Meeting between Steve, Alan, and Brandon. From a previous meeting, we had some assignments. When we started today, we let Alan start. He knocked it out of the park. Great job! Here are some of my notes:

- From Alan - Regularly scheduled intervals

-- Weekly/bi-weekly - Group meeting (15-30 min)

-- Monthly - budget meeting w/ admin/billing (30 min)

-- Quarterly - in-depth goal/vision meeting (1-2 hrs)

-- Annually/Semi-annually - co-owner meeting (30 min)

- Agendas - Alan

- Rotate facilitator - who is leading the meetings

- Small budget talks from Alan - he had worked up some plans

- More salary type options - Alan would like to see us get away from hourly and do more of a salary type approach

- Paid time off

- Get files from Alan - he has some great stuff

- He even did some great work on goals, mission statements, and budgets

- Keeping true to - all data is live and searchable - acronym for adilas

- Monitoring usage and helping to automate things - use technology to see where most people are going and then help speed up those places or parts of the system.

- Getting to an automated free version (trial version) - easy onboarding and setup type scenario - let people try it out

- Following up on people who use or try the free version - sales leads

- Demos, videos, and ways to learn the system

- Working backwards - what do we have already, fill in the gaps, and make it better as we go - different way at looking at the system. Instead of saying, we need to rewrite the whole thing, look at what we have, find the gaps, and then fill in those gaps.

- Updates and videos to help with training for new features

- Cutting costs - lots of talks here

- It got kinda ugly - small internal finger pointing session... everybody is feeling pressure at different levels. Not very good :( (frowny face) but... we had a small little war. It got a little bit heated.

- The subject switched from cutting costs and HR problems to sales and getting out and making sales - everybody, developers included

- Get out and talk to people - slow down and sell it - finding people who fit

- Who should we be selling to? Who are we looking for?

- From Steve - Firewood and analogy of going out, leaving the fire, and looking for firewood

- Changing the approach - we are developers - get ideas from other people and just talk to people - as you talk to people, things will just open up and you'll get a chance to talk to them about what you are doing or hope to be doing. Just open your mouth.

- Eye opening, if you get out there - If you are out and about, you will be amazed at what is out there.

Meeting with Shannon. One of the goals is helping Steve out with sales. On our overviews... for the adilas lite and fracture project, we would like to cut things down to the top 3 main pieces or topics. Maybe simplify the adilas lite model (web pages - take off the accordions and make it really simple...).  What are the three main points? Less is more. Focused and to the point. We did some comparing between the old and the new. When we can, some of the new graphics are going to be worth a thousand words.

Working with Eric on the chart of accounts project. Light history about how and why we built what we built. Proposing a tabular view for the P&L and the balance sheet.

Meeting with Bryan. We were talking about a 2-week notice and plan. We need to wrap up some development projects and switch over to doing some sales stuff. Bryan Dayton was talking about setting up a meeting with Brian Mowris. He works for a company that helps and supports other small businesses.

Bryan Dayton and I were talking about options to help auto updated inventory (other systems - circle B - speed and access to data). Other topics were independent website design, knowledge that we have learned along the way, and then doing a code review with Bryan. We found a few small things, fixed some merge conflicts, and other small changes.

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

Emails and recording notes.

Meeting with Cory. Fixed a few elements of time to help close them up. On retention (potential adilas department - upcoming), Cory and I were joking around on who is going to take what. Going over other projects and rehashing to do lists for Eric, Bryan, and myself. We spent a lot of time talking about the chart of accounts project for Kelly. I was pitching a certain thing, and we were trying to see if it would meet her needs.

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

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

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

Closing elements of time behind the scenes for Cory and Kelly for a demo corp on the Herbo server. Spent some time working on the pub-15 for 2024 - entering withholding table data.

Working with Bryan to merge in code for assigning elements to time to other main players. Fixed some merge conflicts and did a light code review with Bryan. Pushed up files on data 0 and did some live testing. Flipped over to a zoom meeting to do some more planning. Working on phase 2 of tying things between flex attributes and elements of time. I was drawing and having Bryan take notes on new changes.

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

Working with Shannon. We talked about it (meaning adilas work) getting personally too expensive (for all of the team members). No one coordinating creates more chaos. Ideally, we want to let Steve decide and make some decisions. Shannon and I were talking about a possible compromise for doing sales (current request) but with the plan of making and working on the plan (together). We need to determine the highest priority. Triage - fix the worst things first (head wound vs a cut on the finger).

I showed Shannon a small acronym "RAPD" (like the word wrapped) from the children and youth booklet. This is a process that we go through to help us decide and develop our talents and work on things. R=Reflect, A=Act, P=Plan, and D=Discover. Ideally, the process works best if you go in this order DPAR but I liked the acronym RAPD better. It's a cycle...1. You discover that something needs to change. 2. You make a plan. 3. You act on that plan. and 4. You reflect on how you did or what worked and/or didn't work. It keeps going, over and over again.

This is a note for myself... I'm currently seeing that a plan needs to be made. What if we acted and helped Steve out knowing that we will circle back around to the planning phase? For me again, maybe I'm doing too much planning. Sometimes we get stuck in survival mode. This makes you desperate. You are willing to try everything that you (I) can just to try to get some traction (almost out of control). Most of us tend to go back to what you (I) know. If you are in a panic mode, thinking that everything is over my head (feeling overwhelmed), that becomes a full drain mode. It affects everything. In relationships, we tend to think... if other people would get their act together, it would solve my (your) problems.

Shannon and I spent some time talking about books dealing with change and psychology. That was kinda fun.

Book by Jordan B. Peterson - "12 Rules For Life, An Antidote For Chaos"

Adult version - For older audiences - Chapters
1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back
2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
3. Make friends with people who want the best for you
4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
8. Tell the truth - or - at least don't lie
9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something that you don't
10. Be precise in your speech
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

Kid version
1. Tell the truth
2. Communicate precisely
3. Learn from others
4. Take care of myself too
5. Don't compare myself to others
6. Pause to appreciate
7. Take control of myself before taking on the world
8. Do meaningful things
9. Don't be afraid to fail
10. Keep good company
11. Act like my best self
12. Bring honor to my family

Other notes from our meeting:

- Humor - what a great antidote

- Aligning our lives - Alignment - I really like that topic

- Shannon was talking about a doctor and what they do before taking a case... looking back (timelines and what happened - gives some understanding)

- I am wondering if Steve is feeling abandoned? Ship A and Ship B stuff (back in June of 2023).

- Real hurt there (feeling abandoned)

- Reactions to not match the input - emotionally - there may be a deeper wound

- How to acknowledge hurt without putting yourself back into the pain spot

- Play with better boundaries

- Once a problem gets so big... a disruption - sets everything else off of balance

- Relief becomes the ultimate goal - it may not be solving the real issue

- What to do if someone else is stuck in a bad place - how to help them

- Looking at the long-term solutions

- The pain of the problem needs to more than the pain of the solution - this forces changes

- Just for the record, these are some things that Steve has been saying for quite some time. They are kinda related but slightly different. "Ringing the bell, the bell is broken" - "Go get some firewood - stop staying around the fire and go get some firewood" - "I'm so sick of the plan, people just need to do something" - "We have enough cool-aid, let's sell some cool-aid" - This may not fit here, but most of these are dealing with sales and the need to get out there and sell our product.

- Balance between planning and acting

- Concepts - boundaries

- I imagine that I drive him crazy that I write things down

- Seeing patterns and taking time to look at things

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

Working with Bryan - API method - searchCustomerInvoices - linking to tables (joins) that we don't need - complicating the results for an output. - copy and paste errors (trimmed a query down from 59 columns to 17 columns.

Back-up files for elements of time. Going through months and months, years and years of notes and saving things out as a pdf on to my local hard drive. I was using the file called https://data0.adilas.biz/temp/print_elements_of_time.cfm

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

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

Lunch meeting with Bryan. Spent most of the time talking about adilas and where things are at and/or going, at least as far as we can see. Good meeting.

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

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

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

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

- Talking about different roles, within a company

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

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

- High cognitive loads all day saps or drains your energy

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

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

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

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

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

Working with Bryan. Small code review and manual merge. Pushed up files for testing. This is for a 3rd party API socket. Fixed a small error on the time homepage (query problem). Fixed a small tip error on the receivables report (payments not yet deposited - put a null error in an if statement). Small tweaks.

Working with Shannon.

- Whatever brings us to certain points... lots of ways and similarities (commonality and overlap).

- Going over the working genius results with Shannon.

- Overviews for the value add-on core model.

- Concept of boundaries. Boundaries are different than rules. Self-ruling... only able to create those for yourself.

- My personal limits or ways to keep myself in check when things get crazy.

- General and culture specific norms.

- Personal boundaries are set by you... allowing for flex, when needed.

- It's not the hours... it's what is going on during those hours.

- Markers - if, then's - looking through the lens... (how am I doing?)

- Cycles

- I get to define the areas and parameters

- Power to make a change and make a different choice.

- I don't like to be micromanaged - personally.

- If this starts to happen, I need to take this course of action...

- It's more about what I'm planning to do.

- Practice and learning.

Quick meeting with Bryan. Reviewing his progress on tying in PO's and flex attributes to elements of time. Conversation about classic vs snow owl (visual themes inside of adilas).

Switched over to payroll stuff. Working on payroll and pub-15 tax withholdings for 2024. Working on entering withholding tables.