asset to Brandon (me). Thanks Heather!

Jonathan Wells - Designer and mock-up guy. He helped to map out the system and created a number of deep mock-ups for adilas lite (fracture) projects. Great job catching the vision and putting those pieces into a visual representation. We still refer to his work when talking about fracture (future project for adilas).

Jonathan Johnson - Business consultant from Epic Enterprises. Met with Brandon and Steve in end of 2019 into 2020. Really helped us see some needs and opportunities. Later, helped Brandon with some other consulting when trying to define the fracture plan.

Calvin Chipman - Windows software developer. Calvin also did a bunch of web-based work, database stuff, label printing, and API socket stuff. Calvin was the first developer to use the adilas API's to create a native mobile app for a client. He also built a number of special developer tools used by some of our team to speed things up. He's the tool guy!

Cody Apedaile - Bryan Dayton's cousin, Cody helped with a bunch of JavaScript code and changes. He also spent some time working on the UML diagram for the adilas database. We didn't get things finished, but he was working on a new build your own interface (custom to you) for adilas. We ran out of funding. We want to get back to that project at some point.

Dave Forbis - Dave was the official "high tech gofer". He did a bunch of things. Graphics, project management, brainstorming, planning, sales, and helped with managing developers for the adilas shop. He was another great student. He came to a number of training courses and brought so much to the courses. He was also a big support to Brandon during some rough times.

Josh - There are three Josh's. Josh Wheeler, Brandon's friend and developer. Josh Sagert, developer and adilas user (worked tons on the discount engine), and Josh White, Steve's friend from California. Josh White has brought us a number of bigger leads and bigger players, like franchises, and other higher-end clients. Anything recent is Josh White, from California. He helps with networking, sales, and dreaming of new things.

Suzi Distelberg - Sales, training, and deployment. She also worked with some custom projects and doing step-by-step user guides. She has helped with all kinds of projects and even gone onsite for setups and training. Great asset!

Kelly Whyman - Kelly is Dustin's wife. Kelly was single handedly the best independent sales rep that adilas had. She did training, consulting, and sponsored a number of custom projects. Kelly helped Steve and Brandon with reports, functionality, and other things. She got so good at things, state contracts snagged her up to work at state and multi-state level stuff.

Molly Hennessy - Molly was another independent sales rep and consultant. She had numerous clients and got into doing SOP's (standard operating procedures) and other high-end documentation and training. Molly was an entrepreneur and even started creating some of her own product and services. If you search adilas on google, some of the other results are from Molly. Super creative and a great consultant.

Hamid Karbasi - Developer - He has worked with Brandon doing small websites, training, and small tasks. He currently is a manager at a retail store and brings some managerial type skills to the table. Willing to talk about concepts and how they apply to retail and other environments. He is also lightly helping with some planning for fracture.

Gene Spaulding - Friend, entrepreneur, and businessman. Gene is an old college friend. We had a number of friends in common. He has been a small mentor to me over the years. Way back, before adilas, he helped me get my first business loan for a project that I was working on.

Sharik Peck - Friend, entrepreneur, public speaker, physical therapist, and businessman. Good influence and mentor in ways. Sharik and I used to exercise together back in the day. Many of fun walk, run, and weightlifting session. Learning some conference and training skills from him and his wife. They have done really well pushing their product lines and doing some marketing. Trying to get some ideas.

Bridgerland Technical College - Use to be Bridgerland Applied Technology College. Not a person, but a huge help. This is a local technical college in the Logan, UT, area. Brandon's dad, Wayne, worked there. Tons of assets. They provided classrooms, training options, computers, and even an small incubation spot (starter office space) for the adilas shop during the startup phase. Huge asset!

McCorvey's Pro Shop - Also known as Bowling World. Client that had multiple locations. The started out with around 30 and grew up to the 90+ location level, all using adilas. Long time client.

Emerald Fields - They were the first client that wanted their own fully dedicated box and server. They had multiple locations and requested some custom code, reports, and features.

Beaver Mountain Ski School - Client that we helped them track their ski school (snow sport) lessons. Students, instructors, classes, and schedules. Custom interface dealing with elements of time and flex grid.

Bear 100 - This was the first event or annual event client that we did. They used the system for about a week each year. They had 350+ runners and their families that would be on the site for multiple days straight. It was a 100 mile running race with 13 aid stations and a small social portal for the family and friends to watch their runners. This one was special as it had custom input options to upload CSV files to populate the database vs normal HTML form field entries. Records were sent in batches from remote places to adilas for storage and race progress.

High Valley Bike Shuttle - Online ecommerce and scheduling client. They also have a cafe and small retail store. Fun online scheduling and bulk flex grid projects.

Herbo - Mike Roundtree, owner of Herbo, was the first company to do a small white label of adilas. Mike has been a great asset to Steve and the two of them have worked on projects, plans, and dreams. Herbo also has a custom payment solution that they are trying to market and get rolling. Mike has been a great supporter for years. He is also a certified CPA and that credential helps us and him. We would like to get other CPA's on board as well. Thanks Mike!

Nxtlinq AI - AI assistant. These guys really pushed us to get an AI agent inside of adilas. Tons of development took place and lots of prep stuff. We wanted to do a 3-part plan for integrating AI. 1. Teach it how to navigate using the AI quick search (check - done), 2. Teach it all things adilas. and 3. Teach it how to be clear up at the consultant type level. We only got the first phase done. Lots of other plans and such, but we ran out of funding.

Grok AI - Steve loves using Grok. He has built a number of image generation options inside of adilas. He is also working with Grok to feed it data to help with analytics and AI insight. This is not finished yet, but we may end up using Grok as an AI assistant inside of adilas. We have simple and emerging connections available right now but need to really polish things up before going live with the AI assistant options.

ChatGPT AI - We have started using ChatGPT to help with code, explanations, explore resources, planning, and help with training and flow for people and other AI bots. Currently, Brandon, Steve, Bryan, Alan, Josh, Russell, Chuck, and Wayne are using AI in either ChatGPT chat sessions or some other form of AI. We have some using Copilot, Gemini, Claude, etc. AI is actually helping in many ways. ChatGPT is a big one for use. Anyways, they are earning their place in the adilas key contributors list.

There are so many more that I can't list. Developers, users, power users, reps, consultants, trainers, clients, accountants, friends, family, and even critics. They have all helped out the idea farming process and progression. Good stuff! We couldn't have done this alone. It takes a community to do what we are doing.

Working with Russell and Abby. We jumped in and were talking about a small mock-up that Russell is working on for a budgeting app. The first part of the meeting was a mini layout critique of sorts. Here are some of my notes.

- Talking about AI, what it can and can't do,  and getting some good ideas. Often, it helps creating a good starting place or places for your project. Depending on the detail level, it may do the first part or the whole thing.

- Talking about context windows (what it can take in and apply to the current project) and how to keep things consistent along the same lines.

- Russell was showing us some character animations and what they are doing to help AI keep things straight. Realistic references - consistency - character drift - you need a reference from almost every angle. Also mixing both text (prompts) and images, keeping it consistent.

- Russell was asking Abby about basic flow, just based off of what was being presented in the visual. What is next and where can I go? What should I do? Getting input and feedback. Basically, user feedback tests or UX tests.

- We talked about tours and walk throughs. Sometimes helpful and sometimes not. Ways to help the user get oriented.

- As we were talking, Russell was gleaning information from the us (his fake users). You have to record that feedback and those ideas. No way that just one person could think up everything.

- Being intentional in your decisions.

- Talking to people about your product, using mock-ups (visuals and flows), vs just building it. Good design and planning go a long way. That is huge.

- Making decisions based off of user input.

- The interfaces changes and only tells you what it has to (just in time interface changes - single page apps - SPA's).

- Taking the time, up front, to get the design, flow, and training nailed down.

- You can make things that look good, but eventually, you also need to be able to code it and/or get help coding it.

- Narrowing it (the scope or project) down to the specific needs and requirements of that project.

- Getting a valid sign-off based off of mock-ups and design flow. Russell was saying that if you increase your skills to do quick mock-ups, that helps solve things before you ever go to code. Helping people walk through it. Letting them taste the vision or selling the sizzle. Everybody gives their opinion, signs offs, and everybody is sold on it, even before it really exits. Talking about emotions in marketing.

Switched gears and started working on the content management system that we are working on. Talking about helping others and spreading the love. Helping to teach others, use that as a learning and a growing philosophy.

https://github.com/RussellMoore1987/code-doc - This is the GitHub repo for the content management and documentation template that we are working on. It will end up being the underpinnings of the presentation gallery. That, the gallery, will be the top few layers (visual fluff and key bullet points) and then we will use this content and documentation template as the meat and potatoes for the real screenshots, videos, text, and other content. I'm excited about it. The project will be big, but I also feel like it will help tremendously.

 Meeting with Russell and Abby. Russell is working on building a web app. He was showing us a small demo of his camera photo picture to budgeting app. They are still working on it (he and Chuck). We got off into some general world topics. As an ideal, the world would be awesome if we all just helped each other. That would take quite a bit to get there. Talking about some general sharing and community type concepts.

Switched over to working on the deeper documentation options for the presentation gallery. This will end up being the backend behind the presentation gallery. Imagine the meat and potatoes with tons of documentation, screenshots, step-by-steps, and small context related videos. It should be super cool. Anyways, we started with a small review. We were going over moving from the initial plan, to AI prompts, to AI code building, to small manual changes, to GitHub storage, to making updates and having them be tracked in GitHub. It takes quite a bit. Watching his screen and going back and forth through iterations. We liked certain changes and we didn't like other ones. A little bit of picking and choosing. Watching a series of manual tests (at this level, based on the AI changes). We were getting into deep linking and URL routing for pages and sub sections. When it is all done, it should be really cool!

Working with Abby on her graphics. I took a number of screenshots. See attached. We also started to add in images to the actual page where they will go. We ran out of time and finished that up after our other meeting with Russell.

Working with Shannon. We looked around at what is happening and then jumped into some of the stuff. Lots of moving pieces, all over. I explained what I did with Abby yesterday and we looked at some graphics. We then jumped in and talked about what we did with Russell and how we used AI to help build out a basic teaching and documentation project. Supper cool. I didn't have anything really to show, so I drew what it did. I will get files from Russell later on.

We talked about what else we have in front of us, project wise, and where we need to focus. We then spent the rest of the session going over pricing stuff with ChatGPT. Super fun session and we really tried to give it some good information and ideas. Here is what we came up with.

https://chatgpt.com/share/69a0a070-3778-8007-a998-ebf29c864809 - ChatGPT chat link on adilas pricing structure (prices).

Meeting with Russell and Abby. Going over plans. Russell was leading us through a small exercise to mix AI, screen capture, HTML web page creation, mock-ups, etc. Fun exercise. Plans and hitting the heaviest things first. Taking the time to play and setup the capture process. Watching him experiment and play before he committed to anything. Looking into scribe.com and possible time saving things that we could do. We also looked at TechSmith Snagit. Both have AI step capture options.

Doing some drawing and mock-ups before really building. Making templates and standards first. We were then watching Russell work with ChatGPT to help him build out some simple starting things. AI seems to be great from scratch..., sometimes struggles on larger projects. He had GitHub Copilot make the new pages. We watched and it was honestly pretty amazing. It seems to do awesome from scratch, based on a really good prompt. It seems to struggle when there are big projects with micro tweaks. Hard to keep track of the overall rules and context.

Just for fun. This is from Russell - this was his original prompt... ChatGPT then helped him tune it up. We then used GitHub Copilot and Claude to actually build the mini starter app. https://chatgpt.com/share/699f87bd-def8-8011-b518-ad0eac223d04

Emails and recording notes. Added the video link between Brandon and Russell, discussion on the white label investment options to the adilas investment opportunities page. It is kinda raw, but covers some great questions and answers. Here's the history, on 2/11/26 Russell and I met to go over some training. We recorded the video on that day (eot # 12683). Then on 2/23/26, yesterday, I reviewed the video (eot # 12718) and made a few more notes. I asked Russell and he said that I could share it. I thought that it had some good content in it.

Reviewing a video from a meeting with Brandon and Russell, from a couple of weeks ago. As a note, Russell is my brother (younger), but we have worked for years together on training and projects. Russell sent me the video, but I was too busy to go back over it. The goal was to get some of the Russell's questions, from the video, and then address those questions in order to be more prepared for future talks and chats with investors. This video was originally part of a practice session about pitching the white label investment option for adilas. See element of time # 12683 for the original notes.

Here are my notes after rewatching the video.

- Question from Russell - what am I going to get for my investment of X? I don't care about owning it, I just want to make sure that I get the tool that I need, in order to sell it.

- What about future availability and being able to change or fix things in the future?

- What's a good flow so that I can sell it to my customers? I am willing to play for that. I don't need it perfect, but I do need to know that it can do what I need it to do.

- Possible matching funds - say something like $10K them and $10K us

- Salesman like to promise things (known fact)

- White label skins are part of the master plan

- Part of the plan is helping them, our clients, see that it is up to them to pitch and sell this thing (what we create). We help with the plans, the backend tech, and getting you a product that you can sell.

- People want us to build, build, build - our plan is not to do that, meaning for free. We don't mind building and building, but we can't do that just based off of promises.

- We already have 75%-90% already done. We help you get what you want and then you go from there.

- It goes back to that plan and what can we do? - Sell me on it

- Read over the document to get the idea of the rules and how things will play out (link to the investment options pdf).

- How are we going to find these partners, entrepreneurs, and angel type investors? - Work with other entities

- Russell went back to his "flow" stuff. That was really important to him. If he can get that working, he is good with everything else. After the flow is set, then we talk pricing.

- Figuring out a benchmark (features and pricing) and having whatever is needed for the industry. Then making sure that he has all of that plus other important stuff. He was talking about reselling the services on a mark-up. - Making your own package, and then selling that package, etc. - Wholesale costing.

- Make sure that you can find those people - If they can sell it, get the flow down, and make it really rock, then game on - It has to look good, function well, takes care of my customers, or I can slide it under (meaning price it better than my competitors), then I will invest. I need to feel secure that I can make this work.

- Get into some of these investor groups and see what they say - Making the pitch and then getting some feedback - Ask them to put me through the ringer of education - I want to know what investors are looking for - Get involved with people in those sectors.

- Russell said that he is more interested in white labeling vs straight investments.

- Talking about levels of control - control of the company vs harnessing what we already have - often, buying in means I want to take control - There is a difference between normal investing vs white labeling.

- Russell wanted to make sure that his stuff is protected

- Audience - Bringing code and visuals to the audience

- Planning and coding - Plan well and hit the mark - Projects need to be 80% planning and 20% coding - We plan and then make exactly what we are shooting for.

Working with Russell and Abby. Full work session and critique. I was drawing and they were making suggestions. That was not the original plan but I showed them some progress that I was making for my son's headstone. They kept telling me ideas and such to help make it better. It ended up being super fun. Good work session. We then reviewed some of the changes that we made and decisions why we made them. Really good hands-on session. See attached for what we were working on. We did more than just this, but it was very interactive and lots of leaning and feedback.

Emails, brainstorming, and light research. I'm planning on doing a small intro video. Basically, who am I, what do I like, where did I come from, why do I like what I do, etc. Be real.

- Maybe move the presentation gallery over to ColdFusion. Currently, it is on a WordPress site and we can change it, but it does not have backend or database capabilities. That could be huge for us, in order to add searching, dynamics, etc. I would also like to build out the details or the full next level. Right now, you can view it, browse around, and get a good general idea. We have had multiple people ask us for more meat (show me, don't just tell me). I was thinking about using a detailed format that I saw on a site that Russell helped me find. It's a help section on the VS Code (code editor or IDE).

- On the pricing page - I was thinking about showing some pricing categories. Things like fixed costs, percentage costs, annual with discounts, and even family or lifetime costs or prices with discounts. On the family or lifetime, help them figure out their price/cost per month and then do that price/cost for ten years. Add a 20% discount and then give them lifetime access. Just a thought. I would like to help build this mini calculator and mini app/widget and then let Chuck put it up on the main adilas website. The goal is to get a ballpark cost/price and then have them contact us to really set the price. We can use it, the calculator, for us and for them. We still want to talk to them. Every business is so different.

- Work more on the 3-part pitch - intro, current offerings, and future offerings

- Focus on what we are building - the community - the buy in will come as we show people what we are doing

- This is for me... Sit down and plan it out on paper... - mix the presentation gallery, some old PDF's and flyers, and the partially done steps to success documents. We started working on those documents years ago. We keep getting pulled off. I want to put it all together in one document or website. Basically, the presentation gallery mixed with the steps to success. Get it all finished up, with walk throughs, step-by-steps, and videos. Make it cool! Really help our users get the quick high-level stuff and also be able to get to the meat and potatoes and how it really works.

- Along with the plan it out stuff, I really want to bring all of the PDF's together in a single page. I also want to do the same things with all of the videos. Basically, a special page for PDF's, flyers, and docs. Also, a special page for all of the small vision videos. That would be really cool. We have so many good things already. I really want to bring them all together in a single place.

Meeting with Russell. Life is the bootcamp for eternity, it's pretty intense. Looking over some of his collections. Talking about code and checking things (testing). Russell was saying, build habits that will help you to be successful. Slowing down and really making sure that things are good.

- Talking about videos and gifs (small animations or animated gifs) and how to present things. Plan it out, decide how you want it to be used, mock it up, and then slowly move towards your vision.

- Examples of some good gifs... and good training options... for a code editor product called VS code... https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editing/codebasics - they have sub sections... on VS code, they have a page divided into thirds, main nav on the left, main body in the middle, sub nav on the right (what is on the main body).

- Suggestion - on the presentation gallery... make the theme links really work (part of a small modal popup). He was talking about the sales gallery and making it specific for a real sales tool. Maybe go beyond simple modals and really put a full page together where there is some meat. Get them with the flashy sales stuff, then get them into the guts... a full-on web application with good content.

- For me, look into some CSS changes on the presentation gallery. Looking at some pre-built classes for modal dialog boxes and sizes.

- Screenshots, gifs, and super focused videos - this could be a great sales tool

- Russell really likes the full detail version (like the VS code help section - see link above)

- Small wins and a manageable product

- Looking for partners, investors, and entrepreneurs

- Caution from Russell - watch out for people who will cheat you

- Get them interested and then push them to a live demo - use the main website

- Russell and I did a fun mock-up session where I was pitching adilas (selling the engine or white labeling the platform) and he was playing the investor role. It was fun. I didn't really get to prep it very much, we just started into it.

- How can I prove to you that it will be a good investment (question to me), how will I get paid back (meaning the investor)?

- Figuring out the core and then going from there

- Where we struggle - sales and education

- Russell did a small video... he said that he was going to send me a copy of the video - we started recording our conversation

- We want to offer commissions to help with sales. However, we only want to pay the commissions based off of if things are working out, meaning a deal is made or a sale is made.

- Knowing that the flow will really work - we were talking about white label options and investments. Russell was mostly worried about the flow of data and the processes to get the data in and out of the system. He kept calling it flow and will the flow work? That was one of his main questions.

- Question on future development costs and timelines

- Packages and all the features that the competition has plus more - this was dealing with a way of thinking, if you have a new white label and you wanted to break into a market. You would need all of the features that your competition has plus more.

- When it gets into the weeds, you just push through that as it comes - that's hard to plan for

- It's all about the flow - make it look good, make sure that it functions great, and people like the flow - get that and it will sell. Easy, pretty, powerful!

- Practice pitching to an investor group... getting a chance to talk to people and pitch this thing - ask for feedback - ask them to help educate me and put me through the ringer and help me get better

- There is a difference between investing and white label investing

- Them being concerned about their investments - they are going to want to protect things and have assurances that things are in order

- If you plan out what you want to do, you can hit the mark - take time to plan the project - 80% planning and 20% coding - if that ratio is reversed, you can get in big trouble. Take the time to plan it out and then go hit the mark!

As a further follow-up, the video was uploaded or attached to this element of time. I also reviewed the video and pulled out a number of the questions. See element of time # 12718 in the shop for those details. New note added on 2/24/26.

Meeting with Russell and Abby. We started out and spent most of the time working on some webpage layouts and mock-ups. Working on some of our graphic skills. Russell was showing us how Grok was able to take a simple static image and create a motion animation or small movie from the single graphic. You could prompt it or just let it do its own interpretation. Kinda interesting.

After the main practice session, Abby was showing me some of her progress on some of the graphics that she is working on. Fun stuff. We are starting to break out of the box, literally, in her designs. She is making great progress. We will be meeting tomorrow again, as we ran out of time.

Meeting with Russell and Abby. Lightly going over some existing graphics and flyers. I was showing them where we are heading (mixing some of the old adilas flyers as part of a 3-way pitch). We then turned into practice mode. We picked a website and then started to do a mock-up on that website. Working on layout and design stuff. Talking about what we like and how to start using the mock-up. Russell was grabbing images from online, cleaning them up, and then having ChatGPT to make things similar. Most of the session was a practice session. It was fun.

Working with Russell and Abby on mock-ups and layouts. Russell gave us an assignment and then we spent the rest of the period working on the design. Working on mock-ups. See attached.

After Russell left, I worked with Abby and doing some critiques on some images that she is working on. See attached for some of the current concept artwork.

Meeting with Russell and Abby. Russell is using notion (online software solution) to push up some portfolio pieces. He was talking about using their existing tools and just a free hosting spot to show his work. He was saying that you are basically selling your work in a way that they, your clients, feel confident that anything that you do will work and be awesome! These are some lines from a video he was showing us, from some guy on YouTube. I didn't get the name. People do not read. Write with your heart and edit with your brain. Anyways, some key phrases from a YouTube video.

We then switched over to update some CSS for the adilas form fields. This was huge. I asked Russell about it, and I was going to go in and practice. He built the original snow owl them for adilas (based on the project CSS theme). Instead of just doing some small in-line changes, he pointed me to the main or master CSS file. We spent the rest of the session working on the CSS. It was more than I could have done on my own. He was a huge help. That was awesome. We didn't launch it, but we got it pretty close. I still have to browse a ton of pages and make sure that we didn't screw up anything. These were global CSS changes.

I had to help with a school Christmas party for my daughter. Russell and Abby started at 2 pm. I jumped on at 3:15 pm.

Meeting with Russell and Abby. They were going over some options for app and web desktop layouts. Russell was teaching Abby and doing some training on design and layout options. Here are some other notes that I took, once I joined:

- The more people that you talk to, the more feedback you can get. That really helps.

- Having a reason behind what you do and why you do it.

- A good system or interface system that teaches the user about itself and how to use it.

We kept going over some layout options, for almost the whole time. We jumped into Adobe XD and showed Abby what some advanced layouts look like and such. We showed her some things from Jonathan Wells. We also showed her some historical stuff from both Russell and I over the years. You could see the progression. That was kinda fun.

Russell had to jump off around 4:30 pm. Abby and I met for another hour going over her stuff and direction for the future. We looked at a few more samples and she showed me a flyer that she was working on. She is still in training mode. We then talked about some plans and where we want her to focus. She will be building out some of the graphics for the adilas lite project, starting as of January 1st of 2026. That will be one of her first main assignments and projects. Nothing like jumping into the deep end... :)

Meeting with Russell and Abby. We started out and Abby did a show and tell on both vectors and photo editing (some of the things she is working on). Then Russell was showing her some cool links and some samples. Here are some notes from Russell:

- Keep practicing and challenge yourself.

- Take your challenge and then look-up how to fix it and how to improve.

- Russell was showing us how he gets inspired and how he goes in and grabs pictures, graphics, websites, animations, and then makes all kinds of collections and such.

- Fighting towards the goal.

- Helping people see your best work - when they see it, they say - okay, you're hired.

- Go find inspiration, energy, and emotions and then build or create it.

- Selling people off of the sizzle.

- Taking something that you like and molding it into something else.

- Keep getting better at things. Build lots of things.

- Inspiration helps you go beyond your own boundaries.

- Talking about styles and being consistent.

- There was some great advice for Abby and myself. Keep going... you are smashing it.

- Transitioning from design work into code work. Good path and good stuff.

Working with Russell. Checking out in program Git options inside of VS Code, using the terminal, this is for code repository stuff. Going over developer stats and performance metrics that Russell likes to track. Talking about life and playing along with the learning process. Ways of getting through hard times. If God asks us to do something... He is basically singing up for the same thing. Talking about God's miracles. No taxing His power, nothing is impossible for God. The Lord is right there with us, in the moment, from our perspective. Ripples... that just keep going. Not a ton of code today, but good stuff for the soul.

Towards the end, we were playing with ChatGPT and running an image (adilas interactive map) through it to see what it could come up with as far as interpreting the graphic. It did a pretty good job!

Meeting with Russell and Abby. Reviewing some graphic lessons and drawing with the pen tool. That one takes some practice. They were helping me with a small project with some suggestions. We then did some more advanced work with gradients and blending shapes. Fun training session. Russell also helped me get signed up for a copilot (AI) code helper.

Emails and installing some new software. Then working with Russell and Abby for a couple of hours. Working and practicing on doing vector graphics and working in Affinity Studio. Lots of pen tool work. After Russell left, Abby and I kept going and doing some one-on-one training. After that, Abby showed me some stuff that she is working on her own. She is working on some graphic ideas to show the different versions of adilas and how things rolled out. That should be pretty cool. We then jumped into some photo editing skills and such. Abby is still in the learning phase but picking things up quickly. I sent her home with one of the adilas laptops until she gets her new laptop. That way she could practice using the actual tools vs simple drawing tools that she had. Lots of work with Affinity Studio today. Fun little product.

Recording some notes from yesterday. Meeting with Russell and Abby over a Zoom meeting. Small lesson on drawing vector graphics and playing along together. Russell was leading out. Abby didn't have the right program, so we did some screen sharing to let her get some practice. Great little training session.

Working with Russell. Abby was over at my house. We flipped from coding to graphics. Small art lesson to help Abby with some graphic ideas and such. Russell was working with some drawing tools and showing Abby some different techniques. Duper fun lesson. Ee then played with some older adilas interfaces and talked about what that would take to remake those using newer tech and newer tools.

Small note from Russell - You have to know how to break it down... If you don't know, you can't build it. We were looking at things and talking about how you would approach them, if they were a real project. You almost have to see the smaller pieces so that you can get into those harder projects. Once you know the pieces, you can then start building them up and mixing them together. Fun stuff!

Working with Russell. Talking with Chuck for a few minutes and catching up. They, Russell and Chuck, were on a previous meeting. After Chuck left, Russell and I did a little flashback and were talking about CSS and modern tech. Sometimes it is hard to try to keep up with all of the changes. The old basics are still super important. A developer needs html, JavaScript, CSS, SQL, and some kind of backend technology.

As we were working today, we were talking about exposure, in development, leads to some new ideas and knowing what is possible. Not all exposure is good, but certain kinds of exposure can really help you imagine what is possible. Once you know that, it isn't super hard to then go try to figure it out. Granted, the term "isn't super hard" is relative...

We did some training on the VS code interface, some speed tips, some Git tips (code repository and branching stuff), and then spent some time tweaking a little bit of adilas code. We changed some older hardcoded values (in the CSS) to use flex box instead of older direct positioning. Good little training session.

Working with Russell. We jumped in and played with writing ColdFusion in VS code editor. We then spent some time inside of Chat GPT playing with snippets and converting Sublime Text snippets into VS code snippets. It went pretty well. I ran out of my free version (number of requests) for Chat GPT. I may need to get the paid version here soon. After that, Russell was showing me some of his AI image generation stuff that it was doing. We were playing with some images and then having it make some different versions of the images. Fun stuff. Mostly an exploratory learning session today. I enjoyed it.

Working with Russell. Talking security with Russell on the AI quick search. Talking about customer data, employee data, banks, financials, and tons of other data. After that, we switched over to training on CSS.

Training session with Russell. Working on CSS training. He was switching between him telling me what to do, then letting me make some decisions, to letting me try things all by myself. Making progress. Didn't seem quite as lost today as other days. That's good, I'll take it.

Emails. Small data clean-up for Cory and a client who was doing some practicing before going live.

Working with Russell on some CSS training. We spent some time working with the box model and playing with content, padding, boarders, and margins. We then played with specificity and playing around styling with different elements. We then went into some OOP (object oriented programming) concepts and looked at some code and samples. It is important to think about everything as an object. That really helps.

Recording notes from yesterday and today.

Working with Russell. Talking about video streaming options. We may need to look into some pay for streaming services, build our own media player, share links from google drive. Talking about plans and cost/benefits analysis. Russell is trying to get me some exposure so that I have seen certain things and know about some of the new coding options and practices. Exposure allows you to change when you are ready. We then switched over to training. Going options and making snippets inside of VS code. We worked on some CSS training.

Mobile first design. Working with Russell on some training. I don't need to know everything... I just need to know how to figure it out...

Russell wants me to keep doing the training, using AI, and then experimenting with what I'm learning. Exposure is really important and seeing things and how they work. We spent some time working on some practice files. Inside of our practice file, we have a touch image slider, navigation buttons to do next and previous images, and we can click on individual dot indicators to jump right to a specific image. Playing with JavaScript and CSS and mobile first design stuff. Started working on the other page content.

Talking with Russell about AI models and back and forth. Talking about security and validation routines. Talking about scraping pages and pulling stats, even if the client doesn't know. Going over AI options vs AI prompts - creating an AI consultant for adilas. Baby steps - take one thing at a time. Talks about API sockets, endpoints, URL crafting, and mixed solutions. We spent some time talking about human interfaces... speaking, writing things down, OCR scanning and reading (ocr - optical character recognition), AI chat/prompt bots, etc. Russell is curious about the implementation and what we end up doing,

Russell and I were talking about mixing API sockets and session values. Good options.

Switched over to the CSS training. Working on the JavaScript for changing images and creating an image slider.

Meeting with Hamid. We went over some of the things that I am learning with Russell and on the Udemy CSS course. We then did a small practice file and did it together. That was fun. It also gave me a chance to use what I know, in a teaching environment. I enjoyed that. That helps it (the learning) stick better.

Meeting with Russell and doing some CSS training. Working on setting up a small card (page element) with images, buttons, and icons. Lots of CSS and dynamic placement of items and content. Practicing CSS by building a mobile friendly card or app for a recipe app.

Meeting with Russell. We were going over some positioning basics with CSS. Spent the whole session going over small tasks and placing boxes (small placeholders) where we wanted them to be placed. Lots of challenges and then coding to the challenge. At the end, Russell was showing me some of the things he has in his portfolio and things that he has built on the side for his own personal training stuff. It was really cool.

Meeting with Russell. Talking about continuing education. Try to use this strategy for continuing education - learn something, go play with it, learn something go play with it. We will be doing some fun projects. Taking small concepts and building them on top of each other. Russell wants me to write things down, If I have questions, and we will go over it. We downloaded VS Code and a bunch of extensions. Started playing inside the new editor and IDE interface. Looking into CSS. Russell wants me to pay for and take a few CSS and JavaScript classes from Udemy (online learning). Good session.

Downloading a new photo editor. Converting some .png files over to jpegs. Started working with Russell. This ended up being somewhat of a mental health session. Talking about communication skills. Here are some of my notes. They may mean more to me that what someone else gets out of them.

- Things that are kept in the dark are very destructive - air them out.

- Plans of reality vs real reality. Story of an army on the ground vs the ones who are planning to do a certain invasion. What is really happening on the ground.

- Expectations and who knows what. Lots of assumptions are being made.

- If things keep going, it can actually cause other problems. Undoing the underpinnings... hurting inside, affecting all of the other things, spiraling downwards.

- If you don't change anything... nothing will change.

- Admit what is true and do what is right.

- Can I change the situation to be more manageable? My choice not to do something is a choice of acceptance.

- Where is the line and how do we defend that line and advance the ball? Boundaries and what those mean and look like.

- The illusive dragon is very tempting (chasing that what if dream)... just keep fishing (doing the small things). There is a pattern in what is going on.

- The worth of souls.

- Priorities... first things first.

- Take what I am doing with adilas and super charge my training... Stick with the smaller budget and do all the rest of the hours in what I want to do and learn.

- God wants a discussion. Express your wants and then move in a certain direction. God doesn't move a parked car. If you are moving, he can work and influence that action. Momentum.

- Letting go, in order to get out... hand in the pickle jar, you can't get out of the jar if you are still holding the pickle. You may need to let go, in order to get out.

- Budget... 20 hours... and only do those 20 hours. Use the other hours as continuing education and building new skills.

- I'm a helper, a dreamer, etc. Adilas is both my hell and heaven (be real about what is what).

- What is my exit strategy? You have power to bail. Start building toward that exit strategy. Where is your line? What are your boundaries?

- Regardless to what happens... I do this (whatever that is - ideally in righteousness - according to God's law).

- This life isn't the end. What can I do to make the most of what I can do? Bloom where you are planted.

Working with Russell. Mocking up single date range graphical interface and date comparison graphical interfaces. Russell was doing the mock-ups. We did one with a single date range and another with a comparison date range. Just to get an idea of what it might look like. See attached for some screenshots.

Working with Russell. Jumping onto the chart stuff. We started out talking about life here and life after death (fun talking philosophy). Talking about limitations in our vision and outlook. So many good experiences here on this earth life. Take advantage of that.

Working with Russell on Adobe XD mock-ups. Going over plans for date pickers, date ranges, and advanced comparisons for dates and presets (day, week, month, quarter, year). We also want to build in jumper values for next and previous dates. Exploring navigation options, scenarios, pagination, and drill-downs.

Russell loves the full experience... for code projects - plan it and implement it - design, develop, and project management - mix all of those things together. That is fun to come up with it and then see it all the way through. Good stuff!

Working with Russell on some dynamics for the graphical homepages and mock-ups. Going over chart level drill-downs and passing data back and forth. Russell was sharing some of his vision on where we could go with it. That was fun. We ended up doing some mock-ups and adding in some preset dates along with some jumper options to go forward or backward in the date ranges. The new mock-ups are on Russell's computer for now. Still playing with some buttons and such.

Work session with Russell. We were on a scratch page, playing with charts and different hover events, click events, and prepping things for data drill-downs. Working with chart JS stuff and prep/play for new graphical user interface pages.

Working with Russell. Talking about life and best to navigate things. We talked for quite a while about these topics. We then jumped into changing code and looking at our chart and graph project. Here are some of my notes - somewhat all over the place.

- We were looking at code and samples on the chart JS site.

- Building in training time. That really helps and keeps things sharp.

- Small changes moving forward. Those small changes can really add up over time. Like small drips in a bucket.

- You have to sacrifice something to make changes (talking about time and priorities).

- I enjoy enabling and helping others. We talked about boundaries and how to manage those. Sometimes, by not managing those things, I feel like I get taken advantage of. I'm not very good at setting some of those boundaries for myself.

- Questions - How do I run, what motivates me, how does that affect me?

- For me, I get worried about not doing certain things. Instead of fully removing things that I enjoy, maybe just opening it up a certain amount. Being able to adjust within certain parameters.

- You have to have sanity checks and find that maintainable pace. Otherwise, a pile of "goo" doesn't do very much (if you over do it, you can feel like goo or a puddle of something).

- Bloom and prosper where you are planted.

- You have to adjust within the bounds that are set to what you can. Fighting for that high ground and safety spot.

- Keep gathering up the drips and drops (From Russell - that's my life). It takes many strokes to make a masterpiece.

- We were talking about feeling like we are in prison, based on circumstances and such. Russell said - It is only your prison if you make it so. You have options and choices. I needed to hear that.

- Some other one-liner topics that we were talking about. Journey before destination (From the book "Way of Kings" - Brandon Sanderson), moment by moment (getting help from God - He is with us - both with me and by me), Doing unto others and helping along the way.

Working with Russell on custom JavaScript and CSS toggle switches. We are working on the graphical user interfaces for some of the homepages. We were working on getting the page to switch charts (currently using placeholders) when certain buttons are clicked.

Working with Russell on the graphical homepages. More work on custom CSS and setting up layers to help guide the users to what is most important. Working on leading the eye from one thing to the next in a hierarchy of visual elements. It sounds cool, but it takes some work and planning to really make it happen. He is more skilled than I am with that kind of stuff.

Recording notes. Meeting with Russell. We jumped back on the graphical invoice homepage and making some changes to the CSS and layouts. Our plan was to work on some graphs and such... It has turned into a huge custom CSS lesson and such. We'll still get to the graphs and charts, but we are learning along the way. It is helping me out.

Today we started working with small callout cards and values and adding buttons to show different chart options. The page is not linked up to real charts yet, just the prep and layout stuff.

Working with Russell on the graphical homepages project. Only got about half an hour today. We ran late on an earlier meeting and then I got pulled off because my wife needed me to pick up our daughter. Short meeting today. Working on layout stuff. I got a couple of screenshot graphics from Russell to help with the project. See attached.

Working with Russell. Refining CSS on the graphical invoice homepage. We finished up the main search and compare buttons and the top form. It is now responsive clear down to 450 pixels. We added a number of breakpoints and media queries to help it change and modify itself as we scale down the screen size. Fun session.

Talking about life and business... how they compare and what you learn from different places. We had some fun conversations. I was also asking Russell about some business decisions and where to go with things. We got talking about bidding and doing quotes/estimates for custom jobs. Here are a few of my notes:

- If you know (what something will take to do), you can set an estimate (at least ballpark it).

- If both of you (you and the client) don't know (how much it will take), set a small budget and then jump in and see what you see. Setup an exploratory cushion of sorts.

- Be willing to communicate back with them, especially if it (the project) starts growing or you see that it will be bigger than you thought or had communicated.

- Weighing dreams and focusing on what really counts.

- Who and what do you want to be? Work on that stuff.

- Russell was talking about God, heaven, and helping people along the way.

Working with Russell. More work with media queries and custom CSS stuff. Lots of testing for responsive web stuff on these new graphical homepages. Just an observation, but there is a lot of trial and error. Fix one thing, check it out. Go fix another thing, then check it out. The one thing you just fixed causes something else to break. This is all custom display stuff. Definitely a learning curve on the custom CSS stuff.

Working with Russell. We were tweaking out the CSS and JavaScript for the graphical homepages. Lots of work on CSS media queries for responsive pages and modifying the dynamic CSS as the screen size changes.

Working with Russell. Working on custom CSS and precise placement for form controls, including some media queries, and responsive design. Small work session on a new graphic homepage for invoices.

Meeting with Russell. Circling back around on some graphical homepages and working on some graphs and charts. Working on some JavaScript and small tweaks. Playing with CSS, toggles switches, and media queries to help with responsive layouts.

After the meeting, recorded some notes in both the shop and inside of adilas.

Working with Russell. Rebuilding some form controls with our own CSS wrappers. This is for our new graphical homepages. We needed tighter controls. Spent most of the session working on some flexible CSS stuff for the date range form controls.

Doing emails before our meeting.

Meeting with Russell. We started out talking about heaven and life after death. We have both been studying that topic a bit. I was mentioning to him that I had a post-it note with "Begin again..." on it. We chatted about that for a while. Sometimes, it's okay to start over. We then moved on to other topics like: Stay on the bus (be part of the gospel), it is taking us home. We then talked about some questions - is heaven worth it, yes. Can I make it, yes. What is the value of hope and how does it work. Hope is there when it gets tough. It is also there, playing through the background, when things are good. It, hope, will help us to keep driving forward (living out some of those fulfillments and dreams).

My observation about Russell, you (Russell) share what you love. He wanted me to thank God for what he does. Basically, it all happens because of Him. Glory to Him. I can't make it without you (meaning God).

We then jumped into a small work session on the graphical homepages stuff. Still working with the show/hide date ranges and compare date ranges. Playing with layout options.

Meeting with Russell. Created a new branch and then started to work on building out pieces of the puzzle. We are planning on building out a new graphical homepage for invoices. It will have different graphs, search options, compare options, and a list of the last few invoices (say something like last 15 invoices). If they, our users, want anything else, we'll just allow them to link to a different page and go from there.

Meeting with Russell. Doing some prep work on an older mock-up for a new invoice homepage that Russell had done, years ago. Dusting off the page and lightly revamping some of the mock-up in Adobe XD. Our goal is to make a page that has data, graphs, and uses Ajax and jQuery to run on a single page without any page refreshes. Should be a fun project. Lots of experimenting and decision making, all in Adobe XD vs coding it out. Good stuff.

Working with Russell to help with some small formatting changes. We were in on the Knox report and added some line spacing and also made some of the sub data slightly smaller, to help your eyes follow the flow better. We talked about graphs and charts and where we want to head next, with some co-training sessions. Good stuff.

Meeting with Russell. Mocking up some new changes to the Knox report. We started in Adobe XD and then started to build out the pieces in raw code. Small little component pieces and then looping over those pieces. Trying to reuse some code.

Working with Russell on the Yogen Fruz sales breakdown report. We worked on some JavaScript, CSS, and report formatting. Good little work session. It is helpful to get a second pair of eyes on the same code and same page. It helps to refine the experience, both coding it and for the end user.

Clock in/out issue that Cory sent to me. Quick backend database change. Texted cory that it was fixed.

Meeting with Russell. Working with Russell to bring in small pieces of the layout that we made in Adobe XD. Building the form, the toggle to show hide the other part of the form, and working on custom CSS (cascading style sheets - layout and view code stuff).

Meeting with both Russell and Chuck. They were recommending sub districts (maybe for enterprise level grouping) for multiple locations (corporations). Good work session with both guys. That wasn't the original plan, but it worked out pretty well. We spent some time going over the pdf dashboard mock-up from Chuck for Yogen Fruz (see attached).

After Chuck left, I was talking with Russell about showing and selling subs out in ecommerce land. We may have to reverse out the structure. He also recommended that we abstract the process to use the same code for each option (show and sell parents, show parents and sell subs, show subs and sell subs). Ideally, we will setup the ecommerce so that it can use any of these selling types, and the data all gets passed to the cart correctly. Basically, format it all to go down one pipe... with possible branching logic. Russell did some fun drawings that helped me see what he was pitching (see image).

We then jumped into Affinity Photo and played around with some of the tools. Kind of a show and tell lesson on some of his favorite tools. Recorded some notes and pushed up the supporting files to document things.

Working with Russell. Doing some planning. We had to break a bigger document into smaller pieces (categories and sub categories). He was getting me into using notion and some of the cool things that you can do with that program - robust web tools. Light planning on the custom sales breakdown report for Phillip. Working in Adobe XD and doing some layout stuff. Steve joined us and we got into a small bug out in ecommerce land. Russell had to go, but it was good to get Steve on there with Russell again. It's been awhile since those two have met up and talked.

Meeting with Russell. Working in Adobe XD and playing with report mock-ups. Russell likes to do just enough to get going (don't overdo it on XD). We spent most of the time in XD building a report mock-up. I was driving and he was telling me what to do (design backseat driving). Fun session.

Meeting with Russell. I was showing him where I was going with a new report. He had lots of questions and such. We did some consulting and talking about options. Lots of drawings and playing around with ideas. I wrote down a few notes. It was good to talk things over with him.

Viewing some online tutorials on Affinity design products. My brother Russell sent me a bunch of links to YouTube videos and comparisons. I really enjoyed looking around a bit. It was giving me some fun ideas of what we can do with adilas. Very interesting.

Russell got tied up today. We weren't able to make this happen.

Meeting with Russell. AJAX and error handling - server errors and processing errors. Ideally you get into standards and reusing code. Reducing complexity by creating the site standards. It would also be more usable if we were using an internal API socket and returning JSON objects vs raw HTML code.

Recording notes. Working with Russell on AJAX stuff and playing with loaders (see sample code in the extras folder - ajax_loader_sample_view_cart_mini_scan_cart.cfm - dated 6/5/24). Good work session.

We also spent some time talking about time management. Things like bounds, limitations, priorities, etc. From Russell - If we don't manage our schedule, it will manage us. He was very kind and was drawing and making some analogies. One of them was a guy holding up a bag and multiple people adding things to the bag. Each person didn't see their load as too big, just a couple of hours here and there, but what they couldn't see was multiple people doing the same things (all small loads but multiplied by the number of people and transitions and switching back and forth).

At some point, we either learn or get taught (schooled). Learning to manage it. I really liked this... from Russell, "You have power to choose some of these things. Only bite off as much as you can chew and swallow.".

After that, we spent some time looking at CSS loaders.

Meeting with Russell. Working on some AJAX stuff for the line item level groupings. Debugging and testing things. Had to add an event listener and override some form action defaults (like using the enter key to submit the form). Code is not quite ready, just pushed it up to the branch that we are working on.

Working with Russell. We were working on some AJAX and jQuery on the cart groupings. CSS changes with Chuck on the presentation gallery. Working more with Russell on AJAX stuff. Mostly prep work. Consolidating and simplifying it. Light testing.

Meeting with Russell. Going over some AJAX and jQuery. Continuing education - super important to keep that going. We spent a little bit of time going over quotes on some UX design sites. Keep it simple. We then switched over to a small work session. We were standardizing things and refactoring code. We took existing code that runs fine and then slowing started building things up from the working model.

Two different phone calls with Eric. Talking about photos, media/content, image manipulation.

Meeting with Russell. I showed him what we are working on in the cart. We decided that we would make part of it into some AJAX and JQuery stuff to help it out. Spent the rest of the time talking about plans and prepping the files. We didn't get to work on any of it, but we have a plan and it's all prepped for next time.

Working on settings and display options. Meeting with Russell. We went over a bunch of CSS questions. Spent the whole time tweaking out some of the CSS (placeholders for text areas, icons, dynamic flex media queries, etc.). Good work session on the new cart.

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

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

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

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

Small video on the cart prototype - 03:49 minutes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Talking about testing and testing coverage.

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

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

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

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

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

- Crafting an experience takes time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Talking about different roles, within a company

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

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

- High cognitive loads all day saps or drains your energy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Standards and consistency - good coding practices

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

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

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

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

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

- Consistency - little drips vs floods

Jumped on with Steve before meeting with Russell. We went over the new mini scan cart and some of the settings. Trying to show him where we are going.

Met with Russell for about an hour. We spent the whole time working scrolling layouts. We also did some research and built a small table that we will be using in the mini scan cart to show a line items table and the top row (headings) are sticky, meaning they stay at the top and the rest of the table scrolls. Great little work session.

Zoom session with Russell. We spent an hour going over Ajax and jQuery training. I told him that I had to build a small mini cart and he jumped in and was helping me learn some basics. He sent me over the files that we were working on.

We covered topics of: Looking up options for fake api's (get quick data from an outside source just for testing), samples Ajax calls, samples for jQuery, fetch, CSS spinners, we rand some quick tests, pull things in quickly, configured them, and tested them without any special calls (quick and raw). etc.

My other big takeaway from the morning meeting was the value of the continuing education that Russell has been doing, adding it up over time. He was able to jump in and start playing vs having to look everything up or not knowing where to go or start. He already had the basics and was able to build from there. That was super cool and fun to watch. He told me that was from years and years of doing continuing education, a little here, a little there, etc. Super cool!

Emails and getting ready for the day.

Zoom meeting with Russell. See my notes below.

After meeting with Russell, I was on a phone call with John for about 30 minutes. Talking about what is going on with Adilas and Adilas Lite. Going over possible work options. He is going to reach out to Steve and Cory and we'll go from there.

Some of my notes from meeting with Russell:

- Working with Russell on his tool and homemade framework project. He has learned a lot by building it. He can then take that information and know how and apply it to his other projects. Interesting learning method.

- We talked about project bloat - and how using outside libraries and themes are faster, but it tends to bloat the project (you get more than you want or need - code wise).

- Instruction heavy vs automated

- A framework sets a standard. You can then start expecting certain things. Almost like a miniature set of rules and expectations.

- Starter kits vs the end all, be all - You have to start somewhere. Things will keep morphing over time.

- Tools tend to be built as a box (sort of rigid). Often, people and companies want to add on to the box (customize or add custom code or custom work flow). You then have to ask yourself, does your (my) code fit in the box? Yes/No - then trying to match up tools with company structure and needs. Russell was drawing a standard code set and then a non-standard code set. Imagine one being like a box and the other looking like a blob or a flower with different peddles. We were talking about what fits in the box and what has to be custom. We had some good conversations about that. What is the core? What are the plugins? What is custom? What is allowed? What tools or tooling is being used? Etc.

- API's and API sockets - Allowing outside parties to virtually play at the wall - The backend code could be whatever. The frontend is more structured, meaning the API interface needs to be open to outside traffic (permissioned and approved) and a standard that could be used over and over again. Basically, how it is presented back to the user or developer, needs to be well documented and as standard as possible. The true backend has more flexibility. The backend creates the content that is given back. It also interprets the inbound requests.

- The system and it's architecture and code are all based on trade-offs. You then have to accept those trade-offs. Speed, flexibility, rigidity, rules, scale, custom, standard, hardcoded, dynamic, etc. You have to look and balance the trade-offs.

- If you are doing the full API socket thing, you could actually do a headless CMS (content management system). Basically, if you are going the API route for quick and dirty stuff, it (the new application) doesn't have to look like or follow the same rules (thus becoming headless). You separate the content from the layout or view of that content. Imagine a WordPress type app that is built better and interacts with our internal pieces. We talked about the flexibility of the API. It would be so cool if you could mix and match API calls (quickness) and the whole power of the adilas backend. Inbound and outbound requests could return simple JSON. Lots of potential here. For fracture and adilas lite, we want to run the whole thing off of API socket calls. Our own internal headless CMS, in a way.

- Doing everything on your own (one man show or lone wolf) requires you to know too many topics and subjects. Jack of many trades, master of none. You can gain a lot by allowing for specialists and teams. Correctly done, they can make some amazing things happen.

- Setting up rules and then enforcing those rules. Firm, fair, consistent.

- When pushing API content back, sometimes it is helpful if you can add in helpful stuff to help out the users - For example: Pagination values and page links. Ideally, it is all done through settings, requests, and options. Only return what they want, but make it available if needed. Try to think - what would help the user and/or developer on the other side of the API request?

- Building out basic functions that could be plug and play (self-documenting, self-validating, etc.)

- Russell is trying to build an auto generating REST API for his stuff. The auto generating portion is based on the database (data dictionary). Virtually a set of interpreted rules, assignments, and instruction.

- There is a database level and a service level. Each needs to be built separately. In our terms, we are trying to do DAO's (data or database access objects) and services (things that do something including connecting to the DAO's).

- Build the super complex stuff once, and then use it many.

- We talked about the analogy of a set of railroad tracks. If you build out the known railroad tracks and have proven the methods, you can use it over and over again. Railroad tracks are great for that. If you have to keep building out new ones, and you don't get to use them over and over again, why make railroad tracks, make a simple road instead.

- Figuring out your own testing strategy

- Helping the users use things correctly based on validation and/or information or feedback to the users. Basically, force them down the path and don't give them too much wiggle room (helps the devs manage things). Sometimes too many choices cause more problems.

- Usability and error handling and error messages (good communication back to the client or end-user or even back to the developers).

- From Russell - When your code structure or architecture is bad, your testing will scream at you. If you have a good structure or architecture, your tests should be easy or easier.

- The value of training

- If the servers are down, you don't build tests, you just fix. If you have the time, you build the tests and get the whole thing done.

- Having a good system helps you go faster.

- Dealing with testing, you are going to test anyways, may as well write it in a test. This enables you to be able to go back and rerun those tests. If you have good tests, it should help you in finding those error and bugs faster. Progress moves at the speed of trust. If it's your mess (code), you know how to clean it up and fix it, you also know what it affects (touches or reaches out to - dependencies). What about the other guy (someone who comes in and works on your code)? How do you pass on the notes and instructions? You really have to think about looking out for the other guys/gals that will be coming along later.

Zoom meeting with Russell. We were going over some testing strategies and ideas on how to get better overall testing coverage. Pros and cons and costs of testing or costs of not testing. He was showing me a project that he is working on, and I was asking questions and taking notes. Here are a few things that I wrote down.

- The company that Russell works for allows for 4 hours a week for continuing education. That's pretty cool. I like that idea.

- We looked at some Lucid chart diagrams. UML diagrams, flow charts, and wireframe diagrams.

- Talked about stacking API socket requests using GraphQL vs simple or single Rest API calls.

- Patterns and strategies

- Using a data dictionary of sorts - For example: Defining a field, it's value, it's name, it's datatype, etc. We have a table inside of adilas called db_field_settings. It allows for things like: mins, maxes, validation rules, sort orders, names, aliases, special instructions, look-up values, defaults, etc. That's not exactly what a data dictionary is, but we will end up using more and more of this type of things as build out fracture. I have many needs for this level of control inside the application. Here is an example of a past entry dealing with elements of time and time templates (see EOT # 8004).

- Pseudo code, tracer code, or simple scratch files. Great way to get started and do mini prototyping without having to tie in everything.

- Different kinds of testing - unit testing, integration testing, and end to end testing. They tend to go in that order... if you are building new. They sometimes go in reverse order if you are adding tests for existing pieces. It depends on your architecture. Usually, you will have the most unit tests, then less integration tests, and even less end to end tests. That's the ideal.

- From Russell - If your tests are hard to write, then your code architecture may need some help.

- Providing a mock or mocked up data. Often, you may want to certify that your mock is similar to what really happens with real data. You want to make sure that you are comparing apples to apples. Ideally, you don't want to run tests on production servers. Most of the testing is pre-production, if possible.

- Russell and I were talking about time management. Often, we get pulled in different directions. We tend to go where we are needed. That may not always be where we want to go.

- There are huge demands in all areas. Backend, frontend, and even middle management stuff.

- With good testing and good testing coverage, it almost allows for a license to be almost careless in refactoring. If it needs fixing, you can just fix it vs leaving it alone because it may break something else. If something is wrong and you don't fix it, and you keep building on that piece or function, you tend to stack up technical debt.

- Everything has a connected ripple type affect. If you add more people, you will need to add more people to manage those people and what they are doing. Everything in a system affects other pieces of the puzzle or system (ecosystem).

- We talked about the challenges of a multi-use scenario or how our users use our product. Each company is so different. That can really make it kind of hard to test and predict every scenario. Welcome to our world.

- At some point, you almost feel like you have lost control of your users and what they do. It's almost too open or too freeform. There are pros and cons to that approach. It tends to come down to three things - 1. Permissions, 2. Settings, and 3. Templates or virtual instructions (rules and assignments).

- Lots of time talking about pressure from upper management, budgets, timelines, or others (even clients). What happens if you push things out too quickly? You end up getting what you pay for. It's really hard to get both fast code and good code (bug free and super stable). If you want the more stable code, you have to plan it out, build it out, plan the testing, check it off, and probably do more testing. The combo of both fast and good is really hard to get, especially if you have multiple developers involved. Long story made short, it takes time and planning.

- What price are you willing to pay? Great question.

- Learning about different tools and when to best use them. Each tool is best suited for a specific task and/or activity. Not every job only uses a hammer (and nothing else). It depends on the job. The hammer might be the correct choice, but it may not be. It all depends on job (project, task, activity, function).

- Start where you are and build from there.

- If your code is modular, well tested, that allows for future refactoring.

Emails, phone call with John, touching base, looking at my schedule, etc. Recording notes from a meeting with Russell. See elements of time # 10439 in the shop.

Met with Russell over lunch. We ate, chatted, and got into some good discussions. Here are some of my notes. See attached for scans of my handwritten notes.

- Russell recommended some books to read. Good source of learning. Author - Robert C. Martin - "Clean Coder", "Clean Code", and "Clean Architecture"

- Ideas on project management, saying yes, saying no, and some time management concepts.

- We talked about the addiction of "progression" and the pros and cons of that addiction.

- Provide the stable (for you, your family, and others) - then go from there. As a side note, this word "stable" kept coming up throughout our conversation.

- What if it fails? Are you going to be ok? How many eggs do you have in one single basket? Asking yourself questions like that sometimes helps you get a better, more rounded perspective.

- Consistency over small pushes. It may be better to be consistent than push like crazy all at once. Similar analogy to floods vs drips (water).

- Little bitesize pieces

- Dedicated "Lunch" time or some other dedicated time. Carving out something that is special and time for you.

- If it is your project, you will care for it and make it happen (see it through). On a different note, if you can get others to buy in and give them ownership and let them make parts of the bigger project their dream, it becomes more stable over all.

- A good testing strategy is needed. It will build confidence by the bucket load.

- Lots of talks about expectations - Testing and getting everything built out.

- Efficiency - That sounds great, and it has its place, but sometimes there are more things than just pure efficiency. You almost have to play this little balance game.

- Russell was talking about the book and podcast "The Working Genius". He was telling me what some of his strengths and weaknesses were. Fun topics. It helps you get your vision of who you are and how you work and/or interact with others and other tasks.

- Over time, it is interesting to watch strengths and weaknesses playout over time. Letting things play out (both naturally and forced - at times).

- "Keep the stable" - Russell Moore - We kept coming back to this. I think he was trying to get me a subtle message of sorts.

- Continuing education time - make the time for it.

- Not only consistency, but consistency patterns

- Planning out the details of the journey. Looking and planning ahead.

- Russel and I were talking about my wife Heather. She has said over and over again that we are chasing too many things or trying to be too much for everyone. She's probably right and correct.

- Chasing the dragon - (the dream, the final or finished product) - It can be really fun but it could also be really dangerous (both mentally and physically). Just for fun, we were talking about the thrill of it and also the long term phycological effects of that chase. True on all accounts. I love the chase but sometimes it really does affect me (burnout, stress, anxiety, etc.). There is a cost to what we do.

- There is so much more than just building it - That is one of the pieces of the puzzle (the whole).

- Marketing - Pushing it to the next level

- Technical debt - it can crush you! This is when you have so much older code that needs to be updated, maintained, and adjusted. It is called technical debt. It can crush you, it may also crush your soul, your spirit, your will. It can be a huge burden.

- Minimal on the heavy lifting. Who is doing what and what kind of time commitment does that take? Where and what is your job? Don't get sucked into the jobs around the job (whatever that job is).

- Sharing your knowledge. That is fun and it pays dividends.

- If you don't take the time to do continuing education, the world will move on without you.

- Spend an hour a week with Russell.

- Ideally, if you can swing it, 5 hours a week on continuing education. This is your future. You have to future proof yourself.

- Lots depends on the funding... If not, either bail out or keep chipping away at it. Exploring options. Usually it is not just black and white, there are options if you will look for them.

- The dream is awesome but be ok with the maintaining of it as well. It not just the new building of a certain project. Sometimes, you have to pull back and either do some upkeep or be willing to maintain what you have. Here is a link to a small flower gardener (image) with the same question - plan more or take care of what I've got?

- Why does a designer or dreamer code? I'll tell you why, we don't like being stuck. We'll get in there and figure it out in order to make our dreams and ideas come to life.

- From Russell - what is your best path? His answer - Produce features and be able to get revenue (quickly).

- Russell also recommended a video called "Minimal Viable Architecture" by Randy Shoup.

On the phone with Steve. We were touching base and letting each other know what we are working on and what plans are in play. Steve has a developer that he wants me to meet with. He is hitting the sales side of things pretty hard. I told him that we are harvesting some past R&D and planning the next steps. I also mentioned to him that I was going to be meeting with Russell this coming weekend. I also told him about a buddy who may be interested in doing some sales and making some calls.

New transition today. I popped onto the morning meeting because that is what I normally did. I let the guys know that I wasn't going to be doing that any more. Sean was on the meeting and we chatted for a bit. By way of an update, he is doing great working with the dynamic adilas label builder. He is also willing to do some checking out of what our competitors are doing and providing me some competitive research. Nothing too huge.

John joined the meeting, and we were looking at some mock-ups. We would like to allow our users to interact with options to setup their own space, look and feel, etc. We would also like to do some early prototyping. Get it out and in their hands. Even things like settings for click vs hoover and other simple choices that affect their space (what they do and use - their space, their flow). We already have a bunch that we have paid for and haven't been able to use it yet. We have a ton of R&D stuff that Jonathan Wells did in Adobe XD for fracture, adilas cafe, and a new shopping cart.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Dramatize it, push up XD docs from Chuck on the content server. We have done tons of really good R&D. Let's use that. This is how we are going to get fracture up and going and off the ground.

John and I talked about trying to centralize all of the data and assets. I have a bunch of it. We have pushed up a bunch to the adilas content server. We also still have quite a few assets and raw authoring files with the guys/gals who made them - Jonathan Wells, Chuck, Russell, Marisa, etc.

As part of our discussion, John was showing me some of the projects that he worked on for school. He's got business design docs, pitches, proposals, flow charts, etc. I'd like to tap into some of those planning and system scope documents. Not necessarily for his project, but more for what we could do for our projects. Once again, show them don't tell them. That is huge and reoccurring theme. Show them, don't tell them.

Here are some other notes from our meeting:

- We could make some awesome customizable dashboards

- Realtime data on what is going on (tables, graphs, charts, and quick aggregates), help them see everything without overwhelming them. Full visibility.

- "Show them" and then do it over and over again.

- Talking about dream salaries between John and I. Where would you like to be, salary wise?

- Keep idea farming - that's what we do

- Shari O. joined the meeting. She loves to do some gaming. I'd love for her to come up with some ideas on how to turn adilas and the daily work into a game of sorts (the game of business). Shari O. said that she could do some light research and maybe come up with some ideas. As we were talking, she said that she changes games based on moods. That's good information. We may want to come up with something similar - what mood are you in? Ok, let's play that way. This is just a dream right now. I'd like to see where it goes.

- Keep gathering things together. Eventually, we will make our own world.

- More ideas for the application and/or system - education mode, game mode, nuts and bolts mode (just get it done - speed mode).

- More talks with Shari O. about Facebook groups, other social groups, having meetings, setting up schedules, and giving people power to run what they want to do. Make the whole thing a team effort.

Sean and John were on the meeting. We were going over ideas for a car window decal or sticker - advertising adilas as a business software solution for operations and accounting. We spent some time pulling together assets, logos, and chatting about what it should say and look like. Both Sean and I were giving John some feedback. I'll reach out to Russell and see if I can get any of the older assets, logos, and originals.

Meeting with Hamid Karbasi, new adilas intern. He will be building a small web site on the topic of the "business zipper" and how we came up with that analogy. Hamid was referred to us by Russell Moore. They had worked together as student and teacher at Bridgerland, in the web development department. Anyways, we got on a Zoom meeting and started going over things. We did a small get to know you session. We then switched over to a small about us and where we came from orientation. I did a light intro into adilas.

We then talked about a small assignment to build a billboard site for the business zipper domain (businesszipper.com). As of right now (3/1/23) it is pointed to the main adilas.biz website. Our goal is to create a new mini site or billboard site (think of a billboard or sign as you are driving down the road that pointed you to something else). In Hamid's words, "all roads lead to adilas". I thought that was good and fun.

We have a number of other domains that we may work on in the future. All of them will be billboard sites or mini sites that point to adilas.biz or a feature or concept within the adilas network/family. We made a small plan and then I gave Hamid a number of resources, info, links, and such. We will get back together in the next couple of weeks to see how things are going.

Back to the main index for the master adilas plan

Master Adilas Plan - Jellyfish Model

Brainstorming Ideas and Topics:

- How big do you want to be? – See also the internal questionnaire responses and survey - tons of good info there - almost a mini plan by itself. Also, question 7 on the survey has a whole write up on the adilas jellyfish or jelly fish model and explains it further.

- The adilas jellyfish model - see attached - covers almost all of the departments and sub sections of what we are trying to be as a company. It is not the main product, but more of our internal and external departments, areas, and general areas that we will keep refining and working on.

- Possible numbers for the jellyfish model. Going from top to bottom and from left to right.
1. adilas.biz
2. Admin
3. Monthly Reoccurring Service
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Setup & Training
6. Tech Support
7. Design
8. Custom Code
9. Consulting
10. R&D
11. Project Management
12. Internal Development & Maintenance
13. Adilas University
14. Adilas Marketplace
15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World
16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

Areas, sections, and departments in more detail:

** for me - go deeper into each section **

1. adilas.biz

• Are we going to stay the same entity? Are we the same or are we different entities? Are we rebranding? Are we piggybacking?
• What version are we on?
• Adilas.biz or adilas lite? Branding? Marketing? etc.
• The thing that keeps us all together is the reoccurring monthly services subscription for the main adilas.biz system. It has been the glue that keeps us together.
• Offering upgrades from ship A (current adilas) to ship B (fracture or adilas lite)
• What are our goals for ship A? What are our goals for ship B? Are we building it up to sell it? Are we going to be replacing ship A? How do you transition between the two.
• We want to make our current product better. It then grew into a full or bigger rewrite. It seems to be changing more and more. Originally, it was pretty small changes.
• Timelines to get things done? What will it take?
• Ship A will be great salespeople for ship B, once ready.
• If people change from ship A to ship B, there needs to be an increase or at least a re-evaluation of monthly fees and services.
• Ship B, we are planning for tiered pricing and dynamic billing based on functions, sizes, usage, storage, and preset packages.
• Ship B, they can toggle on/off different settings, include other features, and change what they want. All of this will reflect on dynamic billing options.
• Talking about future plans - selling it, royalties, secession, retirement, etc.

2. Admin

• The admin's role is to manage the budget, make decisions as to the direction that we need to go, do HR type functions, payroll, manage the different groups and departments, communication channels, general running of the day to day business.
• This could be one person, multiple people, a board, a council, etc. Somebody or some entity needs to be in control.
• Co-owners, Co-Founders, CEO's, presidents, vice-presidents, board members, etc. We can figure that out.
• If we do one person, we need to have VP's or managers in the other departments.
• One of our problems is that none of us (on the current team) want to be that person or take on this whole responsibility.

3. Monthly Reoccurring Service - aka Billing (new name)

• This is billing, invoicing, receiving, dealing with monies coming in and reaching out to our clients.
• Accounts receivables
• This could be tied in with admin roles
• Debt collection, bad debt, accounting, financials, etc.
• Setting up new corps (currently) and sending welcome emails and collecting business contact info.
• Bank reconciliation, paying bills, prep the budget info, etc.
• We could automate some of this, in the future.

4. Sales & Marketing

• We like that they are together. This is anything to generate and keep new clients to keep coming in and paying for our services. This could be publicity, knowledge about the system, get new demos, entice our clients to buy and keep buying from us. Serving their needs.
• Currently, the main method of marketing is word of mouth and referrals.
• We have used sales reps, consultants, and light networking. Steve and Kelly have been some of our biggest sales type people.
• We want to listen to what feedback they are bringing back. Currently, the sales people and the developers almost live in two different places.
• Sales should have a good pulse on what is working, what is not working, and what people and our clients are asking for. We tend to get lots of good ideas from clients. Sometimes, what that takes or the priority, that can get tricky.
• How big do we want to be? Get everybody or get enough (sufficient)? Keep pushing into other markets or be content with good ROI?
• Helping with market research, looking around and checking out markets, and what do we need to do to penetrate those markets?
• We almost feel like being in no man's land - too big for just a few people to push on it, not quite big enough to really have the team that we need to push it. Do we push and go bigger? Or do we trim down and keep it like it is (not really coasting but strategically developing as we can)? There are associated questions about speed, reliability, and uptime.
• Along with sales and marketing, there are expectations that are set and keep changing (trends and expectations).
• We need to know who we are servicing. Currently, we are kind of all over the place. We have little accounts, medium accounts, and some big accounts. We could go any direction. We just need to decide. Where is the sweet spot?
• If we want to be big and grand, we will need some major funding and thus major sales and marketing. Or do we figure out the sweet spot and really refine and focus in on things.
• Making things more stable and more reliable. Keep improving.
• We have a lot to offer - no one has even heard of us.
• The new and upcoming business owners are going to be fully connected and have certain expectations. If you want to get those guys/gals, you're going to have to revamp things.
• Our current mix is very developer heavy. We really need to switch that focus and get things that people want. Easy, Powerful, and Pretty!
• We need this department to really keep us in the know on what is going on. Currently, we don't have anyone fully dedicated or assigned to this department. We've been missing this piece.

5. Setup & Training

• Originally, we didn't charge for any of this. We just wanted people to get on our system. We are now charging for this and even trying to presale some of the training, deployment, and setup stuff. We are finding and have found, that people who get setup correctly and have the correct amount of training stay longer on our system. It has a learning curve, and that proper setup and training goes a long way.
• Currently, one of our system admin persons has to go in and create the corp, do a bunch of the settings, assign the master users, setup the logos and colors, and get them going. Most of that requires someone from our team to hold their hand along that process.
• Futuristically, we really want to help automate a bunch of that. Have them setup their own corp, let them pick what industries they want to play into, help them with their settings (wizard style), and then even help them pull in their data (without any other involvement). Let them create a test account or a free version, play around, and then either upgrade or get some help.
• Offer services to help our clients. Also have a number of self-help tools and features to let them do it themselves.
• We would love to develop a number of preset packages and industry specific skins.
• We would like the setup and training to be coupled with education and the adilas university side of things. They are very related.
• Getting products, customers, vendors, and other info into the system easily. Currently, we have to do a bunch of that (data imports) on a one-by-one basis. We need to make that more global and self-help level.
• Provide a good starting point to help them succeed. Show them the benefits and advantages of doing it our way or how we help them succeed.
• This department or division could include the adilas university, training, tech support, setup, and training.
• Easy access to get help and direction if needed.
• We see a lot of user error type problems. Figure out ways of helping them stay in their lane better or put up guardrails or bumpers to keep them on track.
• It has only been recently that we have added more focus on the setup, deployment, and training.
• This department could also include on-going training and retention. That is huge. Things constantly keep changing and we keep adding on new features.

6. Tech Support

• Currently, we allow people to email or call for tech support. It's free but often bleeds over into full on training, not tech support.
• We could build out a report a bug or open up a ticket or an issue. Make it easier to get support.
• We could provide better help files, tips, how-to's, videos, tutorials, and in-person training events.
• Everybody uses the system so differently, that makes it kind of tough. It would be nice if we have tech support stuff that was industry specific or catered to a specific industry.
• Tech support really should be part of the training, setup, and deployment stuff.
• Tech support could be a small carrot for deeper training and/or offering other paid services.
• Helping to show the value of deeper training and education.
• Having a standard way of getting to training and even industry specific training.
• Offer some adilas university training courses - covering various subjects on scheduled dates/times.
• Really helping to push the training and education stuff. Tech support should be quick, temporary, and non reoccurring. Show them the benefits of getting properly trained.
• As we move forward, we are planning on simplifying things. That should help with the training needs and the tech support stuff. Helping them figure it out on their own.
• If people (our clients) really want more tech support, we could offer more robust or advanced support packages.

7. Design

• This could be websites, forms, reports, interfaces, dashboards, UI/UX (user interfaces and user experience). This is the pretty and easy part of it. The powerful may be from a feature or backend process.
• Most of our current guys are developers, not designers.
• We don't charge enough, as such, we tend to skimp on the design phases and processes. This tends to get skipped or minimalized.
• We tend to do function over form - however, most clients say that they want function over form, but really, they want form over function - they want it to work and look pretty.
• Our project management tends to be a simple one liner. Do such and such. No other plans, requirements, mock-ups, or fixed specs exist.
• Mock-ups, prototypes, samples, wireframes, flow charts, graphics, videos, etc. We want to show the plan, air it out, and then build to the specs.
• Modern look and feel and user experience keeps changing. We need someone to keep watching and keeping up with trends, expectations, and options. This needs to be monitored and maintained regularly.
• Figuring out and sticking to a style guide. We do have a section called the "adilas docs". We have been working on it, but it has not been fully adopted yet. We need to set those standards and then stick to it. This is our style guide, and we are sticking to it.
• Doing some test cases and getting user/client feedback. How did their experience work out and what did we learn from that?
• Planning in maintenance and upkeep.
• Our clients squawk at things not being consistent. I don't mind change but I don't like some change and other things not being consistent. We could also introduce settings.
• We could allow the users, or corporations, to choose their default layouts. Horizontal forms, vertical forms, stacked forms, or auto formatted. We also want to store those settings and allow them to change it on the fly on per user basis.
• We need some consistency - this deals with who the designer is, what we are designing and outputting, people's preferences and opinions, and where we are heading. We can all be different, but we need to be consistent.
• Allow people to try things out and/or fully switch over.
• There is a point when we need to keep moving forward so we don't have to keep supporting all of the older styles and themes. Help make that as smooth as possible.
• We have some needs for design work out in ecommerce, customer facing sites, portals, and even business websites or web presence stuff.
• We need designers to help with marketing and social media stuff. Once again, consistency, specific plans, strategic campaigns, etc.

8. Custom Code

• This is one of the things that really sets us apart from other systems. We love it and even encourage it.
• We currently have tons of black box options. That was a solution at the time. There are some great concepts there (black box stuff) but we did run into problems.
• The code base keeps changing. We have had people ask for things, we build it custom for them and then wrap back and make it standard. The ones who got the custom version are now off on their own vs being fully integrated into the main codebase.
• We offer a lot of this. Having said that, we don't charge enough.
• We would like to move as much as possible to data driven settings and permissions.
• One of our current issues in maintainability. If it was on the side (like a black box page) it got left behind. The main pages always got updated but anything custom was harder to test, and harder to main it.
• If we do custom code, we need to build in some maintenance costs to help maintain that.
• We could do a community type approach - who ever helps build it out, gets a commission or a usage fee for others using it. Kinda like a sponsorship or something. We just need to get enough to plan it out, build it out, test it, market it, and then do some sort of kickback or reoccurring usage fee. There may be different levels  - one-time, reoccurring, built in, full one-off custom code, settings, combined projects (we pay, they pay, we then get to use it).
• Custom code should be by our internal developers and internal development team. We need to make sure that it works and doesn't affect something else.
• We have had some maintenance issues. Who made it, what does it do, how does it work, what does it touch, what else does it touch up/down stream, where does it live, how can you get to it, and was there any planning or testing done to the custom code? Tons of potential far reaching questions.
• If we build something... we really need to get an ROI and market those pieces.
• We could do some pay as you go build outs. Monthly fees that get added to their bill. They could pay upfront and then get a payment plan, or set it up on a reoccurring basis, or whatever.
• We need to charge enough. We often shoot ourselves in the foot. We charge pennies to build on top of multi-million dollar platforms and applications.
• We need good planning, good project management, good estimates, and then good developing.
• Estimates - take what you think it will take and double it. Then double that. It's almost a 4x ratio. By the time you add the work to get the work, the work before the work, the work, the work in between the work, the work after the work. It all plays in.
• Paying for both quality and speed.
• On the estimates, we also need to think about opportunity costs and what are we not working on, while doing custom code work.
• Approving custom code. Just because someone wants it... doesn't mean we should build it out. How does it fit with our mission statement, goals, and overarching plans and rollouts?

9. Consulting

• Byproduct of the main reoccurring business services. Once we are in, the system starts generating byproducts and people need to know what is next, how to do certain things, where they could go, options, next steps, phases, etc.
• We haven't really tapped into this yet. We do it, but we could do it so much more.
• This could be tied into the training, setup, and education stuff. Teaching our clients the best way to use the system to get the most out of the system or platform.
• You start getting into paying for knowledge and experience and expertise.
• We have seen many of our power-users become consultants. They know the system, they know how to make it run, sing, dance, and play. That provides a value to others. Those people then offer their expertise and know how to help others.
• Currently, some of this is done on the side. Adilas has no part in it, and no kickback exits. We would love to bring this more inside but that takes money to keep those people on call or on staff.
• This could be a great thing to add to the adilas marketplace.
• We may allow some outside stuff to go on, but we need some rules. We could configure this any way we want, we just need some rules.
• This could be part of the adilas cafe scenario - our clients seeking out a professional to help them out.
• Do we want to manage this internally? What would that look like? Once again, we may need some rules here.

10. R&D

• Research and Development - You have to spend time here to move the ball forward. If you aren't going to move forward, nothing will happen, you will live and die. You have to keep up, especially with tech stuff.
• Exploring different avenues - there are costs for exploring.
• Cutting edge, bleeding edge, sweet spot, new ish, or older/classic?
• How much does it cost to be on that cutting edge?
• Vision, plans, and looking to the future. Where are we/you heading? Plans, how are you going to get there?
• It really comes down to where do you want to play (on the spectrum)?
• Training what is new.
• Maintenance for what was or has been developed. Technical debt.
• Stable and known or less stable and new - How quick will the older pieces change and/or be deprecated? If it's so new, it may not even stick.
• We make things and then it sits on a shelf. That hurts. There could be difference between development that didn't get fully funded vs totally new prototyping and experimenting.
• Is this something we should do? On not? Figuring out what it takes to make something happen.
• Looking into speed, efficiency, demand, cost analysis, needs analysis, scope, scale, and reality of doing certain things.
• Beta testing, prototypes, experiments, testing, pushing boundaries.
• Currently some of our R&D is mixed in with our code. We try things to see if it works. Without being consistent with other pages and code. We often have good intentions (prepping for the future - mini stubs or prepping for stuff) but then get pulled on to other projects. We do a lot of experimenting within our projects. Almost a revolving door or revolving code set. Basically, a fully working, living prototype.
• We are seeing a mix between custom code, R&D, and project management.
• Back tracing or reverse engineering things. Sometimes if you know what you want, you can then figure out a way to get there, that might be easier or better.
• Being aware of what's out there? How could I use some of that in my projects?

11. Project Management

• We have really been missing this piece. We do a ton of just in time project management. We are not very good at doing a more full design, plan, or architecture type layout.
• We do a lot of this one-on-one right now. One project and one developer.
• The project manager can and does act as the shield between the client and the developer. Buying some time or deflecting decisions.
• They help with quotes, estimates, and project specs, scope, costs, timelines, and details. Lots of potential back and forth communication is needed.
• We have spent a ton of time and money going back and fixing things that should have been planned out originally. We have also spent money where a developer makes a decision and just does something and doesn't ask or doesn't get any clarification.
• Teams - authority, accountability, and responsibilities - setting up clear expectations. We have played around here a bit. We need to refine things here a bit, based on our needs. We had some people who were so worried about how to do scrum that it didn't actually happen. We also had some problems with free riders. We want to use some small teams, but still need to get it refined a bit better.
• Dealing with teams, we were trying to do some training... and we didn't really have it all defined. Wasted time in meetings, talking about code, and what is needed. We then fall down based on assumptions or just verbal communication. It needs to be just a little bit deeper and more consistent.
• Team sizes and dynamics.
• As a project manager, not assigning yourself to a required task. Actually, make an assignment to do the project management.
• Someone needs to be available and be the virtual babysitter. Getting rid of hurdles and what is expected of them. Helping them stay on task/track. The project manager's job to help other people succeed.
• Slowdown
• We build and build and build... we need to slow down and test it, train on it, market it, and push it.
• Being able to plan it out so that we can reuse as much code as possible. Giving the developers guidelines, handrails, samples, and good instructions. If it's too tight, they don't want to do it (it takes out the fun of figuring it out). Figure out what developer needs what (how detailed) and then play accordingly. Developers need to accomplish something. Not just follow A-Z and you're done. It is a mix and a spectrum.

12. Internal Development & Maintenance

• This internally funded by adilas to work on adilas. This comes from revenue and budgets to keep the system up and running.
• Bug fixes, maintenance, changes, next steps, phases, testing, documentation, code review, etc.
• This needs to be tied into project management and custom code.
• This is the most defined area that we have inside of adilas.
• We get a plan from project management, we then build it out, test it, deploy it, and make sure that it works.
• We have had problems with guys following style guides. Everybody has their own ideas on what a good style guide is. This could be whitespace in code, tabs, naming conventions, etc. It also happens on the look and feel part of page or report.
• Alan had the idea of having a way of helping to force or standardize the output. Almost a forced style guide or validator of sorts. It all has to comply to a certain standard. Whitespace, naming conventions, comments, indents, variable names, components, etc.
• Keeping things separated - backend, database, objects, services, views, logic, functions, classes, etc.
• In object-oriented programming, you need good encapsulation (only contains what is needed) and low coupling (lower number of steps as possible).
• There is some great value in teams and getting different points of view. A better solution because we worked on it as a team. More well-rounded.

13. Adilas University

• This goes hand in hand with the training and deployment section. This is the training arm of the system. It may also tie in with tech support or consulting. We could combine some of this as needed. Similar type people and knowledge resources.
• General topics for training - One, how do you use the system? Two, how do you run your business? Consulting is a part of this as well - what are the best business practices and how to get the most out of the system.
• There could be standard stuff, custom stuff, and internal stuff.
• Each page would have how to videos, quick videos, and options for more or deeper training.
• We also need to offer some custom or live training events.
• For fracture, we experimented with a thing called the education mode. You could turn it on/off and the system would hide or show more options and information. You could turn it on from any page and all of sudden it would react differently. We have some great screenshots on this from Jonathan Wells. Along with this, the help files could be shown, side-by-side with the page that they are referencing. There were also options to toggle into the actual adilas university site as a tab withing the side-by-side help window.
• There is a known missing gap here on the education and training side of things.
• There could be free levels, basic stuff, and deeper more paid type levels of training and consulting.
• There could also be certification levels, requirements, status, and other testing and certification stuff.
• We are hoping that the adilas lite and fracture project will make it even easier to help train the users and because they can tweak everything, there will actually be less of a need for certain pieces of the education and training. They will still be there, just hidden as needed.
• This could be a whole other business entity, if needed.
• A new user really wants to be guided through - holding their hand. An advanced user may not want any of that stuff in their way, just let them do it quickly.
• Link to this from the adilas cafe.
• If we do certifications, maybe show or allow some of that basic info to show to other users, if they are seeking trained professionals to help them out.
• If we have trained users, those become a value to others who are looking for help or pros on those topics.
• Adilas University could be a stand-alone product, or it could be interwoven with the entire site. Both have the same content, they just either have a standalone navigation system or we help navigate for them based on what page the users are on (context stuff).
• There could be levels to the training... Think of a triangle - simple, basic, intermediate, advanced, and deep or backend logic or design level stuff.
• There may be both external and internal training pieces. Along with that, we may have to have permissions or something that open/closes those training modules for certain people or parties.

14. Adilas Marketplace

• Part of the adilas cafe. People could sell their products and services, buy products and services. Including adilas skills and other professional skills.
• Adilas creates lots of byproducts. This is a way to help harness and gather up those byproducts. 
• Options for 3rd party solutions, white labeling, advertising, marketing, etc.
• Online mini marketplace for adilas products and/or our users could sell their products and services on a mini Amazon or eBay type level (mini consignment type shop built for our users and companies that use our products).
• Possible payment solutions with interest, fees, commissions, and other small kickbacks for using the marketplace.
• Limitless potential for other byproducts and additional services that could be added on to this piece of the puzzle.
• This may need a separate team to help run, manage, and administer this piece of the puzzle. Automate as much as possible.
• Here is a rough draft - Russell did - way back - don't get stuck here... It could be so much more. Adilas Market

15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World

• A landing spot outside of any corporation or entity.
• A corp selector - where can I go (have permissions or access)?
• Get to the marketplace type stuff.
• Get to the adilas university stuff.
• Forum type stuff - ask Q&A type stuff. This could be answered by staff and/or other users. This would need a moderator or forum manager.
• Let people show that they have the skills that others (businesses and/or individuals) could be looking for. This may include direct messaging or some other way of communicating.
• White labeling options.
• Standardized portal - single sign in be able to jump between servers and corporations.
• Dynamic billing and making payments.
• Mini marketplace for adilas products.
• Sales and creation of new accounts - tiered pricing and auto setup options
• News and updates - configure news feed as needed.
• Interface with other companies and corporations. Get assigned, hub type model.
• Work, play (demo sites), buy, sell, training, social stuff, and participate.

16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

• This is the whole backend of the application or hardware side of things.
• Load management, reliability, up time, speed, redundancy, backups, storage, orchestration, etc.
• Lots of security needs and requirements. They will also be majorly involved in implementation of security.
• Code interacts with these things, but they are separate entities or divisions.
• We will need our own documentation, permissions, training, etc.
• Maintenance and upkeep, prototyping, standardizing, testing, databases, servers, hardware, clusters, network, security, IT stuff.
• Patches, updates, protection, hacker prevention stuff.
• Email servers, text or communication servers, web servers, database servers, backend logic servers (ColdFusion or whatever).
• Monitoring services, requests, traffic, load balancing, stats, specs, remote access, database indexing, automation scripts, tons of IT type stuff.
• Migration stuff, off-hour updates and maintenance, backups, restores, and other tasks.
• Move data around, put things into and out of cold storage, special bulk data manipulation stuff, zip and archiving things, etc.
• Future proofing things.
• Offloading bigger or longer processes.
• API sockets, API endpoints, and being able to load balance traffic, requests, deal with sessions, server config, clustering, and managing small microservices.
• We need a way to get rid or purge some of the pieces. The current system builds and builds. It never really releases or virtually poops (dumps).
• We would love to get a full data dictionary to allow our new frontend to be more data driven.
• This could be multiple people - DBA, IT/Server guys, etc. They could cross over, but these are high level skills and high level people or teams.
• Everything on the hosting side of things. This gets deep but just think - what do we need for hosting? - SSL's, domain names, hard drive space, spinning up servers just in time, pointer records, DNS, DSN, puppet, orchestration, bit bucket, code repositories, ColdFusion Administrator, Fusion Reactor, Papertrail, Nagios, tons of outside services and tools.
• Servers - hard drive sizes, backups, RAM, CPU's, configs, and the list goes on.
• This could go deep and deeper... Etc.

-------------------------

- Alan and I were playing with a mini version or what that might look like (see attached for a mini mock-up of the smaller mini model):

Adilas.biz - admin, monthly billing, and day to day running the company. They could do their own R&D (progress, speed, what the clients are wanting).

Sales & marketing - They could do their own R&D (advertising, pricing, features, marketing materials, etc.).

Consulting, tech support, setup & training, and retention. This could also be part of the adilas university (similar folk). They could do their own R&D (tied into sales, marketing, training, etc.).

Development stuff - project management, custom code, internal development, maintenance, & design. They could do their own R&D (code, frameworks, layouts, look and feel, etc.).

IT stuff - Databases, servers, hardware, hosting, etc. They could do their own R&D (speed, load balancing, redundancy, monitoring, etc.).

Marketplace and adilas cafe - This could be their own little piece or small team. They could do their own R&D (product research, options, pricing, hardware options, services, etc.).

We would love to see each of these sections or divisions (departments) be able to meet and interact with each other on a consistent basis (at least monthly or semi-monthly). Nobody is left on an island by themselves. Communication is huge.

Meeting with Russell over Google Meetings. He had me download the project - CSS theme and we did some playing with pulling in different component pieces of the theme. We also spent some time looking at the adilas university site and transferring ownership of the adilas university thinkific account over to me. Good meeting and fun to learn some new things.

As a side note, Russell and I were talking about change and how some people just struggle with that. Here is what he said, "We are almost helping our users build new pathways through their minds." It's more than just changes, we are trying to help, shape, and encourage them along the path. For better or for worse, we all have to deal with change.

Just Steve and Sean were on the meeting with me this morning. By 9:30 am, both had bailed out to do different things. We were doing some quick updates and going over things before they bailed out. Here are some of my quick scribbles (notes):

- Gathering ideas from different people. Including new people who are already influenced by existing adilas theory and designs.

- The value of education

- Talking about options for selling shares, percentages, and maybe going public with adilas in order to raise funds for projects that we want to do and pursue. It's all about the connections.

- Steve was talking about the drive to make more money that is shared by most business owners and entrepreneurs.

- Selling adilas to fill in small parts of the business as fill-in pieces. Not piecemeal but selling certain tools and features to help round out other businesses, models, or software packages. For example: Say someone just needs ecommerce, online ordering, scheduling, timecards, or even things like gift cards. We pitch it, get them going on what they need and hopefully they like it and want to expand to other parts and pieces. This is an older saying from Russell Moore back in 4/13/16, "Adilas is a great companion software package for any business!".

- We are still seeing a future need for in-store credit and being able to apply those liabilities to outstanding invoices. You can do it right now, but you have to do everything manually. We would really like to automate that whole process and make it super easy and smooth. This will end up being another one of the special accounts type functions. Not everybody gets it, only certain people or customers need it, and it is basically a reverse account where you overpay and then get to use that value to pay for other things. Very similar to gift cards. As a matter of fact, you could issue a gift card for the overage and then let them use it at will as a payment. Once again, in-store credits will play along with other special accounts such as gift cards, gift certificates, loyalty points, punch cards, lunch cards, vendor credits, and other special account options.

- We got into some talks about deployment as a bottleneck and how training and education could help solve some of that pressure and bottlenecks. There is also a huge need to keep educating and providing learning for new functionality that keeps getting developed. That's an ongoing process.

- Small discussions about keeping up some of the demo sites and making them nice and clean. There is a huge value in nice, clean, data.

After Steve and Sean left, I sent the rest of the time looking over emails and looking into a possible bug on invoices and the new bigger alternate logos for PDF invoices (some new invoice settings).

Wayne was reporting on certain errors out in the API socket land. It seems to be some kind of bot or computer-generated traffic. Just John, myself, and Wayne were on the meeting. We chatted briefly about crazy life happenings and scenarios. When it rains, it pours.

Light server talk about traffic, server speed on data 0, emails, domain names, local SSL certs, and Docker stuff. After that, John and I were looking into some edge case stuff dealing with reverse deposits and reverse expense/receipts. Basically, when a user makes a negative deposit or a negative expense/receipt. For example a refund on a payment or a fee on a deposit or whatever. Kinda edge case stuff. Anyways, John was requested to make some small layout and color changes for the bank register and to show those negative deposits and negative expenses in a different way.

John was also reporting that he found an existing setting that helps the data tables be web ready and mobile responsive data tables vs static data tables. Russell implemented that settings way back; we just didn't know about it.

Recording notes. One of the entries that I was recording notes on was a fun meeting with Russell last Saturday. See elements of time # 9765 for full details. Lots of stuff for adilas (business stuff) and lots of just life lessons and concepts. Good stuff!

Working with Russell on a Saturday. We talked about all kinds of subjects and topics. Here are some of my notes:

- Self-help and continued education and learning. One little bite at a time.

- Using Microsoft Paint for quick drawings when I don't have the drawing tools from Zoom or GoToMeeting. It works pretty slick and can be pulled up quickly.

- On CSS templates and themes - spending time to get to know the templates and CSS themes. Get to know the components and what is already done and what can be modified and tweaked as needed. Well worth the time to get to know the templates.

- Priorities and getting the correct talent and teams together.

- CSS theme forest - some great pre-built themes - Making things flow and look pretty.

- Splitting up backend code, database logic and access, and frontend views and code. Once you get them all split up, it makes changes, on either front or side, easier to make.

- Back to templates and components, he explores around, looks for elements and asks, can I use that theme for something that I (or my client) wants? Don't get tied in to just what you see - look for potential.

- We can't do everything by ourselves - if needed, hire someone who has vision and can spend the time to make it happen. Make it a priority.

- Looks, performance, functionality, ease of use, and support - what clients are looking for.

- How easy is it to do a certain task? Learning from the user's habits and expectations. If needed, get a good UX/UI developer. Ideally, have a nice frontend that hides the whole backend. This can make it more feel more industry specific.

- Paving a path for our users.

- Full API socket backend. That is true power if it can be harnessed.

- Russell's goals - powerful, looks good, and easy to use.

- Using Adobe XD to mock things up.

- Making little building blocks. Then you can move them around and put them anywhere.

- Full mock-ups for the whole course or phase(s). Getting approval, then breaking things into smaller tasks to assign out. Figuring out routes, templates, flow, etc. Russell uses his team to help prep it for the developers.

- Someone has to manage it or coordinate the rollout.

- Using greenies (newbies) vs a senior developer. There are pros and cons to this approach. You have to almost look at each scenario and then decide what your course of action will be.

- Building things more modular for reuse.

- Everything comes down to choices. Including... whatever we don't change, we are choosing to let it be. It all comes down to choices.

- Leaving things better than you found it. Just like going camping.

- Grow from where you are at!

- Teach me (whatever) and then I'll choose.

- Russell's underlying concepts - pray hard, work hard, and use the talents of others around you. Russell likes to use the Big Guy upstairs (prayer and inspiration).

- What's our budget? What can we do to get more budget? Don't just see the budget and then stop there. If it's not enough, look at other angles and see what you can do (within reason).

- We talked a lot about life's pace. The keyword is "pace".

- Pondering the path of your feet - where are you heading? Mixing and blending what's in front of you.

- Smart goals - S.M.A.R.T. goals - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time bound.

- The drip affect - that is awesome - the accumulation of tons of drops over days, weeks, months, and years. The compounding effect over time. Leaning for transfer, means leaning one thing and it helps you with another thing. Learning starts compounding and multiplying. That is really cool!

- Going back to measuring growth - what does a little bit of (____ - fill in the blank) do for us?

- Virtually filling our lamps, small changes, seeking and putting ourselves in good habits.

- It's ok to need help.

- Plans for our next meeting time. Russell and I talked about building out a small, baby component, from research, to mock-up, to code, in order to go through and do the whole process. Sounds fun!

Morning meeting. Sean joined and was just checking in. Danny joined and we started chatting about different subjects. Sean had some questions about SG&A costs (selling, general and administrative costs or internal manufacturing and unitizing costs to specific units). We talked about recipes and the potential there to keep track of things and to virtually unitize different costs through the recipe/build process.

We switched gears and started to talk about pitching "potential". We already have tons of that. This is a quote from a business consultant that we were working with at one time. He said - "Part of what I pitch is hope, the potential to be and do better!". I would like to help us keep pitching potential and hope. That is awesome!

We talked about new companies and helping to keep them up to date with new training and getting them started. We talked about how much to bite off at a single time. If you take smaller bites, it works better, but you have to be willing to circle back around. If you give too much, you could overwhelm them or flood them out. Baby steps and smaller bites. It takes longer, but the experience is better over time. Basically, get comfortable and then move on to the next thing.

Lots of discussions and talk about "custom". Most software systems are just as is, they really don't allow for custom solutions over and above their base product. We, on the other hand, love custom and can either do the whole thing or fill in the gaps as needed. This is from Russell Moore, back in 2016, "Adilas is a great companion software package for any business." We can fill in or virtually fill in the gaps wherever there is a need. We got into talking about how you can virtually use any part of the system or any part of the whole. Everything is an option but not required. That really leads us to do more customization of things. We are ok with that. It is part of our model.

One of our biggest benefits is being able to pull things together in one place. We even want to keep expanding on that concept and make other homepages or bring it together type pages or sections. We talked about getting all of the settings together into one page. That conversation caused us to get into the four different types of settings (that we know of right now). We have world or corp-wide settings, group level settings (invoices, customers, products, etc.), page level settings, and user level settings. After talking about that for a bit, we got into talking about world building and where we are headed there. Literally, the deeper you get, one thing will lead right into the next, in a true system or world building experience.

The guys were talking about a client who has a running list of things that they want us to do (once we or they have some funding). That is part of world building and deals with - what do you need, what do you want, and how will we get there?

The next part of the session was me, going off and giving an impromptu history lesson on where we came from and a series of events that lead to where we are now. I was having fun. I hope that the guys liked it. We bounced into adilas, looked at numbers, projects, histories, etc. I showed them a new graphic that I was working on called the progression of things and we chatted about that. I jumped into an old Excel file that had some numbers to show growth, etc. Anyways, I thought it was a fun history or historical session of sort. Good stuff. See attached for some of the files that we were going over.

Recording all kinds of notes from the past few days. Lots and lots going on. Even recorded some notes from a training session that I had with Russell over the weekend (last weekend). Busy times.

Training session between Russell and Brandon. We met over a Zoom meeting and talked about all kinds of project management styles and techniques. Russell was showing me stuff on his Notion app, how he organizes things, and all of the cool drag and drop type styles for his to do lists and project boards. Lots of linking back and forth and dynamics. We talked about IT structures and how to best manage teams. We talked about scrum, agile, sprint (if you know what to do) and kanban (one project at a time from start to finish).

It comes down to what are your resources, timelines, and talent pool. Do you know what you want to get done or is it more open? The dev team does the story points. Not everybody can do virtual (meaning the work environment). Some people really need some handholding and someone to watch over them. Those are harder to manage virtually. The virtual guys/gals need to be somewhat self-driven and self-motivated. Are the developers full stack (able to do the whole thing - start to finish) or are they limited and/or specialized (just a few of the tasks are suitable for them)? Lots of questions and different styles.

One thing that I was shocked with was how many different tools Russell has to use to keep all of his things going and flowing. Tons of different software and web apps like: Jira, notion, Git, Toggle, Google Drive, all of their internals, and tons of others. We do some of that as well, but Russell had a bunch more. Just me speaking, but no thank you. I've got plenty plus a few.

We flipped back to talking about sprints and getting into a grove. Other topics included owning a task and that is just the starting point, a task is never the end all be all. Helping to share understanding. Also getting help and helping to complete certain tasks. Somewhat of a shared workload vs just owning a certain task and being done with it.

People see things differently. Kinda like the telephone game, what you hear and pass on may not be the actual thing that you are trying to do and/or achieve. It is more of a process of growing and becoming vs just being or having (all at once).

Russell was sharing some of the stuff that he goes over with his guys in the interview process. His interviews are like 3.5 hours long and pretty brutal, testing all kinds of different levels and personality type stuff. We talked about documentation. Other things like dependency injection and how testable are things with dynamics vs hardcoded or static values. We got into testing, mocking data, logic test, integration test, etc. It got pretty deep. Russell is trying to mix all kinds of data and tools to get the testing coverage that he wants. He was even getting numbers and test results (scores) back on some of his processes. He was then using those scores to keep refining until he had less crappy code and in theory, better results.

Spent some time talking about breaking things up into smaller pieces. Using flow charts, wireframes, and other schematic type design tools to show the overview of what the functions and/or processes do or could do. I liked that. He had some new big words for me - I didn't fully understand them. Just being silly, but one of the things he was talking about was "Cyclomatic Complexity" and other things. I thought that it was kinda funny and it made me laugh. I kept thinking, if I don't know that... how am I supposed to teach that or expect it from my guys. Just having fun. I did grab a few screenshots with some of his memes and graphics. See attached. Nothing too special.

Chuck and I going over the custom error page that he is working on. We also talked about fracture and options of building new vs morphing existing into what we want. There are pros and cons of both choices. Just for fun, Chuck and I were saying that is would be really fun to get a small prototype team like Chuck, Russell, and I or something like that and let us work on fracture while others kept up the other system. Dreaming... :)

We also spent some time talking about different page views and where we are heading with scheduling, booking, rentals, and reservations. We really want to circle back and update elements of time to handle the things that we will need going forward. This entire section seems to be heating up and we want to stay on top of that. Good stuff. Dealing with views: We want to improve calendar views, horizontal time views, vertical time views, and other display views that will be fun and useful tools for people who schedule or deal with time as a resource (billing, selling, or booking time).

Emails and making plans. Checked and prepped some CSS stuff for Chuck. I also made some small fixes for Cory. Anyways, getting back to the CSS stuff, I sent Chuck an email with a small challenge to see if we could update the existing classes to make them look more modern. Here is some of what I sent Chuck in an email.

Chuck,

Good afternoon. I'm just playing with some ideas... I've got a challenge for you. Back in the day we only had the classic version of the site. So, to get more options, I wanted to run a contest to see if anybody could come up with a new design. Russell came up with 5 new design options. They all look totally different but are based on the same raw HTML code. Only the CSS code changes. I'm wondering if we could make some bigger, global changes for snow owl so that we didn't have to rewrite every page. I'm thinking ROI and bang for the buck. Basically, can we make some global changes to the existing CSS that would make everything have a more up to date look.

Here is a link to a page that has some of the old stuff.

https://data0.adilas.biz/css/index.cfm - The page is totally static (fake data) and most of the buttons and links are just dummy links. Some of the buttons do work and interact with the pages. If you right click and view the page source, I have the rules for the game (old ones). The page is also inside of Git and Bit Bucket and part of our code repo, if you want to play around.

Anyways, I would be interested to see what this might look like for a generic snow owl theme. That currently doesn't exist on that page. I would be interested to see what it would look like and what improvements we could make globally vs page by page. Basically, tie into the cascade part of CSS. If you want more information, I could help.

Here is the help file for that page. It has links to all of the different versions that Russell setup. If you view them, scroll from top to bottom to see how they interact with all of the existing CSS. At the time, every known class was and/or is represented on the page. I would love to get some newer more modern look and feel pieces tied into the older classes that already exist inside the system. By way of a challenge, I'm just wondering if we used the older CSS classes and just updated that, what would it look like for the new snow owl theme.

Web link - help.cfm?id=497&pwd=css

Anyways, I'm interested in seeing what it might look like. Would you be up for the challenge? Just tossing around ideas... Thanks Chuck!

Steve and Sean going over a new gram controller and all kinds of new rules that are being forced upon us through outside state mandates. I was going through emails while they were talking about new changes and even showing some of the things in action.

Wayne and I were going to meet with Alan to go over the new Application.cfc pages and process. However, before we got going on that. We spent some time talking about coding practices and how that relates to decisions and projects. I was drawing and trying to show some cause and effects from some recent changes. Going over what Russell and I were looking into on Saturday. Wayne was trying to help us get pointed in a good direction as far as action paths and how we should attack those issues. I put some branch stuff and notes through chat and Wayne will check things out to see if he can fix the CSS and JavaScript things.

Russell and I got on a Zoom meeting to work on some CSS and JavaScript issues with the snow owl theme. Both he and I were trading back and forth. Most times, I had my screen showing and both of use were drawing, talking, and filling things in. We used some remote control options to allow Russell to do things on my screen. Lots of debugging and searching around. We ended up making a new little branch and taking some other notes on the technical side of things.

These are a few of my other notes from our conversation. The concept of maintenance may be restated as... "prioritizing what we want to let fail or let go". Sometimes there is just too much to do. Often, we talk about maintenance as keeping up with stuff or even being ahead of the curve. Well, what happens if you can't keep up? It turns into a decision of what do we want to let go or what can we let go of? No fun, but sometimes very needed as well.

If you get bigger, as a company, you also have to become bigger in practice as well. There are so many cause and effect decisions with trying to be bigger or trying to stay or be smaller. Often, you get either small and flexible or bigger and rigid. It's really hard to be big and flexible. We were using the analogy of a bike and train. If you want to go almost anywhere, you need a bike. However, if you want to be efficient and carry a ton, you need the train.

Anyways, we had some good conversations as we worked on code and CSS changes. Good meeting.

John and I had a good work session on year end forms. We started out the meeting going over some XSS (cross site scripting) stuff and how to protect some of our pages and features from the cross site hacks and such. We removed a portion from one of the database updates that was potentially dangerous. The rest of the meeting was used grabbing PDF forms from the IRS website, flattening them, and prepping them for use in the adilas system. By way of a random note, we got clear to the end and realized that we were dealing with forms for 2022 instead of 2021. The current date is 12/30/21 and we needed to get the 2021 forms up and live prior to Jan 31, 2022. Anyways, we tried to find the 2021 forms but couldn't find them on the IRS website. Almost like they skipped 2021 and jumped right to 2022. Anyways, it threw us for a small loop.

I merged in some code for Danny and reached out to Russell for some help with the snow owl theme (CSS and theme stuff).

Today's subject was the adilas market (adilas world) and how to break down the doors and get in there. Russell and Nick built it, the adilas market or marketplace, years ago and we didn't have any documentation on it. Bryan and I went in there and were virtually backwards engineering things and figuring it out. We made some great progress without breaking anything, that was awesome. Anyways, we made a few changes and both of us know how to get in there now. We will keep refining that process so that it will be even more usable in the future.

We spent some time talking about custom code jobs and how things need to flow. We talked about old models and where we are headed with some of our new things and new models (where we are going). Good conversation. I asked Bryan to write me an email with some pros and cons of the different models (old fully independent and newer all under the adilas roof or umbrella model). Just trying to get some feedback and insight on rules and who is looking for what.

At the end, we talked briefly about some of the upcoming agile and scrum sprints that we are planning. Bryan is open to the changes and very interested in learning along the way. That is great.

Quite a few of us on the server meeting this morning. I had a small list to go over with Wayne and we started there. My list was:

- The new Emerald Fields server and custom database

- Training for John - that is going great and we are very happy there

- Talking about the developer's server and making it more into a testing environment as needed - a server that is in total flex - lots of great ideas and conversation here

- Corp-wide settings and carving up the bigger tables. We also got into talking about switching between Application.cfm (current) and Application.cfc (where we are headed). Wayne and John are going to be looking deeper and working on this in the next couple of weeks.

- We need access to some Adobe XD files that we put on the content server. They exist, but we can't download them via a direct URL currently.

- More great talks about the testing and developer's server

- We would like to setup a meeting with Russell, Chuck, John, and others to go over Bootstrap 3, 4, and 5 - We would also like to look at options for other data tables that we may want to use. When we do this, we will eventually want to let Dustin, Bryan, Alan, Eric, and Steve know about decisions and direction.

- John reported to Cory on the adilas phones product and progress there

- John went over some of the discount engine stuff and showed us some of his new plans - light question and answer session between John and Cory

Good meeting and making progress. Good stuff.

I was going to be meeting with Shannon, but that didn't happen.  So, I spent the time recording notes from this mornings meetings. Chuck gave me a text and asked if I could help him out for a bit. We met over the GoToMeeting session and went over a few things. He has been revamping the add/edit payee/user pages. It gets into permissions and Russell had a design to help that section of code be more user friendly. Anyways, Chuck has been translating Russell's dream into physical pages and changes. It started getting past just a face lift, so Chuck was checking in to see what we wanted him to do. We decided that he will finish up the face lift and then we'll need to pass that project on to a backend developer. No problem, and I appreciate him checking in on that project.

Chuck and I also touched base on possibly re-doing the Bear 100 runner portal page (customer or public facing pages for the Bear 100 mile race that adilas helps track). We talked about a mobile first type interface and making that project look better. We also went over the next steps to get the presentation gallery up and live on the adilas servers. Chuck has that site and gallery on one of his servers right now, but we need to flip that so that it will be on the adilas side of things. He has done a great job on that. Good stuff.

On a GoToMeeting with Russell. We were working on the adilas quick search and helping to resolve a small issue. The quick search form, if the corporation was using the snow owl theme, would close prematurely if you were changing the search type or any other drop-down. You could still use it, but it was kinda annoying due to the early closing of the dialog box. It required some extra clicks to make it remain open until ready to submit the content or search. Russell was able to figure out what was needed and we pushed up new files.

On Friday, June 11th, 2021 we had an internal conference day for just the adilas team. We went from sales to internal code to ideas and plans. All over the place. See attached for my notes. Many great things were discusses. Once again, this was an internal team meeting, but we don't mind sharing what we were talking about. :)

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The attached notes are better formatted, but I wanted to push some of them here for searchability:

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Group Sales Meeting

Marisa, Danny, John, Cory, Sean, Steve, Dustin, Shari O., Dawn, Brendan, Steve (mac), Brandon, Chuck, Alan, Kelly, Bryan

- Kelly was saying that there is some public records per states

- We may try to pull our own list

- Questions... who, what, where, how good, etc.

- Maybe look at a sample of 10

- We may need a more focuses approach

- What about different industries?

- We need to get the name out there

- Kelly was pitching a social presence

- Do we know anybody who wants to do the social stuff

- Word of mouth

- Testimonials

- Some new video graphics

- To the penny, to the gram, every day

- What about small streaming commercials – focused and pointed

- Kelly recommends that we maybe focus on a slightly larger pool

- Dawn – maybe focus on start-ups or that small to medium range

- Get them at the beginning – maybe even tradeshows

- It is a pain in the but to switch over – pain creates options for change

- Focus on services... deployment, oversight, consulting, training, best practices

- How can we deploy something easily and repeatable?

- It is tough to get some of the people started, but once they get all in, they tend to stay

- Kelly has done this over and over again

- Using the professional resources that are available

- From Kelly – Help get the clients all the way in – full system and platform

- Getting the success on the first implementation and then building from there

- What about focusing on those who are having trouble and/or are struggling

- Dawn loves the support, training, and feel good part of it – duplicate that feeling to others

- How quick can we respond – we jump pretty quickly on custom needs, development, training, and support

- Get more testimonials from our clients

- We have some experience to offer to those who want it

- What about pitching best business practices

- It's ok to be non-traditional

- Being Relevant!

- Focus on helping over sales – from Steve (mac)

- Simple things that bring the relevant pieces

- Social webbing – group effort

- Danny, straight up, I don't want to be the social media guy! We have to find the right person and/or persons (small little team)

- We are not QuickBooks... what does that mean? Be our own style!

- Packaging this platform based on the target audience

- Formulating a plan – ease the lift – maybe a monthly meeting with some planning

- Influencers and YouTube options

- Small info tips...

- New age marketing – we have to play to the current market

- Big Dumb Animal Pictures – super simple

- We have to do a cost analysis to see which one(s) make more sense for us

- John, what if we setup our own little social piece (aka maybe the adilas cafe) – we could allow all of our users and power users to pitch and promote – we may need to approve things, but we have tons of very knowledgeable people and users

- We are looking for engagement – back and forth – a relationship – maybe get an intern to help handle this

- Danny – Switching over to the modal message marketing

- How to save the app to your phone

- Make the email piece better

- Small web tool to help with building special html links to embed promotions, direct add to cart, discounts, campaigns, etc. A simple form to help with the backend tech of those URL's and web links.

- Maybe, we need to upgrade our email platform. It is a small holdover from years gone by.

- What about the delay on the outbound emails?

- Marisa – maybe outsource things as needed

- Steve – would like more input on the bulk tools

- Better filtering and target marketing

- Steve wants to work direct with Dawn and Branden

- Matrix and target marketing – even predictive

- Maybe a little itty bitty (super small) native app on the different phones – iOS, Android, etc.

- Steve wants to get into possible predictive marketing

- Steve – looking for great feedback and even ideas and dreams...

- Archiving, saving for later, dismissing, etc. We have the data, what do we want to do with it? – Wet clay...

- Danny – Going back to past clients

- Version 1 vs Version 2 – type attitude

- What kind of clients do we want? We may not want certain kind of clients.

- We love people who like details and are willing to play

- We love people who take things to the fullest level

- We love people who just need a small little piece – there is a gap in their current model and they need some help. We can then grow from there.

- Do a full comparison of what we offer

- Pitch what we do differently – we help deploy and maintain your ERP

- White glove approach

- Playing with the tools that we have and flipping those into marketing messages

- Chuck – maybe check out some groups on Facebook

- Blog posts, articles, info snippets, quick videos

- Talking with Kelly – how have we helped small businesses become bigger or big business – showing the potential – dreams to reality

- The small goals to achieve – steps to get to the next level

- Small goals lead to bigger goals – getting some small successes along the way

- Clients and expectations – not all money is the same – budgeting and planning – what kind of client do we want

- Reoccurring revenue vs one-time revenue

- A quote is just one of many pieces that needs to be done

- People, skills, and cogs in the wheel

- We all care... where would you and your skills fit in best

- Seeing the bigger picture

- Maybe looking at personalities and figuring out the mixing and blending of our options and resources

- Slowing down and taking the time to see where we are at? Virtual time travel – child, youth, adult – as a company

- What's the difference between a goal and dream? A plan!

- The internal group summary that we did... a great start

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Second session - Servers & Infrastructure - Refining Our Processes - Tech Support & Training - Project Management

Steve wants us to show the online label builder

- We had some good talk about where we want to go

- We pointed to our internal summary report

- Steve McNew – helping with the strategic marketing plan, technology road map, timelines to position, plans for action

- Scale – can we grow and can we shrink

- Conversation between big and small – perspective – big and small (sales, number of team members, lines of code, etc.)

- Molly – Is adilas the big guy or the small guy? Think of code (lines of code). We could be considered a big guy if you were looking at code and functionality.

- We like being small (ish), but what if we are big already

- If we want to grow, that means that we want to get better – grow in a good manner and sustainable manner

- The underlying services that support the whole

- Be your own style!

- Steve McNew – old classmate with Steve Berkenkotter – guest speaker – part of the adilas team to help us get some things more standardized – processes and procedures

- Defense contractor for the military – 28 years

- Testing, software, management, auditor

- He has already called, interviewed, and talked with a number of different team members

- He did a 20 page audit and report on what he was seeing

- Getting into some testing and processes – he would like to see more of this

- Not trying to derail the train – we are trying to polish the Ferrari (spelling – awesome car)

- Whitepapers – catering to a higher audience – going beyond stick figures and into technical docs – not everybody will want to read some of these, but there will be some that require it

- Steve B – if we try to sell our product to those who can't afford it, it doesn't really work. They have to be able to pay for what we do (really do – billing for our time and efforts)

- Fin-tech – financial technology

- Using whitepapers as part of our marketing plan

- John M – unit testing – confidence of the developer team – currently only Wayne and Alan are doing this (unit testing)

- Going to ease into this – refining our testing plan

- Version control and when do we update these systems? The older way was wild west... we may want to figure out some specific micro builds.

- It would be nice to keep track of the versions and options.

- The balance between core and custom development

- The application needs some spring cleaning – what is being used, what isn't, what is going slow, etc. – Refactoring

- Priorities – customer priorities or our internal priorities – what is the mix and blend of these pieces

- We all ware many hats... we may need to define that so that we don't overstretch ourselves

- We all use (and can use) the system in different ways – how do we translate that information to our clients, other developers, and other team members (upstream and downstream)

- 2 minute videos – no more

- Work instructions – even giving it to someone who has never done anything in the system

- Danny – Shoutout to Steve and Brandon – we have done great – what is coming next? Resources?

- Talks about earn and burn ratios

- Prices have to match the services

- We are a growing business

- Kelly – going from 1.5 to 10 (millions) – that is a huge change

- We are competing with companies that are hugely funded... what do we want to do?

- There are some real things in our path – there is tons of potential – what do we want to do with it – also, sometimes there is shelf life on potential or advantages

- We don't want debt – however, there is a time for debt – cost analysis and being smart about it

- Making choices, but also being willing to fail

- Marisa – look at our new website

- Steve – there are some percentages of adilas that are available – not looking for vulture capital (just being silly – vulture vs venture)

- Someone looking to take on some risk but helping us to get to the next level, without taking over the company

- Kelly – pitching our vision and business plan – we have to define the vision – Danny seconded the define the vision before looking for the funding – goals, sales, budgeting, maintenance, and getting a business plan.

- Adilas Trust option – co-founders

- Possible option – Maybe take some of IP (intellectual property) and sell that to a new entity and then restructure those new pieces

- Dustin – thoughts on corporate structure – we are all on our own little islands – Ferrari to a tricycle – frontend compared to backend – splitting up those pieces and functions – he wishes that we could be more collaborated.

- John – teams and buddy projects – small sub teams – full stack (all levels) vs specific skills or somewhat limited skills – this needs to be part of our plan.

- Sean – we already have some small teams that are working on some of these projects – cogs of the wheel – buddy tagging the workflow and processes

- John – the adilas docs project – and being able to go to it and also add to it – working on standardizing the pieces – filling in the gaps

- Danny – Navy Seals – two is one, and one is none – at least two on a project – two-by-two

- Kelly – scale – having a back-up

- Danny – accountability back and forth

- John – confidence levels

- Kelly – what about a succession plan?

- John and Dustin – real life buddies and how they help out each other – seeing a different angle or perspective

- Marisa – tooooooooo much weight gets put on single persons

- Kelly – relieving pressure and helping with scale

- Marisa – Cory, Kelly, and Marisa – wonderful training slides, presentation, and delivery for the conference. Awesome job!

- Alan – modularize things – able to be reused – code concepts can relate to business functions – one to many relationships – translating knowledge into real life and different scenarios

- Chuck – last summer Chuck was on a joint project with he, Russell, and a different John. It worked out awesome – Keep pushing towards that kind of rollout of the project

- Molly – thinking and coming up with ideas. Keep it going!

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Next Session - Deployment & Oversight - Design & Layout - Internal Core Development - Custom Development 

- Deployment – where are we going and how can we make this all work – team effort

- Shari O. – first touch and setup corp, Sean and Shay first hour or so, Sean helping to coordinate the next steps and pieces

- Sean does a great job of reporting back

- Report on things, record the notes, get back with us to help us keep pushing

- Doing great with testing and prototyping

- Kelly – who is on settings, who is on planning, maybe even looking at pre-deployment options

- Before Kelly even does a demo, do some consultation – figure some things out without doing any pitching or selling. This is called listening.

- What are you looking for, wanting, expecting, hoping for?

- Make the demos custom to the pain points or key wants and needs

- The prep work is huge to help them be successful

- This platform is not a turn on and go type system – there may be pre demo, consulting, custom planning and demo, then custom hand holding to get them going down the road

- Picking the point of contact... who is going to own this thing?

- Owners, managers, and users

- Users want the easy button – Steve calls this the tail wagging the dog vs the dog wagging the tail – what is and how can we get buy in?

- Tools are great, but solutions to problems and pain points are even better

- Give to get! If you give too much, it can get you into trouble.

- What is the cost to fixing things... on the other hand, failing does help with major learning – there has to be a balance

- We tend to remember pain – setting people up for success

- Often users are looking for a quick switch. This system takes work. Please sell it that way.

- Not going to custom too quickly – learning the manual way – then automating it

- User buy in – light pain and then helping them learn a better way

- Change proposals and scope of work – setting up boundaries

- Feature creep – setting that scope of work – cause and effect of what they want and what they give – expectations and timelines

- Sometimes I start with NO – interesting

- A saying no - sandwich... Yes, I'd like to, no, I can't. Yes, I would love to help do this... - people think that no is a bad word

- Having a plan to say yes, vs just saying yes

- We like to please people – that is awesome – what does that cost?

- Help make the plan to say yes. Maybe, no (first), however we could do this...

- Making things repeatable

- What are the internal costs to do deployment?

- Say $350 for a setup fee – does that cover it? If yes, great. If no, where does that put us?

- Maybe on the setup, prep, an activation fee (define this – turning on the lights), setup and deployment fee (range), training, custom code, imports, labels, etc.

- We like to cater to everyone – that had bitten us

- Actual prices and then use discounts if needed. You can't really ever raise a price after the fact.

- Back-up our prices

- Use adilas to run adilas!!! This is our communication tool, let's use it.

- We are good at the dreaming and software building part of things, we need some major loving on the service side

- There is demand!

- What pulls at our time - It is time, money, skills, etc.

- Kelly – earn has to be more than burn

- Flipping the demand to sales or services that could be provided

- MVP – minimal viable product, plan, player, etc.

- Intangibles

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

Next Session – Show and tell! What are you working on?

Calvin – Advanced file and folder finder, resize images, convert images

Brandon – harvesting assets from element of time

Steve – parent attributes report, items not on a recipe (manufacturing), modal message marketing for customers, log notes for vendors and employees (payee/vendor logs), backorders homepage, mini units, auto add item (quick PO behind the scenes), bulk update on the vendor – master copy paster... :)

- Branch 122 – fun

Bryan – cfqueryparams – stop SQL XSS (database hacks – cross site scripting)  - SQL injection – converting from dynamic queries to secure dynamic queries - Example: Corp_id = #Trim(some form or URL var)# or Corp_id = <cfqueryparam etc, etc,> - this stops the SQL hacks

Bryan is also working on eChecks for eXPO, Hypur checkout in the shopping cart (eComm), new API's for delivery (with documentation and samples)

John – Payroll project to allow holiday date picking, timecard flags, timecard totals (pre summing the math to go faster and lead towards bulk payroll), new timecard reports showing grouped sums and totals.

Page templates and style guide defaults with Chuck – Going from old school tables and links to the newer grid and mobile ready code. Part of the adilas docs project. Build once, use many (effective copy and paste). Basic templates (3 new ones). New information icons and popups (modals). Style guides and usage of those pieces.

Servers with Wayne

Chuck – Huge new web site!!! Awesome Job!!!

Global Design Dashboard, adilas docs, and new presentation gallery (sales tool).

Danny – message marketing, custom labels, sales team meetings – hats off to all of us! Keep listening and keep finding solutions. Open table – follow your highest excitement and be yourself! Be happy!

Alan – enterprise level catalogs, refactoring code (custom page settings), standardizing code for speed and reliability.

Random comments – Cory really liked having access to all of the team members, right here at the conference. Marisa – great to meet everyone – keep floating the boat. Sean – he likes the team. Molly – loved watching and wants to be involved. Chuck – idea of everyone joining slack

Shannon and I had a good little work session. Shannon was doing research and recording notes for good elements of time (in the developer's notebook) that had some content and images that we could harness for the R&D gallery and concept gallery (photo galleries). See attached for her notes and research.

Going along with the harvest type mentality for the day, I showed Shannon some of new Adobe XD files that I got from Jonathan Wells. Super fun and I was trying to share the dream with Shannon! Lots of potential and vision out there for the taking!

While Shannon was doing her research, I was working on an old training site that Russell did way back in 2015. No ones knows about it. I went through a few of the pages, fixed some links, removed some really old stuff, and pushed the files up into the master code branch. This is the address: https://data0.adilas.biz/training/ 

It is kinda fun to try to harvest some of the older stuff. It's old to us (me) but some people have never seen it. Almost like a little treasure hunt. I'm trying surface what I can without going super deep and getting majorly involved (aka sucked into the black hole). Other small changes and pushing files up and live on the servers. Fun little project.

Chuck and I started out our meeting talking about paper post-it notes and also magnetic erasable post-it notes. We were just having fun. Chuck is doing some research on web site and using a thing called a mega menu and bigger menu options with icons, pictures, and small amounts of text vs just a simple link or simple menu.

We talked about the adilas docs project and getting people over there and into the docs - using those defaults and standards (code snippets and templates). Often we are heads down, doing the same thing, over and over again. We need to pause and lift up our heads and learn and apply some of the new things.

Chuck is planning on doing some training for our team and wants to put together a crash course on the bootstrap grid system. This will help us as we add classes inside of our code to make it look more modern and mobile friendly. The deeper we get and the further we go, mobile development and mobile friendly sites are becoming more and more important. Basically, mobile first - type development.

John is helping Chuck with some default pages and templates. Chuck wants to help do some training to help Steve, Russell, Dustin, and myself with the frontend development pieces. Trying to help out and get us all onboard.

The adilas docs are a living project - things keep changing and what not. Chuck is willing to do some training. We will just keep chipping away at this huge monster. As new training is created, we will record it and make it available for other developers. Chuck used to have fun with a thing at the college where he worked. They would call it a 1 hour lunch and learn or mini lecture. Fun ways of doing some training.

Emails and a phone call with Russell to talk about plans for the summer. Sad note, Russell may be moving on. He graduates this summer with a master degree and has an internship lined up with a company with the potential to become fulltime for that company. Sad day for adilas. Russell has contributed much. He said that he could still help out here or there, but not tons of time. He did say that he was open to help with questions, consulting, and bouncing ideas off of. Anyways, just recording the notes.

4/14/21: Charles is working with Russell.

Chuck and I met and did a session on the new web version of the adilas label builder. Chuck has been styling things out and working on style and CSS changes. We got stuck on some advanced jQuery and JavaScript changes. We ended up calling Russell and pulling him in to help with the debugging of the jQuery libraries and dependencies. It gets supper deep, very quickly. Lots of checking outside assets and options.

8/20/21: 3.6

4/12/21: Should only take an hour or so for Russell. Add to 8 or 9 places, plus logo for Instagram.

Working with Russell and back on the invoice due date project. While we were working, we were talking about all kinds of stuff. These are some notes between Russell and I and also, along a similar vein, notes from me talking with my hiking buddy this morning.

- What do you want to be? or become?

- How big of a company do you want to be?

- The bigger you get, the bigger the competition is as well.

- Make time and learn new code and keep learning

- The choices and consequences of indecision

- You could sell off your shares and then go in a different direction

- Make each industry pay for itself

- Like a crab, growing into a new shell - the privilege of rewriting your stuff due to people using it and wanting more and being willing to help pay for it

- Small little changes are easier than big huge ones

- Having a buddy and someone to bounce things off of

- Build on what you have - keep building towards the dream

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

Notes from a small morning hike this morning

- Keep helping our team and team leadership to learn and act accordingly

- By adding a new tool, it can save us from adding a new employee (person costs)

- If you are stressed and fighting things off without being aware of the whole situation, you can actually get in trouble even if you fend off everything that you are fighting - you have to lift your head up and look around

- We are at a crossroads - we could do small and custom, we could move towards small-medium, and/or go big and still play custom

- Being able to say "No" - sometimes that is hard

- Helping to sculpt the story and shape the outcome

- Growth and growing pains - continuing to evolve

- Realizing that there is a burnout ratio and guarding against that and at least being aware of it

Russell and I jumped back into the invoice due date project. It originally started almost 4 years ago, and then we got pulled off of it, due to other fires. We are circling back around and pulling from old code to mix it with the new existing master code.

Met with Russell over a Zoom session. We merged in a small code change and push it to all servers. The new change was dealing with Russell's page specific settings and help files.

After that, Russell and I got back on an older project that we started at the end of 2017 called the invoice due date project. We found a bunch of old notes, documentation, code branches, etc. We spent the rest of the time prepping and gathering up files, changes, assets, notes, etc. What a blast from the past. The end goal is a special part of the standard header that will prompt a client if they are getting way out there on due invoices. We need to get the invoice due date project done before we can check to see how much an invoice is over due.

This is an invoice due date project. It is a prep step to get a corp-wide header that could go from server to server to help prompt for overdue payments. Basically, a way to speed up the adilas receivables or A/R accounts. Once the invoice due date feature is in place, we can then figure out the aging of how old an invoice is, regardless of payment history. Once again, this is a prep step for a bigger project, but much needed.

Russell and Brandon started the project back in December of 2017. Due to craziness, it got almost finished and then mothballed. We (both Brandon and Russell) picked it back up on 2/23/21. Project turned over to Bryan on 5/17/22. See media/content for a 26-minute video overview of the project.

Code sign-off with Russell. We had to do some back and forth dancing to fix numerous merge conflicts and such. His code branch was older and so it took a few hours to get everything up to date and good to go. Russell and I were chatting while we were working. All kinds of random topics.

Talking with Russell about politics and being involved. Russell loves that kind of stuff and has a number of strong opinions with regards to certain things. That is a form of passion and determination. As part of this discussion, we were talking about being careful where and how you say certain things. We swapped a few stories back and forth - good and bad.

We then jumped into a code review of the new tool tips, navigation changes, header and footer changes, and general security stuff.

Working with Russell on a code review. The new project has a number of new enhancements that deal with custom client-side validation, just in time help menus, and ways to get information and training in front of our users. We did some light training based on his new code - he was training me.

We kept going back to the value of documentation and helping people use the things that we are building. If we get people to use our functionality, we get feedback. If it is easy to use and easy to setup, they (our clients) tend to use it more. If we have sufficient documentation and help available, we get less tech support calls.

As part of Russell's project, we'd like him to add some new notes and documentation to the adilas docs section. We had some small conversations about where we want that whole section to go, as far as usability and potential. Good stuff.

"Only run as fast as you are able." - We need to keep going, but find that pace that is sustainable - slow and steady wins the race.

Russell was showing me some new help file systems stuff that he was working on. Nice little demo. He is trying to make it as easy as he can for the developers in order to control the help file outputs and content. We are looking at adding just in time help options. We are working on setting up the groundwork for these things. We are also dealing with client-side validation.

I asked Russell to help setup some videos and training files for some developer training.

Some times we end up spending time that wasn't planned. Often we are doing things for the first time and that, unplanned time, just happens.

We ended our meeting talking about documentation and the value of that documentation.

When I joined at 9 am, the guys were talking about industry specific marketing and research. Mixing Danny, Sean, John M, and Steve together has been fun to see. Each has some unique attributes that mix well together (small project team). I'm excited to see what they come up with.

On a different note, Steve is going to work with John to get him going on a round 2 version of the icon menus and more options. Russell launched a new version on the new classic homepage. Steve wants John to do similar stuff on a number of pages. Instead of using screenshots for the icons (current visual) they will be using newer more modern icons such as fontawesome icons and other web specific icons. It makes it feel more modern. John will be working with Dustin and Chuck to coordinate the icon list and what each one does and/or represents. There could be tons and tons of new icons added to the mix.

Looking over some code with Steve on one of his projects. Alan popped in and gave us a small update on some of his projects.

12/2/2020: Wayne will spin up two new corps for Russell at GH

A bunch of the guys checked in and then jumped off to work on their own projects. We had Sean, Danny, and John all check in. John was pretty excited, he is working on a project that tweaks some charts and graphs. Good stuff.

On a side note, Danny asked about Russell and what kind of involvement he may want to play. Russell has been a major contributor as far as current look and feel (snow owl theme) as well as the one who designed the current main adilas.biz web site. We would love his help, he is just busy with school right now.

Touching base on the customer photos and scans out in ecommerce land. Looking good. Bryan had gotten with Russell to work on some of the custom CSS stuff and making it look good. We went over some ideas and options for using a large photo page to view the full size images, after upload and compression. Making progress. This project should be ready for launch sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Working on payment stuff and error handling for a 3rd party payment solution with Bryan. We got into other projects and small bugs and tracking down small fixes. We talked about labels, server addresses, and getting with both Calvin, Wayne, and Russell. We then rolled into the project dealing with customer photos out in the ecommerce land. We looked over pages, made some suggestions, and talked about CSS design options.

After that, we ended up doing some testing and found a bug. We worked on a fix for over an hour. We ended up finding that it was a name conflict between some objects. Two objects had the same name and were overwriting each other. Here is what made it tricky... we added the code, tested the code, even tested multiple times, but still were getting the error, just for one corporation, everything else was good to go. We found that the corporation had a small custom include file (custom code) that had the same variable name (for the object or structure) and that is what was causing the problem. We changed some names and all was good. That is a problem with too much copying and pasting... It works on one page so they (the developers) assume that it will work on the next page, but don't check to see if there are any name conflicts. Sometimes that gets tough if you are dealing with multiple includes... because all of the code is on separate pages (special or smaller include files).

On the phone with Russell going over new changes, upcoming projects, and getting his local environment all setup and ready to go.

**Total for everyone 12/3/20 to 4/14/21: $13,837.34

3/18/21: 4.92
2/23/21: 2.83

12/21/2020: JM hours as of today: 10.31
11/25/2020: 

Chuck and I met and went over some things. We talked about JavaScript and JQuery and some upcoming needs there. Chuck has been working on some new headers and footers for the SAR USA firearms registration pages. He is also working with Russell and Alan to get the AJAX photo upload piece working for the registration page. Good stuff.

Phone call with Russell. We talked about a wage increase as of November 1st of this year (in a couple of days). He is working and was telling me about his school load and what he hopes to do over the next semester and other classes that are coming down the pipeline. Russell has done a great job and we would love to get his help on a more permanent basis as a key dependable.

After that, phone call with Russell, I did some review of some notes that Steve and I have been making for the adilas trust entity.

Steve and I met for almost an hour going over ideas, sales, company background, rules of the adilas trust, talking about selling percentages to help cover things, and other topics. Good conversation. I took a bunch of new notes and have them on my local computer (laptop). We are planning to make an initial internal offering for adilas percentages from November 1st to December 31st. We are changing up some of the internal ownership structure and want to let our guys and gals know what we are doing. All good stuff, we hope, just something new that we haven't done before. The story is unfolding and we are getting a more clear view of what we want to do and what we have to do. Steve and I were brainstorming and roughing out things that we wanted to put into the official memo and notice. Exciting times.

Brandon has almost 4 pages of notes on his local computer with ideas and things that we are planning and going to be doing.

Phone calls. Started out talking to Steve over the phone for about 45 minutes. We were talking about options for funding and making things happen inside the adilas company. That is a constant battle, keeping the business going, moving, and growing.

After that, I jumped on a phone call with Russell for a bit. We were talking about different projects, WordPress, news and updates, user templates, and page level CSS and JavaScript. Russell helped us out all summer and we got a bunch of great projects done. He is back at school now, so we get a smaller portion of his time right now. We can't wait until he comes back, full time again.

Russell and I merged in some new code for the user permission templates. This allows you to create, name, and assign whatever permissions are needed to a single template. You can then use one or more permission templates to assign the permissions to the users in bulk or with preset permissions. Good stuff. We got it all launched and Russell was going to test it.

Russell wanted me to push the jp-3 branch if possible. There is a database update that needs to run prior as well.

Danny and Sean checked in. Danny and chatted and talked about try storming and coming up with a solution for his project to combine and merge together multiple PDF's stored on a per sub inventory level. This would be from an invoice and the merged PDF's would end up being documentation and test results for the different products on the invoice.

Wayne joined in and wanted me to call Steve and Alan. Steve joined in by phone and Alan jumped on the meeting. The subject was how soon are we going to get to the 3 projects that Wayne needs? See attached for the notes. Here are some of them in a quick, non laid out format.

- We are seeing our model shift from small mom and pop shops into bigger and more demanding clientele

- Lots of focus on up time and server reliability

- We have a great team and much is required of all of us.

- Alan and Wayne really want us to invest in ourselves, meaning adilas as a company - plan for the next 10-20 years.

- This whole thing is a long term play.

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.

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).

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.

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.