Working with Bryan. Working on our pitch and a plan. We want to speed up and get some turnkey onboarding (instant start), QuickBooks equivalent (simplicity), full operational expansion (inventory, POS, manufacturing, CRM). We would also like to do some module separation, UI/UX improvements, with the major benefit of faster customer onboarding. Something to replace Clover, Toast, Square, QuickBooks, Shopify, etc.

From Bryan... the problems we must solve
- onboarding is too complex for new users
- UI/UX slows adoption and sales
- User default to known industry software packages for familiarity
- nonmodern UI/UX experience - expectations

We then talked about some things that we could do. This ended up in a small brainstorming session of sorts.

- Scope - figure that out, where are we headed for this lift
- Friction and pain points
- Map it out
- Time to first invoice (<10 minutes) - we want it less than 10 minutes. Super simple setup.
- Solving the same problems over and over again
- Helping the accountants adopt the new solution - if the accountants are onboard, they can help influence and push the clients

For us...
- Database scaling - known issue. We can make more and more of them, meaning databases, but we can't intermix them right now.

- You need a full staff member to run it, meaning adilas. If you just touch it every once in a while, you really don't get the full benefit of it.

- Some people and clients that we are looking at - Andrew with Hosthuski and Brian with Finetech - both have an existing set of clients and a possible sales funnel, even though it is small. People come to them and they reach out to people and small businesses that need tools and services.

- API integrations with delivery systems

- Canned business solutions or fully custom solutions - there is a difference - this gets tough.

- Auto launch a corp and be able to move it later if needed. Back to database scaling and mixing.

- We build and develop - we would love to have others sell it and support it.

- We all live on little islands, and nobody knows what he other are doing - meaning the adilas team

known needs:
- Need to simplify
- Turn modules on/off
- Create our own buttons and nav options
- Map out the system
- Known bigger pieces - db (database), nav, permissions, settings, functions
- Super small mini POS - vendors, part cats, items, cart favorite buttons, etc. Simple.
- Quick setup form... quick vendors, part categories, taxes
- Quick corp-wide settings (limited view)
- Simple forms first, then link to full pages if needed. think layers...
- Quick users with preset permissions
- Quick access to the last few invoices
- Quick access to setup (layered with nav, if needed)
- Quick sales graph and charts.
- Layers - pretend that we are dealing with the cache valley kid's market - see EOT # 12656
- Mapping out the mini POS system - pages, flows, screens, etc.
- Maybe look-up some ideas on wizards and quick setup flows.
- Old idea of a simple app for users, timecards, and project time tracking. We have all of those pieces, similar to the normal POS stuff. We just want to make some super simple versions.
- Ask Wayne where he is at on the db stuff - get an update.

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.

Phone call with Steve. We were talking about the current load and how much is going on. It's hard to keep up. Steve is feeling pretty overwhelmed. He and the other team members are running the ship while I am off on the side trying to work on plans and investor stuff. It's pretty rough. There is also some underlying tension from a miscommunication and overstep on my part. See EOT # 12731 for some back story.

Here are some of my notes from the meeting with Steve:

- We started out and I read a post-it note full of some things that I think Steve has issues with - my personality traits. See attached, if you want for the post-it note. We are all working hard, but we have different opinions on what will help and where to focus. Similar but also somewhat different directions. Neither one is bad, just different approaches.

- He is busy taking care of business and paying clients. He is trying to only work on funded projects and projects that have ROI (return on investment).

- Trying to fill in the blanks (needs of whatever is needed).

- Steve is shooting for full AI projects - code, planning, fixes, etc. Steve is heavily leaning on AI as the backup or fallback. He is totally going in the AI direction for as much as he can.

- He showed me a small website that a guy built using just AI. Here's the link. I pulled it up. It looks great. It is pretty impressive. It doesn't have any real content, just a shell, but it looks amazing. We talked and chatted about that for a while. There is some fear that some of these guys are going to take over and build what we have built over the last 20+ years. Basically, a question of what is stopping them from taking the next step and building it out on their own? I see it, what we have and offer, as way deeper than that, but there is some worry and unknowns.

- He is seeing or thinking that people don't want any real interface... they just want a simple chat type interface and AI will do everything for them. I was telling him that our full interface and existing pieces need to still be there. There is value there. It is nice to be able to do anything that you want (say an AI chat window), but there are also times and places for a quick and easy button or link. We need both. Our interface is not our real product.

- We talked about how Wayne is working with some AI agents to work on the database and some database updates.

- Steve is feeling a little bit of panic mode. He watches and reads a lot of tech news. Huge changes are happening all around us.

- Only working on funded projects.

- Relying on Craig for all money type decisions (controller level control for funds).

- There is an urgency to what we are doing.

- AI is going so fast, it is scary. He is scared.

- Small talk about IP (intellectual property) and how we can't stop AI. If they want to do something, they can just do it, change it a bit, and run with it.

- He wants me to look into complex binary (tech stuff). He is planning on doing some more research there. Basically, skipping the code and going right to binary level commands.

- Brief talk about how people interact with things. He was saying that people don't want to do any data entry. They just want the AI agent or system to do it. Something like this, I have a document, I upload it, I then have the AI agent enter it into the system. Thanks, all done. AI does it all. As a side note, there may be some automation things that we can do, but don't think that everything will be like that.

- Talking about taking care of the business right in front of us. I don't deny that... and I know that there is a need there. We have been doing that for the past 20+ years. It is also a small trap, in some ways. It keeps us from breaking out of our form or container. We are somewhat maxing out our current model.

- If you read between the lines, he and the team are busy, with paying clients. There is a demand for what we are doing.

- We finished up the meeting, and he was going to go jump into another project that is needed. He is working super hard. He is trying to fill in the gaps as best as he can. I'm super grateful for that.

- After the meeting, I was talking with Heather (my wife). We were talking about an analogy of a malt shop or ice cream shop. Say you have a line out the door, small rush, tables need to be wiped, and dishes need to be done. Everybody is busting their buts, except for one guy in the back who is dreaming of a better way to do it. That doesn't fly very well. Sad to say, I'm that guy. I'm not trying to hurt anybody, and what I am doing is super important, it just gets judged pretty harshly. I fully understand. I have been in there busting my but as well, for years and years. I just know that there is a better way. The story above changes when you say, this small rush has been going on for years and years. We have all been pushing on things. It is not just one night, where things get busy. That longer timeframe makes a big difference.

- Tying this back to adilas (above ice cream shop analogy). We offer custom code. That is awesome and totally part of our model. However, we get so tied up in doing custom code that we can't finish what we really need to. We end up getting stuck in that scenario, kinda like the malt shop. There is a balance. You have to have the money to keep going, and that is super important (work right in front of you). You also need to look to the future as well. I heard a guy say one time, there is a difference between working in your business and working on your business. We need both. It's a fine line and tough balance.

Sending Wayne some information on adilas percentages. Emails and follow-ups. Recording notes from the day. Also pushed up a number of images from Abby that I got in an earlier meeting.

Meeting with Wayne Andersen. He's our main server guy. Going over logs, session values, query of queries, server loads, going over his papertrail logs, alerts, etc. Talking RAM memory, servers, timeouts, and ways to searching things super quick. We also briefly talked about adilas percentages. He is doing a great job!

Working with Shannon. We started out by reading over an email from Wayne (backend server technician for adilas). He is proposing some tech changes and code restructure stuff. Pretty in-depth changes and plans. It all plays into our adilas lite and fracture plans. I really want to help and support him in his decisions. We spent the whole time going over his plans and documents. If Shannon didn't understand something, I would draw or explain what I could. The plan had priorities, phases, cautions, and even pages that needed attention, based off of usage and page stats from one of the servers over a 3-day period. That doesn't show the whole story, but it give us a good idea. Pretty cool!

Phone call with Steve and then a phone call with Bryan. The main subjects were dealing with pricing and how to help figure things out. Here are my notes.

- Pricing has always been a crazy battle.

- Steve, Josh, and Bryan have been working on some ideas for pricing.

- Bryan was running things through AI (ChatGPT). Here is a small summary of what it recommended. As a note, Bryan sent me a file with more of the chat messages and prompts.

----

Adilas Pricing Summary

Monthly Software Fee "Unlike flat monthly fees that hit hardest when times are tough, Adilas scales with your business-low when revenue is low, and never punishes success."

- 0.4% of gross revenue

- Minimum: $59 per month

- For multiple businesses or monthly revenue over $150,000: Please contact us for a custom quote

Setup & Training (One-Time Fee)

- $300 - Includes 5 hours of system activation and personalized training

- $500 - Includes 10 hours of system activation and personalized training

- Hours are tailored to your needs. Most clients are fully operational within the included setup hours.

Additional Services

- Ongoing training: $65/hour

- Custom development & integrations: $100/hour

----

- As we use more AI stuff, we and/or our clients, may be charged more for tokens and token usage. Currently free, but that may increase as we go. We will monitor the tokens.

- Steve was saying that Josh has been pitching the enterprise system, for up to 10 entities, at $2,500/month.

- Some of our competition makes money on the credit card processing. We don't really care what merchant processing company they use.

- Steve was talking about a potential client that has a consignment type location. He was talking about a pricing model per booth or per sub section of the consignment store.

- The per location question always comes into play.

- We need to set some minimums.

- It seems like the sweet spot is a business that does between $40K to $100K per month in gross revenue.

- Pricing is confusing and totally depends on the model, the vertical, the complexity of the client, and expectations.

- We like to talk to the person... It helps us read the person and what they are feeling and looking for.

- Steve and I talked a lot about showing them the value of what they are getting. Josh has been pushing on that as well.

- We were talking about some folks wanting to do their own coding using AI.

- We offer all kinds of managed services, including training, setup, deployment, data entry, fractional bookkeeping, etc.

- Most system are just a POS (point of sale) - adilas is so much more. Often people are comparing prices of what we offer to someone else who is just offering the POS part of the puzzle.

- We should probably be compared to ERP pricing, but that sometime puts it completely out of range for the smaller guys, smaller clients, and companies.

- Steve and I were talking about impressions. He kept saying, we are not trying to give them any impression. People will form an impression, either way. In a way, we don't know how to brand or pitch ourselves.

- Maybe come up with some categories of pricing and let the clients see where they fit. In a way, how do you (as a client) want to be priced? Percentage, fixed price, per vertical, per location, etc. - Not sure.

- Being on the street. I was proposing things and Steve was saying, that's all great, but you need to be out on the street and see how that is received. I was pitching for higher prices.

- Walking a mile in someone else's shoes - you'll get the idea and figure out where they are coming from.

- Most software is priced per vertical. There are so many verticals. Maybe we offer dynamic pricing... Let's talk.

- We were talking about Finetech (merchant processing company) selling our software as an add-on. Something like this... it will be such and such for your merchant processing. If you want, we have connections with an awesome software company that we could add-on for x (some small percentage - Steve was thinking about under .5% or 1/2 a percent).

- Steve was talking about how he feels that processing is going to change. Dealing with more mobile type ways of accepting payments and auto tying things into a POS or some sort of system. Robot type stuff.

- At some point, we would love to bill for usage, storage, and processing (called throughput). He was saying that it would help to have some case studies and some examples. We would love to get there, but we are not ready for that yet.

- One of the most common things that we can tie a price to is revenue. It seems to tie things together.

- Most software systems are sold by the seat. With adilas, you get it all.

- We are trying to get a ballpark price (self serve - online). To really get it tight, we would like to talk to the client.

- Get a hold of us. Let's talk.

- We are US based, for our tech support. Steve was saying that was a big question that he has been hearing. Where is your tech support based out of? Am I going to be able to understand the person on the other line? Legit question.

- Switched over to talking about load balancing our servers. If we were to make some changes there, we could cut some costs. Steve is working with Wayne on this. Dealing with server backend coding languages and licenses.

- Databases, datasources, and converting the bus into motorcycles. Maybe create a new database that has corp-specific database tables or some other changes. We have wanted to do this project for quite some time. We have called it the datasource project or the world building project.

- In database land, if we could make things go away (clients and accounts), we could potentially allow for anybody to setup a system. It would either make the grade or get fully removed. Currently, we don't remove anything, we just set it to inactive (virtual delete).

- Drawing the line somewhere. That could be price, company size, business vertical, etc.

- Questions about servicing the account - if it is so small, it makes it hard to service it, there isn't much buffer to cover any tech support costs. Maybe offer a tech support plan or a be able to pre-pay for a certain number of tech support hours. Just some thoughts. This is mostly for the really tiny accounts.

- Talking costs and split commissions. Say something like this... Our costs are 40%. The remaining 60%, we could split 1/2 and 1/2 or 30% with whomever is selling or servicing the account.

Anyways, some good conversation topics and ideas. We will get it all figured out. Making progress.

Meeting with Alan and Steve. He, Steve, is having the AI agents write code and he is managing it. He is working on phone notifications. He is using multiple AI bots to compare notes and check direction stuff. As part of the process, he was getting Wayne, our server guy, to install some different things on the servers. Steve was showing us some things that he is working on, some new reports, and new homepages.

We switched gears and I was showing some stuff from what Shannon and I were working on this morning (eot # 12662). Alan is doing some other research to help with things. We talked about using AI for input data options. Quick, snap a picture, and have the AI do the look-up and prep the input. Having it help with predictions and trending and some sort of analytics.

Steve was showing the different AI models. Looking at pricing per millions of tokens and the context window sizes. Things are changing quickly. We want to keep using natural language processes and asking it for help. Talking about future buildouts and white label options. Steve was talking about robots and what is coming (stuff from the news). Talking about data in and data out. I mentioned that Bryan was working with a potential client that wants a simple POS systems and automating things behind the scenes (eot # 12656). Steve was saying that he sees that kind of thing happening over and over again.

Alan and Steve were saying that our dreams can be realized so much more quickly now. In some ways, you can take the code writing hurtle out of the picture. You still have to know what you know and be willing to mix things together, but things can happen much quicker now. Interesting times.

Reading a large email from Wayne. He has been working on some system stats and running comparisons. He is optimizing speeds and processes. He gave us a couple of new links for pages and resources. Looking around and checking things out.

Emailing the team about the new functions for bulk adding PO line items (mini reverse shopping cart functionality). Small email to Wayne about a possible global database for helping to train the AI agent. I would like his opinion and thoughts. Spent the rest of the time working on a training plan to help train the adilas AI agent. Spent time working with ChatGPT to make a plan and start rolling it out. Towards the end of the session, I was having ChatGPT help me generate some PDF's to help with some of the adilas quick search functions.

As a reference, here is the share link for the AI training session that I was having. Some good stuff there. Light elevator pitch, a few small PDF files, some help files, and making plans. https://chatgpt.com/share/69377fb0-4594-8007-81af-a48edbc72690

Stuff for Cory. We had a report of some errors when adding things that had flex attributes (PO's, customers, and elements of time). We made some quick fixes and then pushed up code. Wayne was on the Zoom meeting with Cory and Steve and he was able to give me page names and lines where errors occurred. He was looking at some paper trail audit reports. We fixed a few files and pushed up new code. That small fix it session went pretty slick. Basically, a small on the fly bug fix - Wayne was telling me where to go, I was fixing , and Cory was testing.

Multiple sessions throughout the day. Emails and looking over documents. Going over new samples provided by the Nxtlinq guys. They provided a zip file and I was browsing and looking at the info on the page. I sent a couple of pages off to Wayne to look at, to get a second set of eyes on the new code samples.

Working on the Nxtlinq integration project. Working on some samples. Did some live testing, off the side, so that no one would be bothered. Worked a little bit with ChatGPT to get some code all lined out. That was kinda fun. We built it out and tested it locally and then pushed up some code live on data 0 for testing. I then sent some emails around to let a few people know. Finally, I sent off an email to the guys at Nxtlinq with a few small questions.

Emails. Got some good information from Wayne on video live streaming. See attached.

Working on some to do list items. Planning, brainstorming, paying bills, emails, and API stuff for cory (internal research and gathering data). Reviewing video streaming stuff from Wayne. He was doing some research on how to do that. He ended up converting a bigger MP4 video into an HLS version or format (a bunch of smaller clips that are played together in a play list type fashion). Anyways, I watched a few videos and looked around a bit. Interesting conversion process. We'll see where we go with that.

Emails and recording notes. Light research on a funding company and responding to some email enquiries.

Internal emails and small research and review for both Sean and Cory on different subjects. Sent an email to Wayne to follow up on being able to stream videos from the adilas content server. Sent some links to Sean that either migrate and/or copy customers, parts, part categories, vendors, or chart of accounts from corp to corp. He has a client that had an old system and wanted to setup a new system and use some of the older values. These are files that help copy between corporations on the same server.

Email to Wayne about streaming videos. We would love to be able to do that easier from the adilas content server. Then a semi-lengthy email to Chuck and others about the shopping cart and updates to my cart favorites. Phone call with Bryan to go over a page that does an upload from a CSV file and allows for dynamic mappings to be used. He would like to help some clients with possible EDI (electronic data interchange or transfer) type stuff for buying and receiving inventory.

Here are the two videos that I sent to Chuck about the shopping cart.

internal_shopping_cart_r1.mp4 - on Google Drive - small future cart demo

cart_touch_and_discount_options.mp4 - on Google Drive - current cart demo with my cart favorites

Emails and recording notes. Small typo fix for a client on their ecommerce site. Had to un-void a PO for different client. Did some research and had to reset some system environment variables for some AI bot stuff that Wayne is doing. Spent a few hours catching up from last week. Recording notes from 7/14/25 to 7/18/25. Busy week last week.

Meeting with Wayne and Steve. Using AI in adilas reports and code. Steve was showing some AI sales results. Wayne was showing me some AI appointment stuff. Wayne was going over Amazon Lex AI stuff. Briefly going over languages, intents, prompts, messaging back and forth, conversations, flow and logic, slot types, confirmations, fulfillment, code hooks, and other bot basics. They were talking about building a mini adilas bot army. Doing all kinds of things.

We flipped over to the adilas API sockets and Steve and I were showing Wayne around a bit. Steve was saying that he would like to setup and help companies that do simple services. We jumped into the Burrito King demo site and were playing with some adilas API calls.

After that Steve and I flipped over to ecommerce code and showing and selling subs. We went over a few things and had some discussion about ways to sell inventory online. Steve is thinking about adding in a new option that will be show and choose subs.

Meeting with Wayne. Looking over server memory issues and how the shopping cart was pulling things. We were looking and didn't find anything immediately. We decided that we will rewrite some of the ways that we call for data and see if that helps. I will make the changes and push them up live so that tomorrow morning it should be better. This is plan A, if that helps the memory issues, great. If not, we'll circle back around and see if we can figure something else out. Lots of moving pieces.

Meeting with Steve. Looking into ecommerce changes and settings. We pulled up a branch that Chuck was working on. We made a few tweaks and wired things up. We got it all up and live and did some testing. After the meeting, I made a few more small tweaks. I also sent an email out to Wayne to ask about caching issues (web file being cached and not updated) and how to help overcome some of those things.

Quick chat with Wayne about queueing up server-side processing. Talking about a quick need for simple ecommerce. This (simple ecommerce) seems to be a reoccurring theme.

Switched over to working with Shannon. Working on the formatting of presentation gallery. We spent some time talking about the attributes and results - showing some of the cool things that people are doing with adilas. Marketing, showcasing, samples, & mixing different kinds of results. We really want to cover the who, what, when, where, why, how, how many, etc. - all in the presentation gallery.

Back to an original thought, about mixing business functions, application players, and core concepts to get some cool results or desired outcomes (leaning this way - changing the attributes section to be called desired outcomes). Design your own systems. Help people... that's what we do. We have a ton to offer, and we keep building and refining it every day. This change, from attributes to desired outcomes, may be a little gift (comment from Shannon).

Phone call with Steve about a huge data dump for a client. 30-45 systems (corporations), 5-10 year's worth of data, with tons of reports and exports. Thinking about 3 options - 1. Kelly doing it all (consulting fees). 2. Reduced storage options. 3. New reports or bulk export tools (csv or excel format). Talking about automation options from Wayne and how he would possibly do it. He would be doing things on the server level. Talking about possible automation ways that we could go with and what that might look like.

Emails, light tech support, and meeting with Shannon. Also working with Wayne (briefly) and looking over some automatic email code. He jumped on the GoToMeeting session with Shannon and I for a bit. Once we were done, Shannon and I went back to working on things. We made a plan for Thursday. Light tech support and changing some settings for Suzi.

Light plan for working on the presentation gallery. We have 4 main topics, about 50 slides (pages), and we want to work on each section, one thing at a time to make sure that the site seems cohesive and works as a group.

Presentation Gallery
link - https://news.adilas.biz/sales-gallery/adilas-advert-index.html

Business Functions
- Solid bullets - Make sure that the bullet points are good and solid
- Top Level Modals - Make sure that every page has a top level popup modal description
- Sub Level Modals - When ready, make sure that each bullet point has its own popup modal description and images (or videos)
- Images and Refine - Go back through things and make it look really nice, tight, and fine-tooth combing of the data and content.

Application Players
- Solid bullets - See above
- Top Level Modals
- Sub Level Modals
- Images and Refine

Attributes
- Solid bullets - See above
- Top Level Modals
- Sub Level Modals
- Images and Refine

Core Concepts
- Solid bullets - See above
- Top Level Modals
- Sub Level Modals
- Images and Refine

Starting on Thursday we want to go back through each one at the top level. Review the bullets we have done (business functions and core concepts) and look to what needs to happen for the Attributes and Application Players.

Meeting with Wayne and Alan to go over options for database configuration options (code words... datasource project or bus to motorcycle or world building project). Light catch-up. Wayne was going over options for running a base service to figure out the corp and datasource (what database to use). The old datasource is the default.

Talking about efficiency and combining corporations and servers. Going over scenarios. The idea is to make the code and the schema unaware (more open - able to connect to any database). For me, I have a bunch of older notes under clustering, solar systems, and galaxies (all kinds of cross-schema options).

For us, internally, database updates may get more crazy, especially for our developers. Talking about possible load balancing stuff. We were talking about master databases, sub databases, and efficiency questions.

- Wayne was recommending a more company related approach (which businesses are connected or have a relationship) vs corp related (single worlds, all by themselves). Widen it out a bit.

- Wayne's branch... WLA/DynamicDSN

- Alan was talking about a wish list to help update things from one spot (one page or one server) vs logging into each server to run it on each server (current process).

- Wayne already uses a script (test script) to run his database updates. He doesn't like to do things over and over again. He would rather build a script or make a tool to do that.

- Wayne wants Alan and I to help pitch it to Steve and Cory.

- We may need to look at and check the edge cases (on the datasource look-up project). They were talking about some known caching issues.

- Places that we need to check... (list of us, internally)
>> shop folder - there is some session stuff but it is different then the top_secret stuff.
>> web folder - API's - most pass in a corp key that we can figure out a corp id number from.
>> public folder - hardcoded per page or FORM or URL scoped controlled.
>> temp folder - hardcoded per page or FORM or URL scoped controlled.
>> database_updates folder - may need to query (get all known datasources), then loop and do updates per schema. basically, layer and nest things vs just plain doing a single update.
>> check the process to create a new corp - some questions there (we are currently using the main datasource and building tables and inputting values based on our create new corp routines).
>> caching - check the daos, services, and cfc's - make sure we do what we need to here to make this still function correctly.
>> search for corp_id IN (? whatever the list or arguments are) - multi corp queries. Maybe be able to set a temporary master/primary corp id where needed.

Looking into a bug on data 3 for pulling inventory reports. It appeared to be a memory issue on that server. We passed some emails back and forth and hopefully Wayne will be able to look at it. He's the master there.

Working with Bryan. Checking some FTP stuff from Wayne. Talking about white label stuff (small fixes that are needed). We then got into some cookie management stuff (stored values or stored session stuff) for flip flopping servers and killing cookies. We made a new master login_reset_all.cfm file. It doesn't just clear certain session variables, it pretty much kills the whole session scope.

We then started looking at client logs inside of adilas for some past logs and contacts in the Utah and Idaho areas. Updated a bunch of log notes and contact info. Talking about each client or potential client and next steps for each.

Emails and follow-ups. Wrapping things up with a client and communicating with other team members.

Multiple smaller sessions working on data clean-up stuff. Back working on the data import and over 20,000 older gift card entries. Trying to get rid of all of the duplicate entries in their data. Emails with Sean and Wayne on different topics.

Recording notes from last week. Meeting with Cody, Wayne, and Alan. Going over progress and new interfaces ideas and options. We then let Alan and Cody talk about API sockets and how to set them up and use them. Tech talk stuff. They got into some deep topics and Cody was asking for some samples. Both Wayne and Alan were chiming in and giving him tips and pointers.

Steve and I jumped on a GoToMeetign session. We rand a database update for Dustin and some new code that he had made. We merged in the new code to master. We then spent some time talking about other needed database changes. Wayne has been proposing a datasource update. That is one of the needed steps. We also discussed other database changes that are needed on the actual database and some of the primary keys. We need to switch out the auto number primary keys with unique combo primary keys. That will allow us to move databases and corporations (worlds) around more easily. Bulk and mass migration needs for some of our clients. Including bulk copy of certain pieces and sections within the system (items, buttons, photos, settings, logic, discounts, etc.). Talking over things and ideas. We will have to take the time and figure out tasks and processes.

Emails, writing to Wayne about possible changes to the adilas database and changing some of the primary keys. He was proposing a datasource project, which would be awesome. If we combined his datasource project with the new primary keys, it would be super awesome and just what we need. Also did some testing on the new part reference number code for PO's. Sent an update email to our people, letting them know about the changes, that everything was finished on that project and live on all servers.

Meeting with Cody. Going over a small bug in the check write settings. We ended up spending quite a bit of time there and making a pretty good plan. As we were talking, Cody was saying "Being clear in communication makes a lot of difference." He helped me format my notes better so that it wasn't assuming things, they were clearer, and it was all spelled out so that anyone could have read it.

After we finished up with our plans on the check write bug, we switched over and started talking about custom responsive web pages and a custom interface and navigation builder. That sent us off to talking about good visuals, eye candy, graphs, charts, and custom components. We then spent some time talking about API's and how to connect to the API sockets internally. Basically, getting the data from the database and mixing both server-side and client-side languages (code). I'm going to set up a small meeting with Wayne and Alan to make sure that we are all on the same page.

From Cody - If you provide good visuals and have good structure, that is good story telling (meaning, we can help tell the client and user stories better by having in those visuals and correct formats). I liked how he tied it into story telling or digital story telling. That's where we are headed.

Meeting with Steve and Alan. Going over budgets, pay offs, timing, talking about the approach, don't talk about positions, pitch the sale ($150 internal vs $75/hour - using some of our guys directly). Steve was and has been selling pieces of custom code to our clients. He would like help there and have the guys pitch their own services.

We spent some time talking about our identity and who and what we want to be. Taht is coming along. Here are some other general notes from our conversations (multiple topics):

- Help protect our clients...

- Set some caps on how much our developers can charge

- Communication back to the clients - weekly reports and billing

- Billing - weekly

- We can't let our developers rough up our clients

- Helping our guys succeed - plans, billing, communication, oversite, etc.

- Possible kickback - commission to adilas

- It takes so much time to crunch things up - sales or custom code - the reality of what it takes

- Can't keep pushing things over to the balance sheet (code or projects for Kelly) - it costs of too much. We pay the developers and we owe money back to Kelly.

- Consultation document or a checklist type doc

- We are generic on purpose - if you want it custom... you've got to pay to optimize it

- Setting up boundaries and being firm on that

- An add-on cost for custom work - they need to pay for it - they may need to keep paying for it (reoccurring) - maintenance

- Selling what we have

- Our development and sales focus is as a general business tool

- Elevator pitch - web based, SaaS (software as a service), we focus on operations and accounting, we have a base model, and we allow custom

- We want to be generic. We want to cover a number of industries. We want to be a great companion software for any business.

- This is who we are - defining ourselves and what we do

- Plans for our upcoming meeting with the developers - take care of business and setup another meeting where we have some plans all made up.

- The developers may have some ideas on how to make things work

- How can we get some of the cool stuff exposed to the public? Selling what we have. - sales - nobody is pushing it, our tools and features, as a product.

- Alan had the idea of using an outside marketing firm - when ready

- There is a need for marketing, education, etc.

- YouTube influencers - quick, short, and powerful mini messages - short and to the point

- Podcasts - how to run your business, tips, tricks, and best practices

- Piece work - we have tons of stuff - what if someone could harvest that kind of stuff? - YouTube, Facebook blogs, podcasts, etc.

- Alan would like to talk about the future - looking short term, medium term, long term, etc. - talking to Steve, Brandon, Shari o., Wayne, Cory, etc.

Server meeting with Wayne and Cory. We need to redo the barcodes and QR codes. As part of this change, we need to change out old Java libraries for Barbecue (barcode library) and iText (for PDF's and QR codes). Wayne has a new server ready for testing - data 100. We need to figure out who is going to be testing things and figuring out who is going to do what. We want a bunch of our users to jump on and use it in a different way or manner. Talking with Wayne about building some custom tags or special functions to help generate those barcodes or QR codes. That would be awesome.

Who is going to replace Wayne as the server guy for adilas. Talking about a new person who might do a good job. She just barely started working with us but Wayne is encouraged by her aptitude and skill level already.

These are just some notes for me - New project to allow quick look-ups for recipe/builds (be able to change the line items for both ingredients and output items). Be able to search for items based on RFID tag, barcodes, product names, descriptions, etc. - pass along the information so that it sticks. Cory sent me a video on this. I put it in her folder, locally, it's about 10 minutes long.

Emails and recording notes. Writing checks and paying bills. Wayne is working on a new server configuration. Light emails back and forth.

Meeting with Shannon. Talking about happenings (catching up on things) and making some plans.

Got a phone call from Wayne. We were talking about what we know dealing with the hack attempts on data 0. One of our plans is going to be moving to a new version of ColdFusion (2023). Trying to close every door possible. Wayne has some outbound logs from the server that we need to review. We may need to get a lawyer involved, if needed. I told Wayne that I would give Steve a call and figure out a plan on that side. We talked about maintenance and how we have to put out fires and grease the squeaky wheels. Some of the other stuff stays undone. There is too much to keep it all up. All part of the game. We also noted that Hostek (the hosting company) is being a little slower on their responses. Looking ahead, we know that we need to fix and work on some labels stuff, need to fix older barcode and QR code libraries, Wayne has a new solution in mind, replace the older BBQ and iText (java libraries). When ready, we will be pulling reports with dates/times, corps, customers that may have been affected by the hack attempt on the data 0 server.

Phone call with Steve. Going over hack attempts and course of action. Steve was telling me about hacks on huge companies like Netflix, Target, Apple, etc - everybody is being compromised. Dealing with credit card transactions, we are heading more and more towards a tokenization approach of data transmissions vs real data being passed back and forth. Steve said that a bank person (person in charge of fraud at a bank he goes to) said that they, the bank, re-issue 90-150 new credit cards a month, due to fraud. This was a small local bank. It's happening all over the place (hack attempts). We will work with Wayne and see what the window of time is that is in question. It's only on data 0. Our plan is to only notify those people/clients that may have been compromised (data stuff). I will get with Shari O. and get her involved to help send a note out. I'm also supposed to get some info from Wayne (tech stuff) about what we know and what that window looks like.

For me - Shannon and I were talking about a book called "Rhinoceros Success" by Scott Alexander. Taking small bits of wisdom from the rhino book - keep charging - damn the torpedoes! As a side note, one of the chapters in the book is called "Damn The Torpedoes" meaning that people are going to be shooting torpedoes at you all the time. Grow some thick skin and keep charging!

Small fix with Bryan on some session variables out in pdf land. Changed them to normal look-ups of the settings vs pulling from session scope. Worked with Wayne to track down a potential hacker. I took a bunch of notes. I did add them to the media/content section, just not tied to this element of time.

Meeting with Cory on importing inventory for a client. They are wanting a bulk tool to help with adding subs - only active items that are normal parts (not the unlimited ones). The plan is to make it into a small migration tool for Cory so that we can use it for other corporations. Email tech support with Wayne.

Working with Wayne - server-side tech support - checking into some random files on the data 0 box. Working with both Wayne and Alan and trying to check out logs and access points. A few different meetings over Google meet. Wayne decided to save a copy, then nuke the files, and then redeploy a new image. Eric joined and we talked about merchant processing, tips, and surcharges. Wayne and I were talking about upgrading security and updating Adobe ColdFusion to newer levels. No fun to be on a security call but it was good to touch base with some of the guys.

It was going to be a meeting with Wayne and Cory but Wayne wasn't able to make it. Going over a number of needed projects. Bulk find and replace on items and vendors. Also being able to merge customer records. Small update on mini scan cart. Small show and tell to show Cory some of the new features. We are looking forward to the discount engine (next major project).

Recording notes. Got on a meeting with Eric. He had an issue with a DAO (database access object) for elements of time and it not returning the correct record set. We could run the exact same query using raw SQL prompts or inside code but not as part of a component that runs things through the DAO. We did what we could. He may need to consult with Wayne, for a deeper database master to take a look at it. Recording notes from the week thus far (6/3/24 to 6/6/24).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Various tasks. Looking into Will's pull request for the balance sheet. Made a few small changes and pushed up a small update. Texted Will with some feedback. Bryan wanted me to check on a timeout issue on data 39. Ended up sending Wayne an email with instructions and specifics on the data sync (table copy) stuff.

Spent a little bit of time adding in popup modals for the bulk clear customer loyalty points project. Added a new help file and cascaded it around to all servers. Light clean-up.

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

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

A couple of different work sessions with Bryan. He is working on saving large reports with an asynchronous process to build a CSV file behind the scenes. It gets pretty deep. We have to query all of the data, check record counts, show errors and options if over the limit. If not over the record count limit, we need to show the actual data. If they choose to build the CSV file (comma separated values file) we have to save the settings, build it, show progress, and then let them know when it is all done and ready for downloading. Pretty intense process.

So, on his local box, Bryan has run over 70+ tests and built that many CSV files. While testing, we found a few errors. We ended up removing some of the buttons and options and keeping things really simple. We took off options like refine your search or save report. We got the files ready and pushed them up to data 8 for some live testing. We instantly ran into some errors on the live server. We did a whole session where we just patched things and got it stable again.

We left lots of the new code on the master branch (with patches) and will circle back around. We then tried to get things setup to do more testing on the live server without hurting any of the existing traffic, data, and users. The new test stuff will virtually be built out on a side road of sorts (away from the normal data, pages, and flow). Sent a request to Wayne to let Bryan get access to data 8 for FTP (file transfer protocol - uploading files) privileges.

Quick phone call with Eric going over USAePay stuff and merchant processing options. At some future point, we may need better documentation and/or a hardware specialist on our team.

Meeting with Dustin to go over things. We started out on GoToMeeting and then switched over to Zoom. He had a list of questions. We jumped in and helped him setup his own new shopping cart. We may alter the name, but it will be called something like the integrated side menu cart. It's kinda custom but may be used by other people later on. I'm hoping that our little session will end up saving him tons of time so that he can hit his deadline. Good stuff!

After we got all of his new cart stuff under control, we switched over and talked about FTP (file transfer protocol) stuff. I showed him around, got him info, and we did some light training. He's going to work with Wayne and our hosting company to get everything else all setup. Good session.

Jumped on the GoToMeeting with Steve, Cory, and Wayne. We were going over bit bucket (code repository) and how to get certain files updated. We had to roll some code back and then things kinda got out of wack. We got it resolved and everything should be good to go. Wayne was showing us some high level code repository stuff. It was way over our heads, but he knew how to do it. I'm super glad that we don't have to figure out everything by ourselves. That's what a team is for.

Bryan and I merged in some code last night that we were working on. It was working great on all of our tests. We weren't able to push it live for testing before it got auto deployed. When it went live, we found that if you didn't have a certain setting turned on, it was throwing an error. I was out hiking and got a call and text message from Cory. I joined the Zoom meeting once I got home.

Wayne and Bryan were on the Zoom meeting with Cory and Shari O. We got the error fixed and made some adjustments to the code. While Wayne was re-deploying code on all of the servers. I was able to get my VPN stuff setup so that I could push code directly to the servers. That ability and connection was down for a couple of days (on my side - just not being able to connect directly to the servers). Anyways, we got it all resolved.

Once things calmed down (servers were getting fixed), I was able to talk to Wayne and do some catching up. We haven't spoken for a few months due to who is on what meeting. That was good and he was explaining his wants and needs (as a system administrator). Some of what he does we don't fully understand and/or know. Our conversation ended up flowing into the start of the server meeting. I think that he needed to talk. That was good.

Started into some bootstrap training and got a text from Bryan. We jumped on a GoToMeeting session and looked at a date/time issue. We made some fixes and merged in some code. After that, doing some emails with Wayne on being able to reconnect via our VPN (virtual private network) to push up code.

Jumped on the GoToMeeting with Chuck. He needs to get his local environment all setup again. He wiped a hard drive and lost his older local box and coding environment. We talked about options of the older classic way or getting with Wayne to try the Docker container way. I got him enough info that he can do it either way. We then talked about the new shopping cart that I'm working on. He was watching and providing some light feedback.

Mostly working on logic for the Bear 100 and the leader board. I did get interrupted a number of times this afternoon. Only recording 2 hours of this session for the Bear 100 project. All other time will go to the new email servers.

Back to the Bear 100 - Currently, all code for the leader board is on a test file (scratch) to check dumps, variables, queries, and dynamics. Almost done with the logic portion. Still need to run a few more tests and then move code over into the real page.

Other work was stuff like emailing back and forth with Wayne and Shari O. on email server questions. Tech support call to Newtek to get info to pass on to Wayne about the email servers. On hold for over half an hour. Got a request from Bryan to jump on and help him out with the API sockets and customer payment profiles project for the new Authorize.net project. Busy afternoon!

Phone call with Shari O. going over questions on merchant processing and custom email accounts. We really need a better or tighter company structure. Certain things are falling through the cracks. Sent an email out to Wayne, Cory, and Shari O. with information regarding the custom email addresses and accounts.

SWOT analysis stuff with John. Working on the threats section. What are we going to do to fix some of these things? Wayne jumped on and reported on possible move to Spain (nothing adilas related, just chatting about life). Wayne was talking about cyberchef tools and security options. We talked about some advanced cyber stuff. High level mash-ups and dashboards. We also talked about professional level certifications. One of things that we get faced with, as developers, is stagnation of skills. We need to keep building on our skills and skillsets. Talking about serving others. John and I jumped back into the SWOT analysis and going the threats. Distractions, time to market, lack of funding, lack of structure, etc. Lots of great conversations.

Meeting with Wayne over the GoToMeeting session. Wayne and I were going over the main login information and process. We looked at the auto login for the ecommerce site as well. Just gathering ideas. We talked about the adilas cafe options. Wayne is getting close to having some of that code done at a super entry level. He is going to work with John to get a small skin and good-looking interface put on it. Lastly, Wayne and I chatted about his brother and some possible involvement from there.

Got a text from Shari O. asking me to jump on the GoToMeeting session. The guys had spun up a new server and she was trying to get in. We ended up contacting Wayne and Cory and worked through a few things. Some of the settings weren't quite right. We got it all figured out. This seemed like a special case. We had copied images and a database from data 33 to data 39 and then Wayne had flipped some values and ids. Basically, a company needed a full deep copy and then wanted that new corporation to be able to be completely separate and run independently. I'm glad that we have some talented folks on our team. We did something similar years ago and it took me days and days.

After hours meeting with Wayne, Alan, John, Bryan, and I. Wayne pretty much drove and I took notes. It went for three hours. We have the first two hours recorded (see attached). The last hour, we thought that we were done and it kept going with ideas and more clarification stuff. It may be a lot to read, but I've got 5 pages of notes, all dealing with fracture and where we are heading with adilas lite. Some of these topics are deep, backend, and server and database related. Good meeting.

I have no problem saying this... I was definitely not the smartest person in the room. I've been doing this kind of stuff for over 20+ years and I was impressed. That makes me excited.

Once again, if you want to review the notes, there are a bunch of good things in there for our upcoming fracture or adilas lite project.

These are a few of my takeaways:

- We need to communicate and get some standards setup. This could be what we call things, what code to use and how it looks and acts, and other style guide level stuff.

- Our plan is to build the whole new parts and pieces into an open API socket connection level application. We could then use API sockets as well as let outside developers use the same API sockets. We talked a lot about this. This is where we want to head. The new adilas lite platform will be mostly run on API sockets.

- Rules and assignments - the concept of building the rules and then assigning who plays with those rules was a big part of the discussion. Follow a story-based design for logic, testing, etc. Make all of this data driven.

- Think generic - what is available - what do you want or need? Make everything configurable. Multiple levels of configuration. See notes.

- We will be building a very robust data dictionary and then using that in the rules, validation routines, etc. This is basically a database that shows columns, names, values, rules, defaults, and other information about those columns and/or fields. This is huge and will help us use a more data driven approach vs hardcoding all of the rules, values, and validation per column. We will have a generic set and then let each corp, location, and user tweak a copy, if they want to get that deep. If not, we will use the main master data dictionary list information. Only change and copy what is needed.

- Events and turning everything into small bite sized pieces. Very minimalistic approach. Make as much of this application asynchronous (nonlinear) as possible.

- Let's do the aggregates (data warehousing stuff) right off the bat and get those values in place and being used. We are very good at transactional data and data storage. Let's really make an effort to break into the aggregated or business intelligence (BI) levels. That is a huge goal of ours.

Emails and research. Meeting with John. Quick update on servers. It sounds like Wayne and John are working on a small mini project for the adilas cafe model. After that, John and I spent time working on the SWOT analysis. We were going over our strengths and weaknesses and making notes on each entry. We pretty much spent the whole time going over that. The current authoring file is on the Adobe Cloud. Lots of little comments, links, and researching out stats and what not.

Meeting with Aspen to go over parts of the plan. She ended up doing some research on fracture and I was recording notes and such.

Notes from Aspen - see below

Adilas Lite Weekly Objectives

6/12/2023–6/17/2023

1. Smooth over the relationship with Ship A

1.1. Propose prototype testing for Ship B components on Ship A

1.2. Win-win for all parties–helpful features that Ship A won't have to pay for directly, Ship B gets the assurance that their components work, Team harmony improves

2. Get Ship B Organized

2.1. Variety of Meetings, prepare documents for a more technical meeting with Wayne on the 14th

2.2. Project Management Document Summary, start on strategies

3.Complete Personal Hours, Etc.

4. Classification of Projects Under MVP and Non-MVP Categories

4.1. Helps focus efforts

4.2. Both need to be clear

4.3. MVP needs to be built with potential Non-MVP build-ins in mind

Meeting with Wayne. Talking about payments. Ways to speed checks up getting over to Portugal. We may end up helping him do remote deposits via photos of the check and speeding things up that way.

He and I talked about practical stuff. How are we going to write our code? How will things get implemented? Basically, the why, the how, the when, the how much, the what, where, and way. All of those types of questions. We really want to make sure that things get fully tested and are stable. Making some plans.

Emails and light tech support. We had a client that wanted and needs some bulk tools to remove some reoccurring elements of time. Currently, you have to remove those elements of time one by one. There are no bulk tools for destroying and/or removing events. That could be a great future build.

Cory was asking about a deploy that had a bad file. Somehow one of the servers was showing that it was on the master branch but had a corrupted file or something happened. Light back and forth between her and Wayne. Cory was asking about emails and trying to get some answers. Our email servers are struggling right now. We then switched and were talking about the sales tax aggregates project. It is fully live but just needs that little bit of a push. We've got a couple of things really close, but they just haven't fully landed.

We started talking about Wayne's new framework stuff. He was showing us some of his dynamic add/edit pages using a database or a data dictionary stored in a database. He then created a smart page that uses dynamics, cascading code and populating it all from database records or dynamic objects. Pretty cool stuff. Light years ahead of what we've got right now.

Some time was spent looking at and making suggestions to the data dictionary idea and concept. The more that we can make this whole thing data driven vs hardcoded, the better. Think of all of the things that show up on a web page, what if we could turn that whole thing into data driven pages and be able to pull the data and dynamically render the pages. That would be awesome! We already do tons of that, but Wayne was showing us options on a whole new level.

Steve was asking some questions and Wayne was answering them. Good conversation between them. Steve was talking about percentages of ownership, deferred payments for hours worked, and other forms of investment. We all see the potential. Steve was saying, "I'm sold, how are we going to do this?" Tons of potential, we just need to figure out how to do it, fund it, and sell it. That takes a lot to make everything happen and work.

Next, we rolled into talking about stability of the code and servers. Steve put the words - "what about the ice down dates" - through chat. We talked about how all of that is possible, we just need to make a plan and get it included. Nothing is just going to happen. We have tons of awesome ideas, it just needs to go the next level. That lead into talking about the plan and making it airtight. We also talked about getting that good plan and then being able to pitch it to investors to get some or all of the funding. That seems to be what needs to happen. We need our plan to be almost at the blueprint level with details, requirements, flow charts, and all of the specifics. Basically, a full-on business plan and full technical plan as well. We need it all. That's the goal.

Original notes are from 5/30/23. This little note was added on 6/3/23 (only a few days later) - As a small side note, this was actually a turning point for Steve in deciding what needed to be done. Nobody knew it yet, but I think that he was seeing that we are having a hard time finishing up things that need to be done (close but not quite finished) and yet we are totally lost in what could be. We know we need it, no one denies that, but how do you stop, control, and/or manage that. Maybe you don't. You may have to let it flow.

After the server meeting, just Wayne, Alan, and I stayed on to go more in-depth on the framework stuff that Wayne is testing, trying, and pitching. Wayne has been spending tons of time looking into the ColdBox framework and experimenting with things. He's really going for it.

We talked about files, folders, and structure of how the application could and would work. The whole thing is setup in a rest type interface with specific paths, pages, and URL's (web addresses) to make it work. REST API or RESTful API architecture stands for representational state transfer. Basically, that deals with logical paths, files, and folders to create organization. You then place special code at each end point to do a specific task. That is part of the way it is organized. Our old site has tons of pages, all bunched into a couple of folders (all mixed together). When I say a ton of files, I'm talking thousands of files. This newer site will have like or similar pieces and pages in specific spots or places. It's all part of how it gets organized and managed. Interesting.

Alan and Wayne were talking about object-oriented coding with options for extending, inheriting, and sub classing functions, variables, and conditions. They both fully get it. I haven't had any formal training on this, but I'm picking up some of the pieces and concepts.

Next, they got into talking about limiting the handlers (receiving pages or virtual doors and windows). We covered a number of other topics such as nesting, sub classes, pre and post level page handlers, and how all deeper business logic needs to be over in the service models. Once again, it was mostly Wayne and Alan talking shop and I was listening. To translate, our existing site and pages have a bunch of things that we do every time to make sure that the page gets valid information. They are talking about doing all of that pre validation and logic as a simple handler and thus making each page smaller and not duplicating code (hundreds of lines per page).

After talking for a while, Wayne was showing us what it takes to rewrite things and pages using the new architecture and structure. We kept jumping off on tangents as Wayne was explaining and we were asking questions and making comments. Fun little interchange. At one point, Wayne had to either jump off and/or deal with something at his home. Alan and I were talking about options for permissions and limiting things even before we show them. Keeping things skinny and lite.

Here are some of my other notes. They don't really flow into nice paragraphs.

- Currently, our main pages, inside of adilas are kinda like handlers. We just don't call them that. Sometimes we call them the wrapper pages and string together some black box and/or special page includes to make it all work.

- All business logic would need to be in the services.

- Lots of talk about separating logic and views (pages).

- Using fracture (potentially more complicated) to show less (looks more simple - based on show/hide settings and configuration stuff).

- Creating rule books and using the database to help drive the pages, logic, rules, and procedures. Basically, the code gets stored in the database, where it could be updated, shared, or tweaked as needed. The pages just process the rules and/or instructions.

- Migrating data, seeding things (pre work and adding things for setup), checking for pending actions, and processing different actions. Small data assembly line stuff, for our own setup and configuration. That could be pretty cool!

- Wayne was saying, not really rewriting our code, more of moving it...

- Alan would love to help with this restructure project.

- We talked about options of how to integrate these things together.

- There are still some core changes that are needed. The key word was "core".

- Lots of talk about scale - how fast, how many, etc.

- Too many includes (code pages pulled into other code pages). This gets hard to trace down dependencies and variations if different pages are mixed together.

- We have some master copy and paste coders and developers. If that is the case, let's help them out so that they can copy and paste what we want them to do and use. If you can't beat them (some of our team may never change), then join them type attitude (give them good stuff to copy and paste).

- Tiny servlets and micro services. Everything is based off of time or events.

- We talked about budgets for both time and money. How quick can we do this? Time, money, resources?

- How long do we have if we don't do this? Not sure... meaning making changes and/or moving things over towards fracture (future plans and making the changes listed). Just part of our discussion.

- Wayne will reach out to Ortus Solutions (maker of the ColdBox framework) and see what options we have. Is there any way to use some of what they have and still keep some of our older existing stuff? We are looking for a middle ground, if possible. Basically, just a quick check to see if an option exists - mixing old code and new code and old structure and new structure. We may have to just choose one or the other, they may not cross or mingle very well (water and oil).

- Small story of how the Utah pioneers had to stop building a temple so that they could finish up the railroad. Once the railroad was done (lines completed) they were able to build their temple faster using the railroad to haul rock from the quarry to the temple site. Fun story.

- We talked about a new possible name for fracture (current code name for our future build out) and/or something that has a nice ring to it. We were thinking about "adilas lite" or something along those lines.

- What about building out a mini version, creating small modules and then charging for those pieces? Everything could be broken down into modules and sub modules.

- Originally, we were going to leave the existing adilas code alone and build something new, using the same database. As we were talking, it became apparent that we needed to build new. Meaning new code, new data, new database, new, new, new. The whole thing. As we were talking, we kept referring to ship A (existing adilas platform) and ship B (new or future adilas platform - aka fracture or adilas lite).

- Our first prototype, that Wayne is already working on, will be for payees. This is for vendors and users and will include a single sign-on option. Once again, just a prototype and proof of concept.

- Lots of great conversation about the adilas cafe and community. This is dealing with a global or master level list and access to the whole platform and/or adilas application. Imagine a single global login and then you could choose if you wanted to work (only show corporations where you have permissions and access), play (demo sites), buy things (marketplace), sell things (marketplace for goods and services - professional services), participate (community and social media stuff), and/or get some training (adilas university). Here is a link to more info and research on the adilas cafe from the developer's notebook.

- After Alan left, I talked with Wayne about percentage ownership stuff in adilas. Wayne would like to get some more ownership. He's doing a great job! We have many on our team that are really pulling the load very well. That is awesome!

- For me - adilas lite - make a simple play or plan. It could be a rough sketch or simple layout plan. Keep it simple.

Eric joined the server meeting and we were talking about the sales tax aggregates and what kind of love is needed there. It's up, working, and just needs a little bit to really be fully functional. We talked about getting that code outside of the database triggers and being able to do manual or force updates. We spent 40 minutes going over pros and cons of automated database triggers, manual switches, scheduled tasks, and how best to tackle the aggregate counts, totals, and sums. We only have a few things aggregated right now, but a ton more options are on the horizon.

We then switched to the backend and frontend frameworks that we are looking into. We got into a conversation about technical debt (older or legacy code) and where we are headed. We really want to move more into an MVC (model, view, controller) type framework and application. We would like to change the main structure and underlying conventions that we are built upon. This brought up conversations about breaking the link between view pages, model pages, and controller pages.

Cory was saying that we beat the odds of how long we have lasted on our older code set, and lifecycle as a software company. We are really good at building new things. We would like to get better at planning and strategically doing maintenance and upgrades to the core and/or foundation. Ideally, we want to take some of our older, bigger, monolith code and break it up into smaller and smaller pieces. Things like helper files, microservices, MVC models, and restful API sockets. We already do a bunch of that, but the whole thing is not yet fully there.

Our guys (developers) keep running into things that are slightly off and/or could be changed. Sometimes, that makes them slowdown and either figure out what was done and/or them wanting to fix it, to make it smoother or better. There is a maintenance cost associated with training and learning. Sometimes you only learn by dinking around and playing with things (experiments and trystorming).

We may need to get some funding in place, even to help make the plan. This has been one of the things that has been missing all along (lack of funding). Sometimes, it also feels like we need some fresh blood (new energy or new talent). We are all getting a little bit older and have been pulling this load for quite some time now. That ends up wearing on you, even if that wasn't the intent. As long as we are talking about some ideals, we would love for our code to be more robust, less fragile, and easier to make global changes. There are a lot of intricate and moving pieces. As an idea, maybe we trim our team down and keep a smaller, highly talented, but nimble developer team. We are not sure where to go. It's always a balance.

Steve was asking Wayne some great questions. We are trying to figure out a plan for making the plan. It gets deep quickly. Steve was also asking about the datasource project and where that stands (looking for a progress report).

On with Cory and Kelly going over new requests for sub inventory reports. Kelly had created some spreadsheets and we were going over those pieces. Great review and we are ready to hand this project over to the developer. We switched topics and started talking about sales tax aggregates and creating manual switches to help force an update.

Cory and I were doing some planning for a server meeting and some decision making. We talked about doing some R&D on the new frameworks that Wayne is working on and almost doing a mini scratch app to get all of the kinks worked out. After that, Cory and I went over a number of other small projects and plans.

Recording notes and pushing up videos from this morning. Tons of good notes from a meeting with Wayne and the crew. See notes from 5/16/23 for details.

Long meeting today. Started out talking to Wayne and Shari O. about emails, internal emails, external emails (outbound to different clients), and possible options. Wayne repointed the IP addresses yesterday back to the original way we had the email system setup. It was kinda wacky for a couple of days. Anyways, we put it back to what it was. We still need to look deeper into this, but it should be stable for now.

Steve was asking about the bus to motorcycle project - datasource or world building project. Wayne was reporting that some of his new code is trying to deal with this issue or these issues. We talked about the current state and where things are going. Briefly touched base on combo primary keys and removing major dependencies on existing standalone primary keys (database connection and relationship stuff). Along with the datasource topic (which database to talk to as a single time) the conversation also included our ever growing need to do cross corp stuff. We didn't talk about it, but some of this is very similar to the adilas cafe talks and discussions that we have had.

If we get majorly into cross corp stuff, and each corp has its own database or sandbox, we may end up doing cross corp stuff through API socket connections. That sounded like a good idea. We'll have to look at it, as we may do unions, API sockets, or other temp database tricks to show and/or report combined data.

We flipped over to the new framework that Wayne is working on. He did a small demo for us on what he is working on. These are just a few of my notes. See attached for a 1:39 - one hour and 39 minute video of of some of meeting.

- Our switch to a new framework is not just a time saver. It goes way deeper than that.

- Lots of conversation about supporting different frameworks, themes, and versions of code.

- The whole new framework is setup as an MVC framework or MVC model - model, view, controller

- We need to keep moving forward in order to stay valid

- Layouts and views

- Everything is event driven

- We have both raw input (info and data directly from a user or customer) and we also have cleaned up and formatted data (okayed, approved, combed, retrieved, or sanitized data).

- These are just some keywords and concepts - handlers, events, models, interceptors, layouts, views, classes, methods, etc.

- One of the goals is to get rid of all of the repetitive, ticky-tacky maintenance code. This is stuff like params, validation, permission checks, making sure that certain values have been set, etc. Basically, the prep work before the real meat of the page begins. Some of our pages may be hundreds of lines of code deep before we actually get to the meat of the page. The framework would help us simplify and standardize some of the prep work stuff.

- If we build this way, it could open up options for multiple layouts and/or views (what it looks like). Keeping a separation between the business logic and the view or presentation of that data.

- Events, watchers, and triggers that help us run clean-up and other processes and routines. Key everything off of certain events.

- Getters and setters - smaller mini functions for each class, object, and property within that class. All built-in and/or available. We really wanted to do this for the fracture project (future project for adilas).

- Options for self-documentation

- Debugging, tracer options, logging, and security stuff already built-in

- Lots of talk about the benefits of using a framework.

- Mementos and smaller sub sets of data, that may be pre-formatted and/or setup how we need it - saving time in conversions and retrieving available data.

- Defining things and then using them over and over again in other pages.

- This is huge, but the framework already has a ton of built-in documentation and samples. That takes a lot of work and preparation. Also, it is able to self-generate basic documentation based on how we code it (based off of keywords, hints, notes, and rules).

- If we build off a new framework, we could use either Adobe ColdFusion (current model) or we could use Lucee - open source CFML engine. The framework can flip flop pretty easily between the different backend engines. It's basically a config option.

- We do lots of things over and over again. Make that more simple, standardized, and compartmentalized.

- They offer a standard set of options and configurations. We can use that and/or pick and choose or customize whatever we want.

- Light talks about the pros and cons of an ORM model (object-relational mapping - mixing of objects and relational databases)

- Shooting for a more modern approach - use of code, technology, and a layered approach

- Wayne really wants to come up with a process of how to convert our current pages and code into the ColdBox framework. Think of a set of instructions (virtual recipe) and then allow other developers to help convert the pages. Basically, a road map to follow.

- Our customers really need and want us to be more stable and reliable, as a company, and as a software system. This includes how we develop code, release and deploy code, and manage systems and servers. In a nutshell, they want us to grow up, as a company and have a bit more of a standard structure and presence.

- We are heading more and more towards clustering, enterprise level stuff. We need to build towards that.

- As a side note, Wayne says we have way too many includes (files that get included and/or strung together to make the whole).

- One of our major focuses on switching the backend architecture is customer reliability.

- Wayne sees a need for radical changes to simplify, stabilize, and build things out for the future. It has to be sustainable and sustainability. Light talks about evolution vs revolution or changes over time vs drastic changes all at once. Things are smoother if software can evolve vs just being harshly changed. However, sometime things need to majorly change, hopefully for the better. There are some pros and cons to both approaches.

- Building new has a motivation factor to it - true story - what keeps us going?

- This is a chance to rebuild it like we want it - build to the dream

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

We switched subjects and were the guys were talking about hosting companies and how that scene is changing in the datacenters that we are using. We have seen a lack or lowing of the customer service levels. We may end up checking out some other hosting companies.

John and Cory were talking about other projects and timelines. They were also talking about uptime, downtime, and databases. We talked about coming up with new SOP (standard operating procedures) for pushing up code, code rollbacks, and deployment of new features. That got into talks about manual and automated database updates, scripts, auto processes.

That topic lead to a discussion on roles and responsibilities and who does what. There is a need to define some of the roles a little bit deeper and make it clearer who does what and in what order. More SOP stuff for the backend processes and procedures. There also needs to be good communication between the developers and the system admin persons. We have to keep up those communication channels. That is really important. Nobody can read minds.

Towards the end, John and Cory were going over projects and coordinating dates/times for testing, review, look and feel changes, and testing. Good stuff.

GoToMeeting session with Shari O. and Sean. Going over emails and client communication channels. Hoping to get with Wayne a bit. Shari O. had a quick question about merchant processing and some settings there. Light talk about some wish list stuff.

On the server meeting with Wayne, John, Cory, and myself. Sean and Eric popped in for a bit as well. We were talking about email servers, merging in code, and making plans for pushing up new pages. Eric joined and Wayne merged in his code for the global item catalog - enterprise stuff. Once that happened, I pulled the branch down on my local box and was clicking around to see if there were any errors. Looked good.

Small code merge for Dustin. Then working with Wayne on his ColdBox framework stuff. We talked about users, payees, vendors, multiple corps, and memory and session management stuff. Small Q&A with Wayne and John about the framework, plans, and how we will handle certain pieces of the puzzle. Light plans for the future (wish list stuff). After that, John and I spent a little bit of time talking about internal education and training for our developers.

Phone call with Shari O. touching base on budgets, tech support questions, and a new project for a client. The client has reached out to both Shari O. and Cory - trying to double dip and push their project through.

Zoom meeting with Cory and Kelly. The whole thing was dealing with inventory reporting and an advanced report builder concepts. Kelly wants to throw-out a wider net and see what we can catch. Instead of going super deep to financials, she wants us just to focus on the invoices and PO's. Basically, an inventory and CRM (customer relationship management) mix. Leave the accounting alone right now (for these reports). Just help our clients get their data in and out quickly. Basically, it's operations stuff.

One of the goals is to show, teach, and allow our clients to use a mix of vendors, customers, invoices, PO's, inventory items, sub inventory, parent attributes, and location information as needed. All of these things interact on both the sales and customer relationship (CRM) levels.

Here are some my notes from the meeting:

- Talking about building a report building engine. This deals with groupings, filters, show/hide columns, sort orders, etc.

- Kelly was talking about getting to the meta data of the database data (going deeper). What is related, how does it work, what can I get out of it - including mixing things that a company and/or individual is looking for? Even things that we can't think of and/or thing about. Extracting those data analytics and details out of the system. Lots of value there.

- Be able to export to CSV, PDF, and web formats (normal HTML or data tables).

- Ideas about display options - Nested groupings, even pulling and storing data in temp tables, data dumps, and then querying that data. ETL - extract, transform, and load - manipulate the data however we need to. Leave the raw data alone, just tweak out other pieces or tables.

- Show all of the tables and their fields. Preset a few things so that the defaults are showing (not everything is checked by default).

- Use the data tables, be able to save the reports, see new reports from the saved favorites, all kinds of advanced report building options.

- Put this new advanced report builder engine under its own new permission.

- Thinking about vertical tabs (for a layout view). The tables or basic system players would be the left most side (left vertical tabs), the right side would show other settings per table. For example: Say the tabs down the left were things like vendors, customers, invoices, PO's, parts/items, etc. Then when you click on the different tabs, it would show which fields belong to what table (on the top of the page) and then the filters and grouping options would be below that. When you are done, you click to view the report. You could also save a new report name, set the sorting or sort order, and who can see it (assigned to who or just a assigned to all option).

- Help educate the users on the database structure. This could be a great side agenda item for this advanced report builder engine.

- Kelly was asking - Is this new advanced report builder a value add-on? How do we monetize it? We decided that for now, we'll just roll it in and try to sell it as a feature of the whole or bigger picture.

- We talked about sub inventory attribute mappings and creating groups (things or attributes that can cross over categories). This is a form of layering for the sub attributes. Basically, each item category can have any number of sub attributes. We then go in and allow a user to setup groups or which sub attributes are buddies or tied to other sub attributes in different item categories. Making small or mini family groups for the sub attributes. Just an idea to help with reporting and consistency.

- We won't build this in yet, but we have to think about things on an enterprise level. If we build this advanced report builder engine on the corporation or basic world level (where we need to start), it won't be long and some of our bigger multiple world level clients will want an enterprise level solution for the advanced report builder engine. We know that is coming!

- Along with the enterprise level, we know that some of our clients really want the business intelligence (BI) level of reporting and aggregation. It's a known need. That's a whole other plan and topic.

- There may be versions and phases of this report builder engine.

- I was asking about big reports and possible timeout issues. We may need to show sample data and then build out the bigger (in needed) reports and then let our clients know that they are done or finished. Some of these reports could potentially be millions and millions of records. As a note, I know that Wayne was working on something similar to this a few months back. I'll check with him on ideas for timing, flow, and notifications.

- We may want to build in options for details (default level) and/or aggregates groups, sums, counts, etc.

- If you are wanting to get more money from people, it really helps if the people that you are dealing with want the same things (that you want). It creates a common want and need.

- In a nutshell, this project would be mixing and blending all (maybe not all) of our existing advanced search features into one bigger master report builder. Because this project could get so big, we may end up playing around and building a mini version and/or a prototype of sorts.

- We talked about timelines and even ways of distracting our clients to buy some time. All of this takes time and resources to plan, build, and deploy.

- As an addition - it would be really cool if we had some presets (pre-maid selections and choices) to help people get started. That would make the building process simpler. We could show some defaults and then let them modify that vs building from scratch every time. This idea came from Aspen (my daughter) who was listening to the meeting while working on other stuff.

Server meeting with Wayne, John, and Cory. We started out by talking about code that just sits on the shelf. We've got to get things finished up and pushed forward. We have to make some global changes and then make sure everybody knows about it. One of our goals is standardizing things across the board. We were also planning which branches are going live and who is on call for changes that are needed.

We have a big product upgrade coming out over the next couple of days. The big push is getting the enterprise level item catalog live on all servers. Making plans and assignments.

Wayne, John, and Shari O. had a meeting with Hostek. Good progress there. They were reporting about all kinds of stuff. We talked about disaster recovery stuff, plans, schedules, and contacts. It sounds like Hostek is going to try to work directly with our server admin team.

We talked about new email servers, flip flopping branches around on the testing server, and figuring out plans for all of those pieces. We then spent some time talking about changes to the look and feel. Getting approvals and other people to test and sign-off on things. Trying to coordinate efforts.

Eric joined the meeting to help us plan some stuff. As a side note, it is really hard to plan for every possible scenario. At some point, we need to move away from the classic theme (old look and feel). It is starting to cause issues because we still support it, but no new development is being done on that code set. It is also intermixing with other pages that are just on the new more modern snow owl theme (newer look and feel). It's causing more maintenance and larger pages due to keeping up with multiple sets of code (virtual supported versions).

At some point, we would like to automate some of the database updates to get rid of any dependencies when deploying new code and new functionality. John had some questions and we chatted for a bit after the main meeting.

This got skipped today. Instead, most of us were on a meeting with Wayne going over some ideas and prototypes.

Meeting with Wayne, Cory, Steve, and Shari O. over a Zoom meeting. Talking about Wayne wanting to retire by the end of the year. He was reporting on his research and plans with the ColdBox framework from Ortus Solutions. I took a bunch of notes...

- Our development process – it's too difficult and hard to test

- Be able to make a plan, set some goals, requirements, and then be able to hand that off to a developer

- Unit testing

- Our product is super complicated

- Spaghetti code

- Included files – they are all over the place

- Knowing where to put things – tops, headers, body files, footers, etc.

- Spend a bunch of time developing and then spend more time trying to get the code actually launched.

- Our development process takes a long time and causes frustration to our team and our clients

- Back to included files

- Different processes – ways of using the page

- Element is undefined in xyz scope – session, variables, FORM, URL, application, arguments

- Things get lost

- Paths – all kinds - ../, ../../, other paths – that creates problems in different pages that are included in different pages

- Wayne talking about global variables and global listings

- Setting up a standard framework and setting up standard practices

- Even though our code is older, it has really gone a long way

- Because of the way that it is coded, it makes it harder for progression and ways to hand it off

- Steve wants to sell the cool-aid (our current product)

- Triage – what needs our attention first? Life threating things first.

- Steve was talking about some of the developers being lazy – kinda getting frustrated

- Wayne is trying to solve some of those problems and/or issues – he wants to show us some concrete evidence and ways to solve things.

- Some of our developers are up against the wall and doing the best that they can.

- Wayne would like to make our code as simple as possible – guide or a recipe type level

- Cory – to rewrite the entire adilas application – that would take years and years and thousands and thousands of dollars (millions – plural).

- Cory – What about clients who want changes to their current system?

- Steve – How does object-oriented programming play into this? MVC – model, view, controllers – classes, sub classes, view models, controllers

- Wayne really thinks that he could crank out some major changes in a hard month - at least a good indicator or model

- Tons of little maintenance stuff is already baked into the framework

- In our current code, we have so much validation, permissions, and sub logic work – 75% of the whole thing is error handling and validation.

- Cory – If Wayne leaves, what is the reliance on him and the framework? Wayne thinks that it will be even easier and work better – even for the long haul.

- Wayne – Open-source projects and making the framework better – he has contributed already to the main code branch and has had some of his code accepted.

- Steve – Can we do this little by little? Wayne – Sort of – It would be better to get it all done so that we are operating in a different environment.

- Steve – What about docker? Wayne – We would use docker for the main ColdFusion stuff for the servers – Not tied to the current ColdBox framework.

- Steve asking about the datasource project (bus to individual motorcycle). – Wayne was saying how we could do some work to eliminate the reliance on the primary key – Turn everything into combo keys vs the single primary key id. All of the tables could be intermixed with combo keys.

- Steve – We may need to abandon some of the old ways of doing things

- Wayne – Even our database structure needs to be updated and changed. It is built in the older style. Technology changes over time, speed, computing power, etc.

- Steve – We need to be careful where we go, because changes do happen – all the time. Skate to where the puck should be.

- More than one way to skin the cat – If it doesn't work, we could go a different direction.

- Wayne wanted to get a fully working prototype done and finished up before he showed us what was available.

- Wayne is starting on the payee level login as his first few pieces and pages. He wants to get it all ready and documented before we just jump. Wayne is still learning as well.

- Cory is glad that we are talking about this – She would love to see our developers be more efficient and get stuff done.

- Wayne – He feels this is something that has to happen. We need this as part of our solution. Looking forward, we almost don't have a choice.

- Steve – Wayne, you are part of the ownership of this company – Let's make it good for everyone. He was encouraging Wayne to keep going and even setting up the next meeting to show us more.

- Cory asked how Wayne found this framework stuff. Wayne explained how he found things.

- Wayne did a small little dog and pony show on some of his code. Showing rules, routines, variables, and lists.

- Steve and Cory – They both think that Wayne should keep going and bill as he does his work. We also want to make sure that John is up to speed.

- This is a personal investment on Wayne's part – building the future of adilas.

- Wayne has been using Toggl time tracking to keep track of his hours.

- Just for fun – Wayne wants to get it done well enough that we want to write him a check… :)

- Documentation on how you do things – Ortus books and live samples

- Hoping to save money, keep our clients happy, and have a stable product.

- Cory – you have to change to grow. Things that don't grow die.

Wayne, John, Cory, and I on the server meeting. Talking about tech support at our hosting company. Wayne gave John some more permissions in the hosting environment. Wayne is working on a side project in ColdBox and testing out a new ColdFusion specific framework. We talked about doing upgrades and upgrading from some of our older code. Ideally, we are moving more to an MVC framework (model, view, controller) with tons of new options. Currently, we are mixing code with some older libraries and dependencies. Our goal is going to be making fully independent pages and pieces.

Constant process of upgrading our stuff. Conversation about upgrading and what technologies we are using. Are we upgrading with older tech or with the newer more modern tech. We are trying to plan for our future clients. Wayne and John were going over options for switching databases. After that, Cory and John were going over data layouts and small requests. They spent some time talking about different projects. Cory and I did some checking on some custom reports and additional requests for more data and more settings.

I joined the morning meeting and Wayne, John, and Sean were on the meeting. Apparently, there was a hack attempt on the data 3 server. Wayne was watching things and putting up blockades. We talked about sanitizing certain variables and keeping things tight (checking for certain mal or bad values). Both Wayne and John were on it.

Wayne was helping me make a few changes to my local computer. Eric popped in and had some questions on vendor stuff. Steve called and I chatted with him on the phone for a bit. Mike wants to meet and talk about SG&A costs and how to virtually load and sell some of those costs as inventory items (moving capitalized expenses into inventory). Anyways, we chatted briefly about that and then jumped on a different meeting.

Sean was on the morning meeting. He was using ChatGPT to get some bullet points for adilas as an all-inclusive ERP system. Interesting use of AI (artificial intelligence). Here is what it came up with...

Here are some possible bullet points for an all-in-one ERP system called Adilas:

• Comprehensive Functionality: Adilas offers a wide range of features to support businesses of all sizes and industries, including accounting, inventory management, sales, purchasing, payroll, time tracking, project management, and more.

• Cloud-based Solution: Adilas is a fully cloud-based ERP system, which means that users can access it from anywhere with an internet connection. This makes it easy to collaborate with team members, work remotely, and manage multiple locations.

• Customizable Interface: Adilas provides a highly customizable interface, allowing users to tailor the system to their specific needs and preferences. This includes the ability to create custom fields, labels, reports, and workflows.

• Mobile Accessibility: Adilas is designed to be mobile-friendly, with a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes. This makes it easy to use on smartphones and tablets, enabling on-the-go access to critical business data.

• Robust Security: Adilas takes security seriously, offering multiple layers of protection to safeguard user data. This includes role-based access controls, encrypted data transmission, and regular security updates.

• Affordable Pricing: Adilas is priced competitively, with affordable subscription plans that scale with the size and complexity of the business. There are no setup fees, and users can choose to pay monthly or annually.

• Excellent Support: Adilas provides comprehensive support to its users, including online documentation, video tutorials, live chat, phone support, and email support. This ensures that users have the resources they need to get the most out of the system.

Kinda fun... Anyways, he will tweak it and make it our own, but that's what the chatbot came up with.

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Wayne joined the meeting and he and I were working on my local machine and box. Somehow my development environment got all messed up. We took things up, down, up, and back down. Trying this and that, rebuilding images, cloning things, etc. We even tried reverting back to an older image to see if that would work. Still had issues. I may need to get a new laptop or computer.

After about 2.5 hours of playing around, I decided to go back to the old non docker image way of doing the local development environment. This includes standalone installations of Adobe ColdFusion, MySQL databases, and other pieces. I was making progress and then got stuck, having to run ton of database updates to get the database up to speed. Ended up stopping and bailing out for lunch. Too much to do all in one sitting.

We started out in the server meeting talking about an outage we had last week at the hosting level (upstream of us). We talked about what to do about an outage and getting and SOP (standard operating procedure) or process in place for what to do on a disaster recovery type level. Cory was checking on different projects.

Wayne is looking into ColdBox as a ColdFusion framework. We talked quite a bit about his findings and progress. After that, we were figuring out what is next for the data 5 testing server. We've had a few projects that get almost all the way done and then sort of get lost in the sign-off and testing phases. It could be data, time, scenarios, settings, or just not watching it all the way through. That code isn't gone, it's just sort of stalled out or in limbo land. Cory and John were making plans to do some testing on a project.

They were looking at a server and why it is running slow. We need more info from the client as to what they are doing (process or procedures). We really need to know what corp, what page, what time of day, and what process they are doing. Just saying that the server was slow doesn't help us out very much. Once we finished this up, Cory bailed out and left just Wayne and John and I on the meeting to work on my local development environment (docker images, git stuff, and database code).

Both Wayne and John were watching my screen and trying to help me figure out what was going on. We repulled down code, rebuilt images, and did whatever updates we could think about. Tons of command line stuff. I'm not very good at that (hardcore IT and tech stuff). They were very kind to help me for hours and hours. As we worked, we were having some side conversations about different things. Here are some of my notes.

- Aspects, events, announcing (broadcasting states and status), listening for events and announcements, virtual queues, and event handlers.

- We talked about resource collections, private resource collections, and virtual session management options.

- Standards and consistencies across platforms and development environments

- Different modules for security, validation, etc.

- Form validators and bulk issue finding

- The power of mixing rules and assignments

- Virtual flash memory and managing containers for memory objects (just in time memory allocations and storage).

- Thinking in both layers and levels - for almost everything

- Writing less code using a framework

- If we went with a new framework, we would need both training and deeper education.

- We talked about having both commercial products as well as open source products. Mixing the two types together. Some people will buy the commercial product and then contribute to the open source product. Or the other way around - open source to commercial.

- Packages, extensions, modules - making complex decisions

- Looking at clustering options - comparing Lucee and Adobe ColdFusion - including options for clustering and licensing requirements. Adobe ColdFusion is really nice, but you can lose your shorts on the clustering options and prices. It can get painful in the pocketbook (costs).

- If we make some changes, we would have to change our pricing models. If a client or customer wants more dynamic resources, they have to pay for it. The price would based off of usage vs just a fixed or static price.

- We talked about paying for support - both what we offer and what we are requesting from other vendors and web hosts.

- Talking about ways to give back to open source models and projects - help with bug fixes, donations, and keep pushing their product forward. We spent a little bit of time talking about other ways to help businesses and products that we like and want to support. Just conversations at this point but rolling a few things around.

Wayne had to leave (dinner time where he was at) and just John and I kept going. Wayne checked back in a few time but to no avail. We couldn't get my local environment fully back up. Wayne is going to do some testing on his side and we'll hit it again tomorrow. While we were waiting for things to download and install, John and I were talking about computers and different specs. I may need to upgrade my local computer. It's kinda small for what I use it for (spec wise and hardware wise - RAM, motherboard, chips/cores, hard drive, and processor speed).

Sean and Michael were meeting and talking about gift cards, demos, and sales. I was cascading updates and settings to other servers. John jumped in and helped me with the Herbo server and with my local docker image stuff. The Herbo server just needed to be restarted (Adobe ColdFusion services). We kept running into problems with the docker image stuff. Some of it would run great and other parts would fail or not work correctly. Wayne jumped in and helped me out as well. No major success before the server meeting started (the next meeting).

Working with John and pushing up some files temporarily for some live testing on one of the servers. We were having issues with the auto deploy only on certain servers. Texts to both Wayne and Eric on different subjects and follow-up. Recording notes in the system for 4/11/23.

Shari O. had a question about the adilas phones stuff. We looked at the page and there was some code that tried to show a sub or outside website that was not in a secured SSL (https) site. We made some tweaks and pushed up the code. Kind of a temporary quick fix.

Wayne, John, Cory, Shari O., and I were on the meeting. They were talking about a client and their servers needs. They (our client) may be closing some of their locations down but want to keep other ones active. Light back and forth on whether or not any server specs needed to be changed on that server. There was also a conversation about the need for more tech support. Both on our side and on the server side (the hosting company). Often we don't need help, but when we do, it is kind of painful.

Cory had a list and was checking on different projects. Good dialog and good back and forth. Wayne may be moving on and working less in the next few months. He is wanting to be more of a part time or fully retired. We need to get plans in place to figure out who is going to be taking over that role and what documentation and knowledge needs to be transferred over. We talked briefly about Dustin maybe wanting to help with servers and also looking at existing knowledge levels. Do we want to bring up one of our own guys and/or hire it out to someone else with more knowledge? Great questions.

Wayne was talking about options for virtually building a new ship. This has been a discussion and topic for years. Do we keep building and tweaking what we have or do we rewrite things and try to go all new (code, architecture, design, etc.). There are pros and cons to both approaches. Due to current budgets, we have to stay with fixing what we have vs building all new. That can be painful as well and takes a lot of time. Wayne was talking about doing a sample project and seeing what kind of time it might take to move the existing adilas structure over or under a new standard framework. There are a number of unknowns, but worth looking into.

Towards the end, John and Cory were talking about look and feel stuff. Also, Wayne and John will continue to work on some outlines and plans for the system architecture stuff. Making progress on most fonts. We'll take it!

Meeting with John. He was going to help me with my docker images and local development environment. Right before the meeting I was able to make a little bit more progress. It was stalled out and I had rebooted my computer a number of times. John and chatted for a bit and touched base on a few different things. He passed me some docker commands through chat that I saved for later reference. He and Wayne are working on some server documentation and system architecture documents. As I was doing the rebuild, it was taking forever so John bailed out and just said to reach out if I had any problems or questions. I was grateful for his help.

Hostek went down a couple of days ago. Wayne was reporting on what was going on. We talked about communication and disaster recovery processes. Who does what and what are steps and responsibilities. We need to more tech support from our hosting companies. We have like 40 servers there at Hostek. Most times they do great. However, if things go wrong and/or bad, we don't get any preferential treatment. We kinda need that.

Anyways, Wayne was doing his own trouble shooting processes and found a few problems. We have a growing need for more documentation for our processes and procedures. We also need to keep some of them super secure. That makes for an interesting mix. There is also a ongoing need for more communications and keeping everybody in the loop that needs to be there.

At some point, we would like to reclaim some of the WordPress stuff on our main site. Sometimes WordPress is a high level target, with tons of plug-ins, themes, and required sequential updates. Once again, we need to get documentation for all of these pieces. The next subject was a statement that everybody needs to give us documentation and architecture layouts. Some people don't like that, don't think like that, and it's worse then torture for them. We have to figure things out and figure out who is going to do what. Everybody has talents, virtues, strengths, and weaknesses. It is tough to require the exact same things from everyone. It will end up being a moving balance.

As a side note, we may end up needing to help certain people do some of those things like documentation, training, and certain communication skills or tasks. There may be a need for a new role to help the devs and get the info out of their heads and into a consumable format. Eventually we have to get documentation on all internal and external dependencies. There is a big difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Sometimes we are pushing so hard, it's hard to slow down and virtually clean-up or sweep the floor.

We talked about having a checklist for our developers. We have an old one that Alan and I worked on years ago, but that's all that we have at this point. Some of the developers just can't do the documentation (and sadly, some of them we don't want them to do it). It seems like the next steps are helping to collect and organize the information and documentation. We have some holes that need to be filled. John was commenting that we need to add this into the budgets and project costs. We need to charge more than just the developer's time. Once again, we may be going too fast or running too hard. We are missing a part of the puzzle.

Next, we went into talking about Adobe ColdFusion uptime on hosted platforms. Wayne was reporting to Cory about a survey that he was reading and what it was saying. Cory wanted the guys (Wayne and John) to call and talk with Hostek to see if we could some things changes (service levels and response times). We need to make sure that we have the access and tools that we need. Some of our clients are 24/7 everyday, even holidays.

The new dedicated testing server was the next major topic. We switched over to talking about the data 5 server, capturing documentation, and walking through the project with both Wayne and John. They are working on both training and documentation and so it is taking a bit longer. Making good progress. John has a project that is done that needs to be tested by some outside parties. He and Wayne are setting up and managing the project queue. Cory is helping to coordinate the actual projects and the testing.

Spent some time talking about look and feel and talking about a new version of the internal shopping cart. We know that there is a need there, we are just not sure how deep to jump. We may end up doing things in a couple of rounds. Round one, just look and feel. Round two new settings to toggle on/off certain fields, sections, columns, and features. There may be another round that gets into a smart cart level (deep cart engine logic). In a nutshell, we want to remove things and make it smarter and easier.

We are looking for feedback. Talking about timing on projects, testing, and pushing things all the way until they are live and in production (and fully documented). Shari O. popped in and was asking about insurance and levels of support from Hostek. Sometimes, the lack of support can be a deal breaker. We've seen this even in sales of our system. It's a part of the puzzle that gets overlooked sometimes.

WordPress was down and this caused our main website to be down. I contacted Chuck via text, then a phone call. Sent emails to Wayne with some instructions and suggestions from Chuck. Trying to get things figured out. Luckily, you could bypass the main website and do a direct login by changing the URL (web path) to the login page.

Jumped on the GoToMeeting session and was having audio problems. Cory had some questions about the adilas label builder and getting images pulled in. Kelly needs some sub inventory reports. Some of that gets pretty dynamic and pretty deep. After that, John and I talked about our WordPress site and getting our stuff off of an outside content management software package, WordPress. We couldn't get ahold of either Wayne or Chuck to get help. We need to get some documentation from both or have John help with that documentation. Our eventual goal is working towards standardizing and using best practices for all of our developers. Constant processing of pivoting, updating, and changing to fit and fill our needs.

Chuck was able to meet with me and I jumped back on the GoToMeeting session. John jumped back on as well. We were trying to fix the WordPress stuff for our site. Chuck was helping John try to navigate to a certain file folder and make some changes. We kept running into issues. Cory jumped on and we made a quick fix for her on a cross corp invoice to PO transaction (special cross corp page). Once we finished that up, back on with John going over plans and what not.

We started out the server meeting and Cory wanted to check on the data 34 server. It was reported that it was running slow. Wayne logged in and looked around. They ordered some more RAM for the database server. Pretty cool to see how quickly they can jump on things.

Next, we started talking about a client and their balance sheet. I mentioned to Cory that we have on our wish list a report that would show known issues (bad dates, things done out of order, or other possible problems that we could detect and/or figure out). That would be so cool. As a side note, the page already exists, it just hasn't been built out yet. Definitely on our wish list for fracture. This could help all of us out and make things more transparent and visible.

Both Wayne and John are working on documenting things on the server level. It's far from done, but they showed up a 3 page document (just the start) of the outline or outline of the server layered architecture design document. Pretty cool. Starting to see that being worked on. I'm excited to see what they come up with.

The next major conversation was dealing with adilas phones, phone trees, and other forms of digital communication. We had some open discussion about do we want to keep it, who is going to support it, who is going to maintain it, and so forth. This piece is kinda flapping in the wind. We also talked about, if we want to, allocating both time and money and getting that code and/or process fully inhouse. Right now, it is a virtual 3rd party entity, even though we technically own it. The prior owner/developer is the only one who really knows what is going on inside there. We talked about different technologies that we could and would use if we brought it fully under our control or under our roof.

The reason that the adilas phones stuff got brought up was because of this document that they are building out for the system architecture and layered plans. Hopefully, we'll uncover other issues and/or dependencies that we need to look at and evaluate (spend/don't spend, maintain/don't maintain, market, pitch, let it die, etc.). We kept getting off on tangents. Cory did a great job keeping the discussion going in a good direction. Once setup, we will provide an open VPN (virtual private network) for our developers to be able to remote into the testing box to push code and make changes.

After that, we got into talking about the testing server and what our plans are for that. We have a client's data that we want to move off of a production server and put in the Amazon cold storage or Amazon Glacier. As we were talking about the testing server, Shari O. was sending questions and comments through the chat feature on the GoToMeeting account. We are making progress there and making headway.

We got into talking about insurance, coverage, errors and omissions, and general cyber security, and data breaches. We have a 3rd party integration that is pushing on us and wanting all kinds of certifications and proof of insurance coverage. Everybody but John and I had to leave to jump on other meetings or calls.

After that, John and I spent some time doing a code review on his recipe/build rework stuff. We talked about a new possible user-level setting for using the time-pickers vs an open entry time field. John likes the time-pickers. I had to take them out the other day due to a few clients complaining. That sounds like a perfect option for a user-level setting. We also went over new options for showing progress bars and helping the users know which step they are on and what is still needed to complete a certain task and/or process.

As a final comment for the meeting, John said - "The ROI (return on investment) for the testing server will be internal peace of mind." I liked that.

Touching base with Sean. John jumped on and was updating the printable expense/receipts to show verified payments. I merged in some code for Dustin and then started working through emails. John jumped off to work with Wayne on server documentation stuff. I spent the rest of the time recording notes from yesterday (3/21/23).

Cory and Eric were talking about enterprise level stuff and the new item catalog that they are working on. We then switched over and were talking about a 3rd party API socket connection that has been in place for a couple of years. They had some questions and want us to do some research. We feel like they should pay for it (new maintenance and new development). We looked around in our code repository a bit to see if we could find any changes that happened on our side of the fence.

Wayne joined the meeting and reported on some mandatory Adobe ColdFusion updates (patches) that had to be applied to all production server (security risk stuff). We talked about getting server documentation and helping to transfer that server and backend knowledge to the other developers or whomever might be taking over, once Wayne retires. Wayne has been making some notes and doing some screen recording or screen capture videos.

We then rolled into a discussion on a dedicated testing server. I'll cover more of that in a minute. At the end of the meeting, John was reporting on progress on CSS and look and feel changes. He is working on printable deposits and printable expense/receipts. He is also making some small tweaks to the layouts and where certain dollar figure data is located. Good stuff. Cory and John were talking about plans on the discount engine and making plans.

Going back to the dedicated testing server - We went over a proposal to get a real testing server up and going. We currently have a number of testing bottlenecks. We talked about reverse merging in master code to the working branches, to help keep them up to date. We have had problems when a project takes weeks or months and it has not been kept up with the master code branch. When we go to merge it, sometimes there are huge differences, conflicts, and some of the underlying application structure has changed. That merge process then takes a while to sort out and make sure that everything gets fully tested and verified again. Anyways, it is an issue that we deal with.

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We then had a small discussion about pros and cons for getting or having a dedicated testing server. This was all recorded on a google doc, but I'll paste it here for searchability. Here are some of our notes from today:

Group discussion notes

Cory - We’ve tried this before - what would be different this time?

John - No FTP access to the testing server - there are pros and cons to that

Wayne - We need to test one branch at a time

John - He would like to see it (use of the testing server) go in a line (testing schedule or queue) - I’m next, you’re after me, etc.

Wayne - If we need to, we wipe it clean and then start over again. That’s the process and the beauty of it. We test on it, beat it up, and then wipe it clean for the next round.

John - We can get a full copy of a client’s database and then kick the crap out of it. When done, we just flush it. We never mess with live data. We just make a copy and then test and push against that. Much better look (at live data - copied) then our own fake development data.

Wayne - We need a way to turn off outside 3rd party API’s - either mocking it (pretending) or muting it (silent send outs).

Cory - Sometimes we have big issues with Metrc and other outside parties and doing testing that flows into outside 3rd party API sockets and feeds.

Cory - Currently we are using the Herbo server for some testing. We have been having problems with that. What is going on?

Wayne was commenting on the Herbo server - We are mixing branches, there is still FTP access, it is pointed to a non-master branch, and we have certain things that we can’t change for demos or other needs. Basically, we are using a live server, we have live clients on it, and we are trying to test on it. Too many mix and blend variables... Hard to manage.

Wayne - Would like to see some project scheduling - project A on this day, project B on this day, etc. Keep it tight (ish).

Cory - Con of having just Wayne and John having access to the testing servers. The scenario is, if we find an error, we can fix it right away (whoever the developer or testers are) but then we have to contact either John or Wayne to help that new code get pushed up and deployed. That becomes another bottleneck.

Wayne - We could change the timeframe or auto deploy time cycle to make it faster.

Cory - What about data 5? That is an option, but we would have to make a full copy of the database and all of the corp specific files (images, PDF’s, csv files, etc.). We could then order a new hard drive or put those files somewhere on the current hard drive that we could get back to if needed.

John - Talking about paying bills (meaning our clients)… If a client doesn’t pay, we should be able to just shut them off.

Cory - Question - How much does it cost to put things in cold storage? How much does it cost to bring it back up live?

John and Cory - Talking about costs. John was saying that we need to build in this cost ($400-$600 per month) as an operating cost. We are a software company. We kind of need this. Just like being a foundation company and not having access to a cement truck. It creates a problem.

There are ways to lower the cost, if needed. We could lower CPU’s, RAM, etc. We could also spin things up/down as needed.

Wayne - Rough cost to spin up a server is 2+ hours (somewhere in that neighborhood)

Cory - Really liked the video idea of Wayne recording what he does as future training things and visual assets. Good idea. We just need to be careful of who gets those… This is the whole backend access zone stuff. We just need to keep it tight.

John - He has some server docs and would like to get that put into a private repo that only has access to Wayne, Brandon, and John. Small group.

Cory - Figuring out a way to force some of these clients to pay for cold storage and reanimation or redeployment of the servers. It comes down to if you don’t pay your bills, we get full control of what happens. We need to do what we said that we will do. Forcing the hand by making them pay for the backup data.

John - We just need to have our plans and procedures in place. We need something to stand on.

Brandon - We could do some cold storage on the same servers. Either with a different drive or a partitioned area where we could store things. As a group, we were talking about other possible storage options within the same box. We could make copies of ColdFusion files, client files, and SQL data dumps. Put them all out of reach but on the same server. Then if needed, we could restore things as needed.

John and Cory - If we need to reanimate or redeploy - here are the params and timelines and costs - Part of the plan. Some of these values may change in the future as well.

John - If the crap hits the fan… He doesn’t want to be in the spray zone of that fan. We need to protect ourselves.

Steve and Sean were talking about deployment and how we need to be onsite, at times, to help the people get going. Sometimes there really isn't a good time, we just have to do it and let other things flow around us. Sean is making some plans to go help a company with a new setup and deployment down in Texas. Steve was encouraging him to grab it by the horns and go for it. That's how we used to do it, back in the day.

Steve had some questions about searching Microsoft Excel for field lengths. We looked it up and found that you can use the function =LEN(D12) where D12 is the cell address. That will give you the character count or string length. That is very similar to how we do things in other languages. Anyways, just a little tidbit.

John and I started talking about the need for a testing server. Steve and Sean took off and it was just John and I on the meeting. Some of our developers have been asking for a dedicated testing server. We kinda have one, but it still contains some older live customer data. That company got purchased by another company and isn't actively using the server, but it has things that we need to leave alone and not touch/destroy. We used to have a dedicated testing server, but we weren't actively using it and decided to shut it down. We have a need sometimes and then it chills out and we won't need it for a month or two.

The two of us did a good long session and came up with some pros and cons, budgets, and advantages of getting a new dedicated testing server. John started a Google doc and we put some info on it. Here were a few things that we came up with (these may change in the future - just a quick copy of what we were working on):

Pros

- No clients on that box - able to beat it up and even kill it without affecting anybody
- Be able to swap out the database - at will - really test with real client data without causing problems with their data
- Mock things up without worrying about cleaning it up
- Be able to point any code branch to that server so that it could interact with the data
- Code stability and testing
- Eventually move over to Lucee (as the backend server-side scripting language) - This could save us $20K per year - if we could cut out the Adobe ColdFusion licensing ($100/month per server). This is a recurring monthly fee.

Cons

- Cost per month or cost per year
- Another server to maintain
- We have to get with Wayne or John to get things planned and changed around, plus all of the current changes on live testing on servers while clients are still actively using those same boxes.
- Admin team only sees the costs not the benefits of getting a good testing environment - in John’s words, “They are not out in the weeds banging around. We need this.”
- We have a number of huge projects that haven't fully gone live yet, due to some little hitch or merge or overwriting code. Thousands of dollars of development that we can't use or sell yet.

Maybe use data 5 - Currently about $400/month - $200 CF and $200 DB

Budget of 5K per year

What does it cost in other resources and labor - Wayne, John, other devs?

Timing (when to do things - during business hours or after hours), loads (time of day and tasks and amount of data), and planning (looking ahead and when do we do this or that)

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John and I will fill in more details later. After the meeting ended, I wrote a few other things down that were going through my mind during the meeting. Here a few other notes:

- Taking the time to listen. Sometimes that is really hard. Often, we are going a million miles an hour and are almost being too efficient. If we slow down a bit, we could gain some valuable insight and information. Our normal is push, push, push. That is good sometimes, but not for every case. Slow down and take the time to listen - at home, at work, and with others.

- We had a need for some specific training this morning, but no one knew where to find it or if we even have it. I know we have it, because I did it years ago, but it has sat un cataloged and undocumented. We really need to go in and go through our older videos and do some cataloging and documentation of what we've got. Even if we want to do some new training, it would be great to see what we already have, even if it for nothing more than training the trainers. There is good content, drawings, explanations, demos, questions, and solutions. Eventually, this all needs to be a part of the adilas university site and media catalog. This hasn't been cataloged yet, but here is the Adilas.biz YouTube channel with hundreds of videos, that need to be cataloged.

Cory and John were going over a review of a dashboard mock-up and layout that John was working on. After that, we talked about getting documentation for the main adilas servers. We have like 40 of them. Currently, a lot of the real nuts and bolts are in Wayne's head. We need to get that information out of his head and into a more tangible state (both paper and digital). If we ever needed to get a new server admin guy/gal, we would need this information. John has a bunch of it, but not all of it. Wayne has told us that he is getting close to retiring (at some point).

Along those same lines, there is so much to know and coordinate to really make everything work smoothly. John was talking about doing a software architecture drawing and doing some systems design work. We have been building this thing for over 20 years, it sure would be nice to build out something to show the visual architecture, flowcharts, and database model. We have it all, we just don't have the visuals or 10,000 foot level models. Think of all of the natural and possible connections and relationships. That could be a pretty hefty project, to document all of that. Anyways, we talked about some projects to get that information out of the minds of a few and into our hands to distribute as needed (paper, visual, and digital models).

I won't go into all of it, but we went over ideas for setting up those visual models and then keeping those things updated. There will be some ongoing maintenance that will be required. Who is going to do what? Who does do what (right now)? etc. Figuring out ways to transferer knowledge and be able to store and search that knowledge. John has some server docs where we could record things. Wayne joined the meeting and we briefly covered some of these same topics over again with him.

The next major topic was dealing with how we build and deploy custom code. Basically, we went over the progression of the black box  and black box code from the ecommerce site and side of the fence into the secured environment. Wayne had some questions and was trying to follow some of the logic for different black box code sections. He would love to help us standardize things and make it more uniform. We have lots of comments in our code, but we are really lacking in real documentation on almost all levels. In a way, that's a form of technical debt. We will keep circling back around and pick up the pieces as we are able. Ideally, we will figure out and document the best practices. We will then really try to stick by those practices. Another big part of this is making sure that all of our guys/gals follow those best practices.

The conversation progressed and we started talking about moving our older code out of linear processes and more into services and functions. Once this happens (on all levels) we would not be as bound to our linear flow and would be able to jump around more, as needed. We have already been making this move and Alan has been refactoring and building out all kinds of services. This is just a pitch to make it more global and system-wide.

Next, we got into some bug tracking and error logs. We have seen a number of errors in the logs but no one has reported those errors, especially out in ecommerce. We have a feeling that it is automated traffic, outside hackers, and/or bot traffic. It seems like instead of following existing patterns and page flow, the automated traffic is skipping steps and thus introducing certain flow errors that we can't duplicate by doing normal processes. Anyways, we spent some time looking at the error logs.

Cory was asking about why we care about those other errors. Wayne was explaining that certain errors, especially if we get a bunch of them, then to crowd out other more important errors (they get buried in the midst of all of the non-important errors). Currently, our goal is to fix what we can along the way. This lead to more discussion on documentation and being able to show people what our way is and why we do it that way.

Some of our projects are being delayed due to waiting patterns and/or approvals. We have things ready and planned but are either lacking approval, budgeted funds, or something else if waiting in the wings that needs to come first and/or before some other step (virtual fires and priorities). Cory really wants us to try to focus on getting the system architecture stuff documented and creating those visual models. Internally, we will book some of this time as server training time.

Eventually, we will need to do documentation and training on backend stuff as well as frontend stuff. Wayne and John are going to start doing some of the backend architecture stuff here in the next few weeks and months. We will keep chipping away at things.

Small pitch to the guys and gals of what we are planning. I did a small recap of our last sales meeting and went over a few ideas and options. The first two pieces of the plan are the adilas jellyfish model and the value add-on core model. Just trying to keep all of the players up to date and in the loop. Even though it's not done and fully ready yet.

We flipped over to server stuff and going over servers, bugs, questions, and what not. Cory had a list of questions to follow-up about. Wayne was telling Cory about new ways of building and checking objects and memory objects. We went over some options for testing code on data 5 and the value of both data and documentation. Cory asked about a few other client requests. One of the last topics was - Being able to finish and get the projects across the finish line.

For me, I really want to build the value add-on core graphic in put it in the teaching photo gallery. I have to keep drawing it over and over again, and it doesn't really show the whole vision of where we are headed yet. I'll get there.

Wayne joined the meeting and we did a couple hour work session together. He was showing me some stuff on the Google Workspace and email settings. We were going over SMTP, relay services, and app passwords. We changed the payment options for the Google Workspace account. We then flipped over to a number of other topics. Here are some of my other notes.

- We looked at session values and setting up both application and session values and variables on the server. We talked about a session object manager of sorts. This also includes the main adilas.biz website, shop (ecommerce), web (API sockets), and other public sites. We were thinking of having one session manager object and then passing in special flags based on what section(s) the user/client is using. It may vary or may include a number of different things, at the same time. We talked about sub classes within the session scope or session manager.

- Looking at SQL table joins and going over some options for inner joins, syntax, and converting our older code into different formats. Our goal is to make some of the joins tighter, yet still maintain the agile or flexible interface that we currently have. This is part of the datasource project (splitting up the databases and also being able to combine the databases, if needed).

- We talked a lot about UUID's and how this sometimes slows things down. As a thought, we may just use this (UUID's) on the payee/vendor tables. We spent some time talking about the global id numbers for payees (users and vendors). This lead to a discussion on off coding (altering our current code) to use a combo primary key vs a single auto generated primary key. We went over a number of scenarios and talked through things. We are putting the datasource project at $30K-$60K based on what we are seeing.

- We jumped backed more into session stuff and looking at errors that are undefined in session scope (variables that are used in heads and tops but don't exist in certain situations. We would like to create a master list of all session variables and what their defaults are. If we do this, we will be able to code against things better and really be able to push heavily on the know values. As a side note, we do have some pages that only create session values if a certain task or button is clicked. The code there will need to be changes to check for some other value (is it valid or not). If we do this, it should make our code more simple and more usable and more reliable. That will help.

- Consistency, and always setting things to a known state. Creating that central one-to-many type object.

- Dealing with session values, new rules, and new functions - we don't have to do everything in one swipe. We could do one variable, one page, one function at a time. Once we get it lined out (basically outlining the logic, flow, and template type mentality), we could hand it over to one of our other developers who likes to do processes over and over again. Basically, using our super skilled folk to build it out, then have our lower skilled folks help us push it to all pages and sections. We then would need to oversee things and delegate the tasks to our guys and gals.

Good meeting, making progress!

We started out by John and Cory going over pages, options, and new look and feel changes. Talking about show/hide search criteria, scrolling, or creating new flow and/or better layouts. Making some good progress and John is making a number of updates.

KPI - key performance indicators - We have a client that is wanting us to build a custom dashboard page that KPI pieces as part of the dashboard. We may end up going in on the development costs with the client to help them get what we/they want.

Wayne joined the meeting and we were going over a number of lists and different projects. Wayne, John, and I met a few times while Cory was gone, so this was the first time that all of us were back together in a couple of weeks. Touching base on various projects. Looking over a few issues and small bugs. Shari O., Cory, Wayne, John, and I were on the meeting for a while. Things seem to be going well, in general. We are making progress in a number of areas.

Light talks between Cory and John on the discount engine and planning to roll things out. We are getting better and better at planning things and hopefully doing them (acting on the plans).

Multi-hour server meeting. Wayne, John, and I were on the meeting. Our first topic was email servers and options. I pitched 4 options. Wayne came up with a fifth option. Here they are - in general:

1. Stay with Newtek on the same server and try to update code to help make it more stable. Currently on a shared server for email functionality.
2. Stay with Newtek and just upgrade the shared ColdFusion server to a newer version. Basically, request a plan change and switch boxes (upgrade servers).
3. Switch over to Hostek and use their email services either as a shared server or a VPS for SmarterMail.
4. Full custom and we setup the server, the services, and the API socket connections. There are a number of unknowns here.
5. Switch over to Google workspace and use that as our email server. This was Wayne's idea. We chatted about ideas, options, pricing and what not. He is going to run some experiments using one of our other domain names that we have to do some testing.

After we got done talking about possible email options, we started talking about the datasource project and options that we have there. This discussion took quite a bit of time and felt like we weren't making much progress until towards the end of the discussion. We were talking about tough situations like payees and users being bridged between corporations. We went over the need for GUID's or globally unique id numbers. We also talked about tables like customers and part categories where we use the auto generated id as the main primary field. We also talked about other tables where we allow duplicates based on a multiple column primary key. For example: Say deposits or PO's. We let the system create an auto id number that we don't use (auto number for the transactional ids) but then we do a special corp id and main deposit number or corp id and main PO number as the sub combos. Ideally, we'd like to make all of the tables so that they could have that multiple column primary key or key indexes to help keep the data separated.

Lots and lots of talk about tables, options, and details. Toward the end, I think that all of us had a better idea of what we are up against and how to tackle the project. That is awesome. Our next plan is to have Wayne play with some things and see what it would take to update and merge a couple of tables. Basically, we are going to start running some scenarios and testing experiments. We talked quite a bit about UID's (unique identifiers) and even converting them into numeric values to help with indexing, sorting, and such. Most of it came down to adding in an additional layer to the database where needed. It's not needed everywhere, just in certain places and that was good to see. Progress.

As a goal, it would be super cool to get the full database all mapped out and fully documented. Things like data definitions, primary keys, foreign keys, key indexes, combo fields, etc. As a fun side note, if we flip over to a unique id type system, the main work will be on the insert code (putting things into the database). Then making sure that each select, or view query uses that unique id (a real UID or a combo/multi column primary key) in the joins and where clause filters. Once again, good progress on the datasource project. It may end up being a combo of both new datasource names and better unique identifiers to allow us to mix and bled tables, datasources, and data as needed.

Next, we switched over to session variables and session management options. We talked about setting up global session variables, centralized place to manage that, and moving things into more of a session object with methods, classes, and functions. Get it all in one place vs having it in-line code on multiple different pages. All part of standardizing things and maturing code wise.

Wayne reported that he and Eric got the local docker image running on Eric's Mac with no problems. We talked about some image, media/content, and local paths that need some help and loving. Then at the end of the meeting, after Wayne had left, John and I went over a number of new pages that need to be updated with a more modern look and feel. Long, but a good meeting today.

Emails and researching a different bug on gift card payments. I ended up just doing some looking around. Not sure where to go, based on the new stuff and newer flow processes. I know the old way, super well. But some of the new stuff is still kinda fuzzy for me. I may need to get with either Eric or Wayne to get some clarification. I made some other notes for when we meet that will allow me to get back to what I was looking at.

We have been using an email service for years and years. We are starting to outgrow that service and looking at ideas for what is next. These are just some ideas that I had written down on a post-it note but wanted to make sure and put them in digital form.

- Steve said to call and see what the provider of the service says as far as upgrades, ideas, and what not.

- We could always roll things back (we've done this as a temporary band-aid). We are currently using an older shared server to service the internal and API socket connections for the email service. It is called adilasuniveristy.biz. We wanted to move the code to a server that we have deeper access to (dedicated server vs a shared server). We tried moving it to the adilascontent.biz server but couldn't get it to work with all of the emails. It would work fine for adilas.biz email addresses but not for gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.

- We could check the certs on the content server

- Get Wayne's help

- Do a whole new rebuild, from the ground up

- Check whitelists and blacklists

- Include better error handling and record errors in log files and/or in the database

John and Steve were on the meeting going over the chooser page and graphic options. We kept going back to ways of limiting things down by selections and/or settings. We have a lot and sometimes it gets hard to sort through things. Sean was asking about email stuff and what we need to do there. That is still somewhat of a mystery with some unknowns. We went back to talking with John about the look and feel changes that are here and/or coming down the pipeline. There is no way to get it all done at once. We will have to allow for different rounds and being willing to circle back around again and again. All part of the process and that's ok.

We talked about being able to search and filter different options. John is going to be working on adding things to the adilas docs. Dustin reached out and had me push some code for him. Quick phone call (mini server meeting) with Wayne. He was not in the office and was out doing stuff with his family. We'll reconnect next week and push more on the email stuff.

Dustin popped in and had some questions for both Steve and myself. We talked quite a bit about email stuff. That is a hot topic right now. It got a little bit heated and crazy. I'm trying but some of this stuff is over my head and somewhat out of my hands. Lots of pressure, both internally and from our clients.

We were supposed to get on a server meeting, but Wayne wasn't able to make it. I spent the next hour from 10-11 am rolling back about 38 files from pointing to the adilas content server back to the older adilas university site, where we had the old email API functionality stuff.

This is a side note, but sometimes I really wish that they (our team) would ask someone else to do it. I don't like being the fix it guy. That's a lot of pressure. Not my favorite thing, for sure.

Wayne, Cory, John, and I jumped on the server meeting. We were reporting on updates and what has happened since last week. Cory had some questions about being able to move corporations around. That lead to a discussion about future goals of being able to move to a fully clustered environment. Talking about plans and where we are headed. We also went over a few of the prep steps that we need to do in order to get there. Light talks about the datasource project. That is part of an overarching world building project that we are working on and chipping away at. It keeps coming up. We really want to push it forward, as we are able.

Wayne was explaining clustering to Cory. I was mostly just listening to them talk back and forth. We did talk about maybe doing a small prototype or demo project to do a proof of concept. Next, we talked about building up a data dictionary. At some point we want to document the whole database, tables, relationships, primary keys, foreign keys, data types, and other data definitions. As a fund side note, inside of the adilas shop corporation's site, we have a number of documents that Brandon has worked on over the years - the beginning of the data definitions and data dictionary stuff. To find those, do an advanced media/content search and add the keyword "database" to the file name or path field to get the results. Some of the original work was done back in 2014 and then added onto later on.

As we were talking about data dictionaries and definitions, we talked about getting everything in one spot where all of us could see it and contribute to the document. We have it stored inside of adilas, but it isn't really setup for quick contributions like a google doc or something like that.

Lastly, both Wayne and John got into some deep talks about Java memory stuff. John and Cory were also talking about look and feel pages and upcoming projects as we ended the meeting.

We started out the server meeting. Those who were on the meeting started out by reviewing the last meeting (morning sales meeting). We then jumped in and started going over server-based topics. The first main server topic was email stuff. We are going to be using or trying to use the adilas content server to send it out vs the adilas university site. The old adilas university site is on a shared environment and is an older server. We are going to see if we can get more up time and new features by using one of our fully dedicated servers.

Next we spent some time talking about data 0 and maybe updating or upping the CPU count and RAM memory. We talked about Hostek and the customer support that we are, were, and hope to get. At times, we really need more support. Currently, it hasn't been as good as it used to be. Sometimes we get slammed and need help. We don't need it all of the time, but when we need it, the support is critical. It all deals with server up time and keeping our clients happy.

Touching base on other projects. Wayne is going to be reaching out to Eric and Dustin to see if they need any help. Cory and Wayne got into some technical compliance stuff like SOC 2 reports and other compliance stuff. Lots of talk about risk mitigation and managing risk. While we were talking about risk management, we got into a conversation about accessibility issues and making content available for persons with disabilities. That got pretty deep but this seems to be a section of the web that is expanding, and requirements are being made more for mainstream sites vs just specialty sites. Lots of special tags and flags for screen readers and such. We also talked about the cost of making a fully accessible site. The costs are huge, especially for little guys. Anyways, it seems like there is some legal cases and such that are pushing this agenda further. We may need to keep an eye on it.

We spent some time looking at some of our other servers and database stuff. We then switched subjects and Cory and John were talking about projects and new CSS look and feel stuff. We would like to get more user feedback. We are doing the best that we can. We are constantly improving our code every day. Talking about new settings and dealing with look and feel and personal preferences. We would like to get good feedback and keep trying to connect the backend code with the frontend user interface (UI).

We looked at the calendar and did some scheduling for some of our new projects and rollouts. Right at the end, Cory was reporting to us on a couple of small bugs. We'll have to circle back around. We ran out of time.

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.

A couple of different sessions. Small review session with Bryan on cross-corp invoice to PO processes. He is working on a sub barcode project. I spent some time checking out some of the adilas domains that we have pointed to the main adilas.biz website. I was supposed to get a list out to Wayne on my findings. I made an Excel spreadsheet and saved it in the Wayne folder on my local drive. I also met with John after lunch to go over some more quick layout discussions. We looked at things and made a decision. He is going to keep pushing it forward. We should have new pages (redo's and new look and feel facelifts coming online weekly). That is awesome!

John and I were looking into a possible bank transfer bug with Cory. We found it, but we are not sure that it is a bug. It may be that the user is using it to do something that it wasn't designed to do. That happens more than we know. We then did a critique and review of some of John's new look and feel pages. All in all, I'd say that it is looking good. We talked about how much scrolling is needed and maybe adding in a quick summary section to help get people to the meat of the page as quick as possible.

John is going to be pushing up a number of branches of code here later today. All of them are dealing with deposits, banks, and expense/receipts. After that, we rolled over and started talking about levels of mobile responsive design stuff. We want to get what we can this round, but we also know that we may have to circle back around and pick up that piece at a later date.

Brandon is going to be checking out the parked or other domain names that need to point to adilas.biz. We have like 30+ different domains that point to the main adilas.biz site. Wayne was on the meeting but feeling kinda sick. He will keep working on his tasks that are already assigned. At the end of the meeting, John and I were talking about controlling the printing to make that look good. Sometimes you think that you can just design something and it will work awesome for desktop, mobile, and print. Sadly, not always true. Depending, sometimes you have to design and have code in place for all three versions (desktop, mobile, and print).

Checking on a list of parked domain names. I reported back to the guys about how my Docker server install was going. No problems on my local development environment. We talked about other server level projects such as: inventory snapshots, email formatting, gift cards, dependencies, and sales tax aggregates. We keep making small little tweaks. We also checked on a number of other small projects.

Eric popped in and he and Wayne were talking about triggers and stored procedures. They were looking at the database entries and what not. As part of the meeting, they (Wayne and Eric) were physically looking deep in the database. Eric is going to circle back around and do some more checking on his side of things. They were reviewing the stored procedures.

It was kind of fun to watch them view and refresh some of the aggregate data on the fly. Cory was acting as the user (actually doing something inside of adilas), Eric was orchestrating what to do and look for, and Wayne was doing the backend calls and database SQL statements. It was fun to watch, as a fly on the wall.

Eric is going to run some debugging scripts on the data. They are looking for a cause and effect scenario. They were also looking at servers, monitoring processes, and running pages. From what it looks like, they will need to do some further data research and analysis. They are trying to get to the bottom of the data differences between the transactional records and the aggregated data.

As a note, if we can't get with Wayne, John is the backup database admin person. He has access to all of the different servers.

Emails and working on adilas ownership percentages for Wayne and Marisa. Built a small spreadsheet with percentages of ownership to show who has was percentage. Steve and I are helping to spread the load and also the ownership. We are excited about that.

Checking emails before the server meeting. Once the meeting started, we went over some of the changes that we have been working on with internal emails, output formatting, and changes. Wayne is working on things and going through a process of elimination to figure out what else is still needed. Cory and Wayne were talking about scheduling and plans for new feature releases. We also went over some other projects and gave small reports to make sure that everyone was on the same page.

John was reporting on some new updates on the department homepage. Eric, Cory, and I were looking at gift cards and scenarios with different settings. We had an internal email bug reported to us and we started looking into it. John was the lead and doing most of the debugging today. Bryan joined us as we were checking things out. Sort of a grouped effort. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the email stuff. We pushed up some new code and John will get with Wayne later today to finish things up. We did what we could for current time. It will need more attention later.

Steve and Sean were talking about sales stuff and where they are heading and going. Danny jumped in and they were all talking about personalities and outcomes. Fun conversations. Adilas is such a great tool, you can watch everything... we want to keep using that! That's what we want our clients to say. Giving our clients the knowledge to help make the decisions that they need to make.

The guys were talking about maybe hiring a new salesman and doing a 60-day trial period. Just trying to get some ideas. We also talked about education and the big need for structured learning within the system and about the system.

Switched to working with Wayne and John. Got a temp file from Wayne and a dump of his local database. As we were downloading and installing things, I was asking them where we stand and what are their goals? Wayne said - I think that our goal is clustered servers on both the database and code side of things. Small talks about load balancing and not overloading our servers. We also talked about back-ups and storing all external files and images in a different way (maybe the content server or something like that). Basically, getting rid of the local file storage so that the clustering would work better for the different servers and clusters.

Wayne would also like us to switch over to Lucee. That would cut the hosting costs on a monthly basis with a big overall savings year over year. We briefly touched base on the datasource or world building project (getting each corporation on its own database). The other goal that Wayne was talking about was tracking usage based on each corporation's load and data traffic usage (bandwidth and storage). Once we have those pieces in place, be able to bill accordingly.

After that, we switched back over to my local development environment. The way that they have it setup, both Wayne and John, the local environment closely simulates the live or production environments and servers. Trying to make things be more consistent for both test and live environments. Ideally, once we get it a little bit further, some of our automated tests will make sure that things are flowing and behaving consistently. That lead us to a whole other conversation about testing and having a whole test suite. Both unit tests and migration tests.

Lastly, Wayne was helping me install Sublime Text libraries and custom packages. We also went over creating new code snippets to help me code quicker. I had tons of those on my old box, and in my old editor, got to get it all setup again on the new laptop. 

Quick server meeting and then leading into a work session with Wayne, John, and I to get my local environment all setup and working smoothly. First off, we checked on a number of different branches. They (Wayne and John) flopped the data 0 box (quick reboot) and then we started working on my local machine. I was downloading Microsoft Office, working with Wayne on VPN's, FTP settings, Git stuff, installing Docker, and setup of my local environment. Huge work session. Lots of good back and forth while we were bringing Docker up, down, and testing settings. I took a few notes during the process. Multi-hour tech session.

Went over to Bryan's house to work. My computer was down. We went over new settings and ideas for time buttons and tying them into my cart favorites. We wrote down some ideas in Bryan's notebook.

From 2 pm to 3 pm - Bryan and I jumped on the server meeting (from his house). Cory, John, Bryan, and I were on the meeting. Wayne joined part way through. After the meeting, Bryan and I jumped back in and worked on refining the old custom code that we made for Beaver Mountain. More time button stuff and planning. Bryan has all of the notes. I was kind of just an extra today - no computer or anything.

Recording notes and looking at Wayne's add to cart testing branch (new code). Light code review. Still need to run it through some physical tests and actual use it on my local machine. Ran out of time.

code review session with Bryan. He is helping me out by combining about 5 branches of code that Chuck did into one single branch. We reviewed some of the code and he will be coordinating with both Cory and Wayne to get things tested. Once tested, we will merge the new files into the master branch and push things up live on all servers. The 5 or so branches were dealing with new changes to elements of time. New time homepage look and feel, new working with time page, new printable time page, and some tweaks on the add/edit main time pages and time history pages. Good stuff. Looking good.

Bryan has really been a key helper in getting these projects off of my desk and getting them making progress and being pushed forward. I'm super grateful for that.

Cory was talking about projects getting stalled out and how to help push them through the finish line. We were talking about this earlier but she just barely joined at 10 am. Light rehash of some of what we were talking about.

For the server meeting, we allowed Steve to talk to Wayne about emails and how things are going. Wayne was reporting on the gift cards and refactoring some of the cart logic. As soon as he is finished, he will get his code out to different parties to look at and do some testing. Cory and Wayne were doing some planning and scheduling of releases.

We then talked about passing certain branches of code back and forth and who is going to test, merge, and deploy certain things. We are trying to get better at working as a team. Some of the branches need to be strategically placed and tested on certain servers before going live. With that process, it opens up a whole new subset of needs for being able to merge, sync, and reliably deploy and execute code, branches, versions, etc. Currently, we are all pushing up code daily to a code repository using both Git and bit bucket. Wayne is the one who primarily changes which servers are pulling from which branches. Ideally, they all pull from the master branch, but we do tweak that every now and again, based on other projects, testing, requirements, etc. It's a pretty big job.

After that, the topic switched over to differences in display and page outputs. We talked about code differences, data differences, and even things like settings, permissions, and other custom code. It all plays into the mix. Light discussion on how to best help convey or communicate any errors or differences. All of those factors may or may not play in (code, data, settings, permissions, or custom stuff). It can get interesting.

All of the other guys jumped off (Wayne and John) to meet on a different Zoom session. Cory is doing a great job trying to keep up with billing and what not for custom work. At the end, Steve, Cory, and I got on a small work session and chased down a small bug in the dynamic PO labels. It ended up being a blank query for parent item attributes that wasn't populating in the correct spot. Small work session.

Wayne and I jumped in and did an hour and a half long meeting talking about the internal shopping cart. Wayne was showing me how he has to change things in order to run tests on certain pages. He is using an interesting combo of saving content and running included files inside of the saved content. Then it becomes a memory variable (big but still in memory) and he can test certain parts of the page that way. Interesting.

We went over some of his tests and how he has to virtually fake it, mock it up, and simulate certain flow and/or actions. He is working on removing an older code set that used a cfinvoke tag into more of an object model. We went over mocking the data, throwing errors, and catching the errors and exceptions. The discussion on testing got us into topics like: limiting the scope, only testing one page at a time (not the dependencies), testing without touching the database, keeping your data clean, simulating page redirects, as well as hard aborts or stops.

Part of the test is separating the data from the logic. The logic doesn't know if the data is real or not. It just knows what to do with certain types and kinds of data. By splitting things up, you could test the code logic without having full access to the actual data (live data) or being able to fake or mock the data (hardcoded or simulated data). The goal is to test the logical flow of the data through its process and/or routine. Ideally, the end goal is to make the processes more refined, bullet proof, while keeping the data nice and clean, and organizing the code to be reused and maintained by others (where does each process live and how is it organized). We briefly talked about putting supporting code closer to the usage of that code vs a more disjointed style.

After going over some of the testing, we switched over and started looking at the actual cart code and how it works. We did some demos, looked at code, and did some drawings. Some of the discussion was dealing with other developers and what assumptions that they are making. If the process is super complicated, the other guys who don't know, guess at where to make changes and where to start. That has bitten us in the butt a few times. Often, we play this crazy game of "add on". If the other person/developer doesn't know where it starts, they simply add on where they can and then go from there. Sometimes that is fine but as it gets more complex, it actually causes pain to the other developers.

To be honest, sometimes we don't know where things are going when they get built out (first time around or phase one). It just keeps organically growing through that add on game. Eventually things slow down and we can determine what is needed and wanted but we may make a mess getting there. That is totally normal. You just have to be willing and able to go back and do some maintenance and clean-up. That's the part that we have been missing. Currently, we just keep pushing forward without taking time to circle back around. That process of circling back around takes major work sometimes. Part of our fracture project (future project) will be going back and defining what we want (overarching scope and requirements) and what we need and then building accordingly. The bigger the picture that we can see (speaking hypothetically) the more we know what needs to be included and fully integrated - once you know the bigger picture, the path becomes clearer and you can plan accordingly.

Things get really crazy when there is a difference between testing and production environments. That could be settings, permissions, versions, data, usage, processes, scale, etc. It can get quite in-depth. The more ways to do things, the more things that need to be checked and maintained.

Wayne was saying, none of our customers have ever left our system because we don't do custom. They love that. Some of them really hate that as well as they have been burned and feel like testers vs clients. Most clients don't have a problem with what we charge, for what they get, we are way under the normal market prices. The biggest reason that some of our biggest clients leave is either the look and feel or consistency and scaling issues (they get too big for our product). The next step up is a big one (cost of other custom software solutions). Wayne and I were talking about helping our code not be fragile and be more bomber and scalable. That is a task, in and of itself. One of our biggest weaknesses is code reliability. Getting that dialed in and on speed dial, that's the goal.

Having said that, we have a viable working prototype (the adilas system or adilas platform). Not only are we constantly refining it, we have had paying customers who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per corporation to use our system, as is. That's millions and millions of dollars that we have generated on a working prototype of sorts. That is awesome. I'm excited to see where it goes.

Finished off our meeting and conversation about talking about how even automated testing still needs some hands on testing and virtually kicking the tires. Wayne and I also talked briefly about percentage ownerships stuff inside of the adilas company. We would like to invite Wayne to be a co-owner in the Adilas, LLC - multi member LLC company.

Danny and Sean popped into the meeting. Nothing major going on but just talking about sales, demos, and how to put our best foot forward. We talked about getting small quick screenshots and samples to help go along with our demos. Currently, we bounce inside of a demo site, show someone around and then bounce somewhere else. I use the word bounce, and we are fine with that, but to a new user, that seems like you have to know a lot, in order to jump or bounce around. They want to know that we have certain things and want to get their hands held for the first little bit.

Because we are so flexible, it sometimes intimidates people and new users. That might be a good thing to remember for fracture (future project). Maybe setup a super simple step 1, 2, 3 process that always work (for example, the normal front door entance) and then show them how they can change that if they want to (side doors, back doors, basement doors, garage doors, etc.). Dustin was calling it handrails. I might be nice to have different training modes or education modes. If you turn it on, meaning education mode, it virtually tells you what to do. If you turn it off, you can bounce wherever you want (like normal). Almost an analogy of training wheels vs freeride or normal bike riding (without training wheels).

As a small side note, my dad (Wayne Moore) was saying the same things yesterday. We were looking at the main adilas.biz website and he was saying, I like the verbage but I want to see it (super tiny clips or screenshots). For example: It says "real time visibility and control with inventory management". Ok, what does that mean and can you quickly show me (a picture is worth a 1,000 words type mentality)? Just some quick screen shots.

As a note, there may be different levels. We may need a quick overview, a quick this is that (demo style), and then a deeper how to or let's really learn and master this. I can totally see a need for different levels of screenshots, examples, tutorials, and step-by-step walk throughs. Good stuff.

2/15/23 Edit pages:

- top_secret/secure/statement_home.cfm

- top_secret/secure/add_edit_statement.cfm - step 2 - select statement date range (2 of them)

- top_secret/secure/add_edit_statement.cfm - step 3 - set the dates (4 of them)

- top_secret/secure/bulk_receipt_verify.cfm - top form and looping over the results

- top_secret/secure/bulk_deposit_verify.cfm - top form and looping over the results

1/26 check and pushed final pages with Brandon.  Basic project complete.

1/23/23 checked and pushed 600 pages with Brandon.

1/18/23 checked and pushed 300 pages with Brandon.

1/13/23 updated more datepicker code on pages.

12/21/22 updated more datepicker code on pages (see below). Will connect with Dustin on testing:

12/6/22 Consolidated the Time code that Brandon and Charles did, and met with Brandon to check the code.  Two news and update pages have already been created for this project "Elements of Time Homepage Will Have a New Look" and  "New Look for Working With Time". Next we plan to have Wayne point the data 5 server to the branch (project-2260combine) so that the code can be tested on data 5. 12/5/22 met with Brandon on what we wanted to do with time:

    Date picker:

1. We want:
2. 1. put in 1/1/2 (characters)
3. 2. get 1999 when we put in 99 (not 2099)
4. 3. truncate correctly: 1999 goes to 1999 not 19
5. 4. if I supply a date in the past on the first click I want to go to that first (not how it is currently functioning going to todays date).
6. 5. create documentation in help file and in Adilas docs (update).
7. 6. update to all datetime instances. Check for date validation and go backwards (if I am validating a date I am putting a date in). (search for 'datepicker', '_date', 'date_', '
8. from_date', 'to_date', -form fields are what we are mostly looking for)
9. 7. on the times be able to put in a one digit (1 PM not 1:00 PM)
10. 8. put the datepicker on the content server.
11. 9. roll it out in small batches (10 or so pages instead of all at once)
12. 10. leave Bear100 code alone.
13. 11. communicate with Cory and John.

12/2/22 Spoke with Cory and John about the project.  John said there is a bug with the new picker that needs to be resolved. He said there is some information in the Adilas Docs that may be helpful (Adilas Docs>hamburger link>Adilas Core>components (top links)>date picker (left side dropdown, 'here' link - If you need more information on flatpickr for some reason you can find the documention for the plug-in here ).

Next, all of the datepickers in the system need to be updated to the new datepicker.  Brandon sent an email regarding what needs to be done to update all of the datepickers as follows:

 I found a page that shows some simple date picker stuff. Here is the page: top_secret/secure/add_bulk_flex_grid.cfm – if you search for “picker” it will take you to the different options that are needed. Here is a quick rundown.

• 1st include is set right before the include for basic_css.cfm it looks like this:

 

 

• Then any new date field will need the date-picker class. For example:

 

        on input fields --- the key is the class=”date-picker” part or css class stuff

 

• The last include is set right before the ending body tag. It looks like this:

 

Anyways, there are 3 basic parts… the top include, the new class on form fields, and the bottom include. This is true for any page that is a full page (no black box options). If it does have black box options, it is slightly different. Anyways, just wanted to get you some information. I don’t have a list of files right now, but we want to spread it (the new date picker) across the whole site. If you want, we can meet and build a list or if you want to poke around and fix things, that would be great as well.

The only page that I know we don’t want the new date pickers on is some of the bear 100 custom files. They get dates entered in via special formats and the date picker screws things up. Everything else needs to be updated (to my knowledge).

Steve, Wayne, Harry, John, and I were all on a meeting. Steve was talking with my dad (Wayne Moore) about all kinds of ideas and direction stuff. It was pretty heavy on the education and training side. Partway through the meeting, Steve had to jump on another call/meeting. I stayed on and talked with them about all kinds of stuff. See attached for some notes.

Cory had a list of things to go over with Wayne in our sever meeting. We had Wayne, Cory, John, and I on the meeting. Steve and a couple of others were also on but not participating. Cory pretty much led the discussion and the meeting. Here are some of the topics that we covered. New backend cart process and refactoring code, new tests for the add to cart page and view cart page, automated tests, email servers, security updates, and scheduled maintenance.

John gave us a report on where he is at with yearend payroll and tax withholding stuff. He is also working on new documentation for payroll and yearend forms and processes. We talked about the adilas docs (our internal documentation and style guide stuff). Possible new options for automating database updates and pros and cons of using outside plug-ins - like date/time pickers, data tables, and what not.

Meeting with Wayne and Eric. Talking about internal shopping carts and refactoring the internal cart engine. Not the user interface but the backend logic and brain. They were talking a new cart model and making things consistent.

Just for fun, we were talking about what adilas might look like if it was a building (a core with multiple add-on's). Kind of this conglomeration and stacking of structures on top of structures. Kinda interesting.

We talked about taking the logic and look-ups out of the pages and into functions and models. Trying to standardize things. We talked about overloading variables and using a single thing to hold multiple things. For example: We have a form field that is called store_id. However, behind the scenes, that field has the store id, the store initials, and the whole store name. Basically, we pass a list of data to prevent a later look-up, but it basically overloads a form variable.

Anyways, just trying to be more consistent and having  a known starting point. We also got into duplicating things to cart, invoices to carts, quotes to carts, restore to cart, buttons to carts, barcodes to carts, simple searches to carts, starting from a customer vs an item, etc. We are trying to make all of those pieces work in tandem and flow smoothly between the different sections. Basically, creating models, controlling inheritance, and the flow of data and logic.

Eric was talking about the time it takes to push things live. If the model is not consistent, it takes twice to triple the amount of time. 

Small demo for my day (Wayne Moore) and Harry (my dad's friend). They were pitching that we need some training courses. They want to go pitch adilas, but don't feel that they know what it can do. We talked a bunch about LinkedIn training courses. See attached for some of my notes. The first part was for the demo and then we started talking about all kinds of education type options.

- Wayne - training courses - in LinkedIn - people need to see it

- Adilas course that could be as deep as we would like... overview, beginner, intermediate, advanced, deep-dive

- Helping people know what is possible

- Get people where they need to go and then come out with a skill

- YouTube is another option

- We could get a lot of traction if we help train the public on what we have

- Putting the pieces together - where do you start and where can it go (easily) and with some work (more in-depth).

- The crazy things that we are doing - everybody needs.

- Global communities

- Tapping into other resources - including going into LinkedIn - allowing them to get all of the resources (course materials) so that they could do it on their own

- Helping show the adilas world - we have to show what we have

- Just in time learning and training - being able to move from step to step (building out the whole)

- We already have pieces - we need to string it all together - at the professional level - having our own plan of how to navigate the elephant

- Wayne was really pitching the training aspect of what we have and do

- Harry - you get what you pay for - If they pay for it, they become invested and involved - time, money, etc.

- Time - that is the tricky piece - sometimes we feel like we are so busy

- The digital world of learning - certificates, learning, etc.

- Adilas keeps changing... that is part of the game

- Steve was commenting on how we used to do videos - way back - we couldn’t even get things edited before they changed

- Wayne and Steve were talking about setting up new courses on LinkedIn - Wayne will see what it takes to add in new courses

- Steve was showing them some of Danny’s adilas quick tip videos

- Funding - getting enough to get that part of the puzzle going

- Talking about invoice reminders, online payments, etc.

- Steve was showing them the warranty registration stuff - video from Chuck

- Steve was explaining how our model has changed. We used to use outside reps and consultants. Now everything is done internally, using adilas trainers

- Steve was pitching ongoing training courses for our clients.

- Wayne has a degree in curriculum and training

- Steve was showing his older YouTube player - older stuff - but still valid - we need to update it and keep it fresh

- Speed and cadence of what we are going over - full outline and layout

- Just in time online courses

- People are pretty picky - we have to capture their attention pretty quick or maybe even faster

- Keeping up with the constant changes

- From Wayne - make the world our audience! Getting the information in front of the decision makers

- We can schedule more meetings, or we are on every morning at 9:00 am on the GoToMeeting channel

- From Steve - how do we make this go forward? Plans, compensation, ideas (even out of the box).

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

After the meeting, my head was swimming. I came up with a couple of other ideas, just for fun.

- What if for training we gave a new user 3 accounts vs just one account. Here is my thinking - One could be for the start of the lesson (work area), one could be for the finish of the lesson (what is expected or a finished product), and one could be for fun (we keep whatever, their own playground). All of the other systems could be reset to any stage by rolling back a database. Assuming that the training was planned out enough to roll things backwards and forwards as needed. This could all be scripted and rolled around as needed. It would really help with training and keeping things standard.

- What about making things plane Jane type interface or only as much as is needed. Keep it simple. Just a thought.

- Being able to reset the database at any time could be really cool.

- We aren't ready for this yet, but for fracture, it sure would be cool if we could have certain settings and defaults on speed dial. Basically, if someone wants a certain setup or package, the database (aka the backend scripts) could help us flip flop things in a hurry. Currently, we have to setup all of the pieces, settings, permissions, naming conventions, show/hide, sort order, and other aliases in a manual format or fashion. That takes quite a bit of knowledge. If we could get our settings and options dialed in, that would really help and speed things up. We could configure and virtually show/hide certain things in a click of the button vs hours of individual configuration. Lots of options here. It could be size wise (tiny, small, medium, large, extra large, huge) or it could be industry specific (this for that, and this other stuff for some other industry - tons of options). Preconfigure whatever we can. If they want to still tweak things out, it all exists, it just gives them a quicker starting point.

- Not sure where to take this... but I was thinking about books and choose your own adventure type style books. If you want to do this, go to page x or y. If you want to do this other thing go to page z. What if we helped setup our training in the same manner? If you want to put this on account, do this. If you want to pay for this, do this. You get the idea.

- Train the world

- Super easy setup and configuration, you could then tweak it if needed to get super custom

As I joined the meeting, Cory was already on there. She invited Alan and we had a good discussion about transitional invoices (QTI stuff - between a quote (Q) and an invoice (I) - thus QTI - quote, transition, invoice).

Cory showed us the problem and then I showed Alan, in code, and we ran a number of simple queries on the live server to look at data. I did lots of drawing to help illustrate what is going on. We talked about things and Alan is going to look at the code and make some changes. Good session.

Right at the end of the meeting, both Wayne and Eric joined the meeting. They are working together on the new gift card stuff. They are both very smart and I'm glad that they can work together. More good progress. Cory and I had to jump off to get on another client meeting. We left them in charge and on the GoToMeeting session.

While we were waiting for Wayne, Cory and John were going over payroll and yearend forms and updates. We then started to talk about email servers, changes, web servers, and general web API documents, samples, and general documentation. Wayne joined and we touched on some of those same subjects again briefly. Cory then had a list and we started to go through it. One of the crazy things that she is doing is helping to schedule and coordinate releases and updates. We've never had that problem before.

Cory is planning a rolling blast of server updates spread across different days and for different servers. We then rolled into a small discussion about a bug bounty program and possibly offering compensation for individuals who help us find bugs, vulnerabilities, or ways to fix and enhance the system.

Helping Cory with some tech support questions and answers. Wayne then took us into a deeper realm of DNS (domain name server) records, SPF records, DKIM, and DMARC records and errors. All kinds of deep email server stuff. He was going over public and private keys and how they all interact and work together. It got a little bit technical but good to know (or at least be aware of).

Looking over code for gift cards. Checking emails. Ended up pushing up some code and ran into a problem (crossing two code branches). Eric joined, Wayne joined, and we ended up rolling things backwards (back to the master branch). We talked about the need for unit testing as well as integration testing. Eric and Wayne were talking about software lifecycles and us maturing as a company. We are getting better and better but still need some improvements.

We could use some internal training on writing tests and how best to make sure that we have good coverage. We have so many different levels of coding skills (junior devs, senior devs, full stack devs, designers, etc.). We got into a big conversation about where certain logic needs to go and how best to handle errors and logic for checking for record counts.

That lead into a conversation about MVC (model, view, controllers) and how we are currently doing some of that but we are also mixing things. For example: We have some of the view and the controller in-line or on the same page. Some of our logic is intermixed with the display vs the business logic. Some of the code is older and some of it is newer. We need to make some plans and then go and head in that direction. Currently, we tend to go in a number of different directions. It gets done, but it looks more like patchwork vs tight, smooth, standardized code. Getting a plan and being united in that rollout, even if we have to do a little bit at a time, would be awesome for our fracture project and plans.

The meeting started out and it was just Eric and I. Part way through Wayne joined and then Cory joined after that. The goal of the meeting was to talk about and discuss the sales tax aggregate project and do some light debugging. Eric and I were going over project life cycles and talking about options for dev or development/testing servers. If we were to do that, we would like to give the developers full access to the underlying database as full database admin levels (grants and permissions).

We talked about the process of refactoring code and getting rid of some things and adding other things. It takes time but we are making progress. One of the recent things that Eric was working on was refactoring the submit cart page. We removed all of the hard stops and refactored the code to handle any number of errors without halting progress on other functions or method calls. That will help with automated testing (later on).

While it was just Eric and I on the meeting, we were also talking about the need to be able to see the full database as an admin user, not just a read only SQL prompt (simple look-ups). We need the full access to the backend database. That would really help with debugging and making sure that things are good to go for production.

Wayne joined the meeting and brought up the live database. Eric and Wayne were doing test queries and looking at stored procedures and other SQL stuff. As a side note, we were looking at tons of dates inside the system. They are very important but play at different levels. We were looking at created dates (when it was created), actual dates (when it shows up on reports and such), and last modified dates (if and when it was changed or altered). Each date plays a different role, but they are all important in the grand scheme of things. Along with that, we were going over processes and which ones run first, second, conditional, etc. Lots of backend logic.

It was fun to watch and chime in here and there as Wayne and Eric were getting pretty deep into the processes and procedures. Cory joined us and we ended up having her use the frontend web app (user interface) and Wayne and Eric checking code and actual data on the backend. It was pretty cool to see and watch them all work.

One thing of note was a redo or re-flush type option. Basically, Eric had coded in a special value that if passed in would reset the whole process and/or procedure. The end goal is not a good number (whatever that is). The real goal is a solid process and good error handling (repeatable and solid logic). That produces good numbers.

Touching base with Steve and Sean. Planning and scheduling demos. Talking about getting my dad (Wayne Moore) involved in some adilas sales. He is really good at talking with people, organizing things, and taking things to the next level.

Cory and Dustin joined the meeting and we switched gears and started talking about a possible error or errors. This took quite a while. We talked about possible date picker problems and using our new date picker. Everything keeps moving. The ground we stand on is in constant motion. That seems to be our reality.

We then switched over to other projects. Cory had a list and we went through that along with multiple things from emails. We got into a discussion on the hierarchy of different settings and which ones take precedence over other things. That can get tricky. It gets even trickier when you get layers of logic involved. Anyways, making progress there.

Hours of emails, tech support, and other stuff. Emails to Wayne, Cory, Kelly, etc. Going over validation stuff, routines, logic, fixing small bugs, and looking into sub inventory data and attribute mappings. On a Zoom session with Kelly, Wayne, Dustin, and I. Looking over code and testing things. Kelly even pulled a client onto the meeting to get some approvals and have her do some live testing. Pretty deep session.

As a side note, if all is going well, the value of the systems admin person doesn't seem that important but when all things go crazy and he/she helps to get it back in check, the value of that person is huge. They are often overlooked when seas are calm and the wind is not blowing (which means that they are doing a good job). Lots of unseen efforts. Thanks Wayne!

Small bug fixes and emails to Wayne, Cory, and Kelly.

Today's server meeting started out pretty normal and ended up in a small work session and trying to figure out how to modify some code for sub inventory. We started out and John reported on his yearend tax forms (W-2's and 1099's). We got a small report on the changes to the email server that Wayne is working on. We are excited to see if we can gain some more control and/or options there. We then switched over to the bug in the sub inventory stuff. This doesn't happen all of the time, but when it does, it throws an error.

Anyways, we spent the next hour or so going over different levels of pre-validation, in-line validation, and post-validation. Sometimes the problems can be stopped before they ever get going, some can be stopped once an error or 0 record count is hit, and some need to be soft or conditional errors that don't do something but allow for other things to still take place. For example, the soft errors may need to happen in a complex loop or nested loop. You may not want to just stop on a dime. You may want the loop to finish and then show problems or gracefully roll past any problems or issues.

Anyways, it got pretty deep. We will end up going in and looking at each page and decide what the best option will be. There is no quick solution for this issue. We may have to check and change code in hundreds of pages. Each one has a different task or function or flow. The quick answer is to just change it at the method level, but this same method is used in tons of places and in different ways. We will just have to chip away at it and/or watch the logs and only fix the pages that show up on the error logs. Once again, it only happens every once in a while and not all pages that use this method have problems. We have to track this one down using manual processes and time reading over the code before the method calls, during the call, and after the call.

To sum it up, it all deals with general error handling and making it more consistent. We are in a state of constant refinement. We will just keep working to make it better and better and smoother and smoother. I will note that we never would have found this error if it weren't for Wayne's monitoring and error logs. Basically, it allows us to look under the covers and catch things that a normal user would never report to us.

After everybody else left, Cory was talking about testing and making sure that we are only pushing up good code. Wayne told her that we push up code everyday, multiple times a day. That is totally true. She only knows about it if it goes bad or has an error or bug in it. Anyways, we'll have to keep pushing on things and we'll find some good balance points between testing, pushing, and progression. Making headway... yee haw!

Multi-hour session with Wayne on the GoToMeeting session. We were debugging things out in the adilas API sockets and dealing with sub inventory queries. We went through a number of emails that had been going back and forth. We also got into some database and query analytics and doing analysis of our queries. Trying to get things faster and smoother. Small work session.

There are pros and cons to this, but this was a direct quote from Wayne during our conversation. "Our flexibility is one of our biggest assets." We have a number of clients that use the system completely different, even within the same industry. That is awesome, but it can also bite us. Just part of the game.

Got an email from Wayne and he wanted me to test some things. Looking into a bug and testing some new email capabilities. Looking over code on a branch from Wayne.

Emails, text messages, and recording notes. There were some emails flying around from a client that they needed help. We reached out and it ended up being a false alarm. We had Cory, Wayne, Sean, and I all trying to help them, but it ended up being a user error (nothing that we could have controlled). Not the most efficient, but that's what happened.

Started on a custom JSON export for a client (half an hour). Spent the rest of the time looking into the huge file that Wayne sent over as a database backup for all of the adilas corporations. The file was soo big, I had a hard time getting into it. Spent some time trying to break it apart into small bite size chunks.

Server meeting. The whole first part of the meeting was Dustin and Wayne going over some new things for cultivation. We talked about doing a new database field for locations and calling it a location type (normal, retail, warehouse, backend, vault, etc.). That almost sounded like sub locations, but we didn't end up going there. I've got a bunch of other notes on sub locations and sub phases.

Kelly ended up joining us and we found out that we thought was a coding error was just a data or user error. Great dialog back and forth between Cory, Kelly, Wayne, Dustin, and I. It was a great session. Here are a few other things that I thought were interesting:

- Being consistent - across the board

- Forcing some clean-up and maintenance

- Talking about reports and proper data drill-downs - getting to the underlying data quickly and correctly

- Mixing different vendors and locations (report settings and filters). If they weren't just right, the reports would return different data (filter stuff).

- When Kelly joined, you could literally hear and feel the difference between a power user and a backend developer. Kelly, as s power user, had so much more depth of knowledge of what went where and how it got there (using existing tools). The developers could look at the data and the logic, but it didn't make as much sense because they had no context for that data. Interesting!

- We are trying to smooth things out. Some of that will be through new interfaces, training, and education.

- Some of the challenges of being so dynamic (as a software system or application). It is both a blessing and a curse (how flexible we are).

- What does it cost to keep clean data and how do we main that clean data?

- We would love to add some trouble shooting pages and/or known error reports or pages. Basically, a quick way to find and fix data that may have an issue. Flag it and then allow them to change it so that it is correct. This would be awesome if we could add this for our fracture project.

- Manual tests and audits of the data - Is it a code issue or a data issue?

- We talked about switching over our email servers and how that project is coming

- Talking about getting system-wide aggregates and how best to get that data in place. This is huge, we just haven't done it yet. We have all of the transactional data records, we just need to virtually let the cream rise to the top.

- Kelly and Cory are going to be coming up with some standard testing forms (what to test and different scenarios for testing)

- Cory had a small list of other projects that we checked in on and got small updates.

- John and Cory were going over end of the year payroll projects, once everybody else left

During the server meeting, Wayne told us some good news that his wife was out of the hospital and back home. That is awesome! Wayne was reporting on some issues dealing with Alan's code and transitional invoices in the cart. Cory was talking with Wayne about different errors. Trying to clean things up and keep refining it (our app or software platform). They had a good light back and forth talking and questions and answers.

We spent a little bit of time talking about learning from our errors and mistakes vs just having successes. Great teachers... not always fun, but a great teacher.

They were sending emails back and forth and reaching out to clients and other developers. After that, Cory and Wayne were coordinating times to push and test certain branches of code for specific projects. Currently, we have a small traffic jam with projects being done and needing to be tested. Wayne had a good idea to use one of the other servers that used to be a dedicated box and the servers are still up but the client is not actively using that box. We could test on that box very easily and not interrupt anything. Great idea. We may start out that process by installing some server updates, testing, and then going on to the next thing (while our main testing server is being tested for another project).

We switched gears and Wayne was showing us some of his monitoring services. Just for fun, one of the servers has over 5.2 million records from the monitoring service. That has only been running for about two months on that server. That's a lot of page view and page requests. Light talks about traffic and data usage.

John and Wayne were coordinating on schedules. John reported on the discount engine. He is really glad to have that one virtually off his plate. There isn't more than a couple more hours of clean-up stuff that needs to be done. The heavy lifting, minus the testing, has already been completed. What a relief for all of us. It has been a big project. Lots of lessons learned. Cory was doing some planning on the discount engine stuff. She was flipping some user permissions on the old dedicated box to get ready for some other tests.

John was giving Steve and I a demo on the discount engine and the new database changes that he and Wayne were working on early this morning. Looking good. John was also pitching the use of diagrams to help with requirements, flow, sequences, and object models. We talked a little bit about MVP - minimal viable product. I like to switch out the ending "P" and do something like minimal viable person, minimal viable plan, etc. It helps me think of what is needed.

Sometimes, we, as a team, tend to wing it. That works great to a certain level. Then you really need to get that extra planning and project management in place. If not, you end up fighting against yourself, in different ways.

As part of our discussion, we were talking about minimal viable plans and how often, they are in one person's head. We talked about getting that MVP plan on to paper or getting it recorded digitally, so that we can preserve it and share it. See this link for more notes on tools that we use.

The last topic of our meeting was John and I talking about small checklists and upcoming projects.

On a GoToMeeting session with Wayne and John. We were talking about the discount table and some data that we are storing. The problem is the field called discount day of week. We store all kinds of stuff and it is somewhat misnamed. We talked about a number of possible solutions. As we talked, you could tell that John was doing calculations as to what those ideas would really take to push all the way through the code. I was proud of him for being able to see beyond the current change. That was awesome.

Wayne was wanting to make the changes (he saw an angle that would work) and John was still asking questions. As a side note, it is amazing how one little decision will cascade throughout a single project and potentially affect other projects and/or features. That's part of being a system.

I sent out a text message to Cory and Steve to let them know what the plan was and that it was going to take a small rewrite. All part of the game.

Work session with Chuck and the new look and feel for some pages inside of elements of time. Working on the working with time page and the printable time page. They looked great. We made a few small tweaks and merged two different branches together. We sent a note to Wayne and Cory about testing and pushing the code to all servers. We are waiting for them before taking it to the next step.

During the server meeting, Cory and Wayne were reporting on different issues, problem, questions, and talking about changes to sub inventory. Wayne is working on some new changes to help speed things up there. Wayne was also volunteering to help Alan with some elements of time (flow) stuff for production processes.

One of the big topics was the email server. It's kinda old and has been acting up lately. It's turning into one of our top priorities.

We spent some time talking about servers and specs. We have certain pages, like the balance sheet, that cause heavy loads. We really want to get into some preset sums, counts, maxes, mins, and averages - basically, we need aggregated data. We have great transactional data, we just need to keep moving up the chain and create the aggregated data that is date specific. That will allow us to go both forwards and backwards. That is very important, to be able to easily go backwards as well. Making this change to aggregated data will be huge for us in the future. We really need this as part of our fracture project.

We have a project called the inventory snapshot - mini aggregate project that Eric was working on. Once he finishes with his gift card project, we are going to have him jump back on the inventory snapshot project to help with quick inventory quantities.

The last thing that we went over was between John and I. We are working on a smooth hand-off of the discount engine project. Coordinating times and making plans. That is coming along well.

Emails and cleaning up my inbox. Responding to questions and what not. Checking some code for Wayne that he asked me to look at. Light testing on the update inventory counts pages on my local box.

Meeting with John and Cory to do a code review on the discount engine project. John started out by talking about a class that he is taking at school and a section called "Requirements Engineering". He is going to pass on some information to both Cory and I. One of the main goals or strategies of that requirements engineering is being able to see and quantify those requirements.

We talked briefly about taking the time to get it right vs having to go back (again and again) to do other maintenance or backing to back track. I agree with that, however, there are times that you just need to get it done and you know that you will have to circle back around and fill in the gaps. There is not just one answer for every possible solution.

Most of the meeting was a code review session. John walked us through the process and did a great job verbally walking us through his code. If we had questions, he would take and show us on the discount engine why, what, and how he was doing certain things. I thought that he did a great job explaining his code. We made a few recommendations, but mostly it was him telling us and showing us what he has been working on. He is getting really close and is starting to work on the action page to really get the stuff to stick in the database. The frontend interface looks great.

We got into caching of objects, memory usage, and memory management topics. We spent quite a bit of time going over custom JavaScript that he had to set up to make his little one-pager work. One of the interesting things that he and Wayne are coming up with deals with using the users to help run the database updates based on automation processes and usage within the system. Most of John's new code is all in script vs the older ColdFusion tag based language. He likes that style way more and it feels like other languages that he knows.

The last topic of the joint meeting between Cory, John, and I was dealing with team building and getting enough training to help us all do our jobs and help spread the love, dealing with knowledge and training. After Cory left, John had a few other questions about finances and checking on the health of the business. Great meeting!

As part of the server meeting, Wayne was reporting on progress and status of his wife - health issues. We spent quite a bit of time looking over a number of requests that Cory had. I sent Wayne a zip file for all of the existing email stuff (code and assets). The email server is being more of a topic lately. We will need to do something there soon.

We also spent some time talking about the content server and the disk size of what we are storing for clients. It is getting quite large. We talked about the accumulative sized and storage costs over time. Looking into other options, costs, prices, and other servers to help handle the current and future content loads.

We got into database stuff and talking about sub inventory stuff. Tons of bulk tools are wanted and needed. Another topic that we got into was dealing with training and lack of training. This was dealing with existing features inside of adilas and/or different 3rd party plugins and libraries. This topic led us into talking about maintenance and doing the right thing. That's a constant battle. Another huge vote for maintenance and education. Two huge concepts that may end up being better than new features. Something to remember as we keep heading towards the fracture model and project (maintenance and training/education).

Touching base on projects between Cory and I. Wayne was trying to connect but was having connection issues (he was driving). Once Wayne was able to jump on, he and Cory were going over back emails, client requests, testing plans, and projects. Not sure when, but most likely we will be needing a new primary email server here soon. That topic is gaining momentum and heat. We currently have a solution in place, but it feels like we are growing out of that shell (virtually).

Dealing with the email server code, I need to gather things up and get a copy of those files over to Wayne for review. I'll just go grab them off of the old shared server and send them over to him in a zip file. He wants to look over the old code. It is not currently in our master code branch, because it gets deployed on a separate server.

As a group, we talked about the next project for 710 Labs and Hoodie Analytics. They want a good daily inventory snapshot plus info on committed inventory (items that are on a transitional invoice - at the time of the report being pulled). We will try to get to this later this week or first part of next week.

Towards the end of the meeting, both Wayne and Cory and Wayne and John were coordinating plans and meeting times between themselves. After Wayne left, John was giving Cory and I a small run down on the changes and plans for the discount engine. We are going to be putting a deadline on this one as of October 1st. We really need John to switch gears and help out with some payroll and end of year forms and what not.

Small demo with Cory and Sean going over the upgrades and progress on the client facing scheduling stuff (10-15 minutes). Wayne joined the meeting and we jumped into our weekly server meeting. First off, Wayne gave us a report on his wife's progress (health stuff). Going over a number of different subjects. See the attached notes. At the end, John gave us a quick report as well.

Working on the custom data extract project for 710 Labs and Hoodie Analytics. Made the new formatting changes more permanent. Sent an email out to Wayne for him to do some of his magic.

Steve and Sean were doing another bout and going over BioTrack API sockets and connection stuff. They are making plans and trying to see if they can get other doors to open up. Some of these integrations with State compliance systems are pretty deep and keep changing. That makes it tough. It also changes from state to state and that makes it tough as well.

We switched gears and were talking about servers, stats, and traffic. We had some slow down on data 0 over the weekend. I showed Steve and Sean a couple little reports that both Wayne and I have made to help monitor certain page usage and application flushes.

Cory joined and she and Steve were talking about Metrc and their servers getting maxed out and having timeouts. We are so tightly integrated, that when we are up and they are down (Metrc) it makes us look bad, even though it is completely out of our control. More talks about BioTrack and other 3rd party solutions. They keep popping up here and there.

Wayne was unable to attend today. Just Cory, John, Sean, and I were on the call. We started out and I reported on some of the projects that I had been working on. Two of note were the first round of the bulk update flex grid tie-ins for the bike shuttle company. This is dealing with persons being attached to a calendar event or element of time. I also reported on the update on the time sub date/time notes and expanding the field to allow HTML and more characters.

Cory had some questions about servers and memory management stuff. We talked about projects, costs, budgets, and skill levels of the developer who were assigned to certain projects. One of the side notes here was the high cost of code maintenance. It's part of our game. We just need to charge enough that we can continue to keep things up. Often we get tricked into just charging what the project costs (at the time of development) and totally forget that later on we will have to do maintenance on that code as it becomes part of a bigger whole.

Steve and Cory were talking about looking up projects in bit bucket (code repository stuff). Being able to check on commits and branches. They were then talking about different industries and how they are financing some of their developments. Lots of games that people play and how do we fit into that mix. While Steve was still on with us, Cory was reporting in on some meetings that she had had with Kelly dealing with the adilas label builder and sub inventory attributes. Both of those subjects seem to be heating up a bit.

Our current goal is to focus and try to get some small victories (projects being done and across the finish line). Cory and I spent some time going over projects. We talked about the need to test everything. Even small stuff. We have had it bite us before. Next, Cory and I looked into a possible bug in some settings. We looked and looked and couldn't see anything quickly. We may have to jump in deeper, when we get a chance.

Shari O. popped in and had some questions about getting a new internal email server. Our current solution has been giving us some problems lately. We don't change any code on our side and it works great, all of the sudden it will be down, and without any changes on our side, it all of the sudden starts working again. Kinda crazy. Shari O. calls it the gremlins or email gremlins. As a side note, later in the meeting she popped back in to let us know that it was working again. Random.

Wayne joined the meeting and got Cory and I up to speed on a few things that he is trying to work on. Performance tweaks.

Cory and I then started going over her list of possible projects, quotes, and estimates.

- Need quotes for inputting sub attribute data all at one time upon PO creation (start with build page)
- Bulk update sub attributes interface
- Mapping of EOT (elements of time) data to sub attributes (settings for cultivation and manufacturing)

Along the way, we were talking about options and settings that relate to the concepts of the data assembly line, recipe/builds, showing subs in the packaging and production pages, and managing recipe/build output better. Lot of talk about bulk edit tools for sub inventory attributes, batches, phasing, sub locations, and moving subs along a known path or virtual assembly line.

Dealing with the data assembly line concepts, I was telling Cory how we setup both rules and assignments for smart group buttons (tiered pricing buttons). I was mentioning that we could use something similar to help setup and do the mapping between elements of time, sub phases, sub locations, sub groups, and monitoring the progress of certain things. We need the rules (what or how to do things) and the assignments (who or what to connect or monitor). Using the two pieces in combo (rules and assignments) we could then have the computer and/or system help us monitor progression and progress. They are good at that, they just need instructions and the who, what, when, how, and why and they can do those jobs over and over again.

As we keep rolling more and more towards the concept of fracture (future adilas project) I would really like to keep working on the data assembly line concepts and using rules and assignments to get the correct flow and mapping in place. I see that as important as we keep going forward.

Recording notes from my meeting with Wayne this morning. Lots of refinements and memory management stuff going on. Small tweaks every day. Slow and steady.