John and I touching base on a big code launch and the responsibilities of each developer to see it through. We've had a few of the guys basically dump it on us and say, get it up and running and feel free to debug it if necessary. We don't like that. No one would like that. Anyways, we spent 45 minutes talking about best practices and how to help our guys follow those best practices.

Sometimes we have a limited launch window as some of our clients are 24/7 system users. That makes it tough. Our best window seems to be between 12 am and 4 am. We talked about the need for documentation to help others on the path. There is also a need for a slightly more rigid corporate structure. We are pretty loosie-goosy.

Another thing that we would like is to automate some of the database updates. We also need to beef up some of the communication channels and figure out and address any of the communication breakdowns. As we were talking, we decided that partial is sometimes better than nothing. We'll keep working at it.

Phone call with Cory to go over plans and logistics. Emails, checking on the Herbo server, texts and emails, and working on a database update for Eric - pulling out a dependency in the code.

Meeting with Bryan. Talking about rentals and what the next steps are? What options are available? We also spent some time talking about the horizontal sub time view page. We have a page that shows the parents or main elements of time in a horizontal time view. We were talking about options for showing subs of time in the same type of a view. There is functionality already built in but we want to beef it up and make it even easier.

Spent some time talking about other options for making rentals more visible and easier to use. Maybe even some custom buttons, pages, views, and/or pre-build bulk forms. Lots of good ideas.

Got a call from Harry, my dad's friend. He was watching videos on how to make Facebook work for you. We have some much content, no one knows about it. Harry was pitching an idea of doing piece work for dollars (based on content, posts, videos, images, etc.). The whole thing was reusing what we already have. If we could get the right person, and pay them a piece work fee or rate, we could push out soooo much good content. It just needs the right person to virtually recycle that content and push it out in the correct channels and spots. Great idea from Harry!

I was a little bit late, but jumped on a Zoom meeting. It was a demo prep meeting with Mike Roundtree and his crew. Their plan is to do a quick demo, get in and get out. Almost a brochure level demo. It sounds great.

Mike was marshalling the troops and getting a plan in place. They are working on a small demo outline.

After the meeting, Sean and I got on the GoToMeeting account and did a small little follow-up meeting. I helped Sean setup the SG&A parent items for the demo site. We also looked at some small errors on the enterprise system side of the fence that he was getting for enterprise vendors and copying vendors down from enterprise to transactional corps.

Recording notes. The computers (our servers) were down, so I just typed out notes on my local box. I was working on notes for a bunch of days. See the notes for 4/26/23 to 5/2/23.

Great morning meeting. Eric and Sean started out and were touching base and coordinating on a big demo and a big feature release. They were planning release times, testing times, and fall back plans if needed. I thought that it was really good. They were also talking about different servers and plans per server, based on the demo and the extra functionality. For the demo, they may script it and use an outline (direct links) and/or screenshots of the two different pieces, in case we don't get everything all merged together before the demo.

Sean and I switched gears and were talking about SG&A costs and using expense/receipts (E/R's) vs PO's and capitalized inventory. Sean kept waking up last night and wrote down a number of ideas on a Word document (see attached). We went over the Word doc and drew pictures, made notes, and talked about options. It was just Sean and I, but we beat it up pretty good. See attached for some of the notes.

Here are a few of the notes, beyond what Sean had pitched (once again, see attached).

- E/R's is where it all starts. Maybe just keep it there vs going clear out to PO and capitalized inventory levels.

- E/R's already have a normal date and a due date. The difference between the two is already a built in date range - how long to track the life cycle of each E/R.

- In Sean's notes, he was talking about to the exact minute, second, etc. We will be sticking with a daily value to keep it more simple. Most likely, it will be scheduled at a certain time so that we get consistent results, it can handle weekends, holidays, and becomes a built-in procedure.

- I liked his idea of flagging each SG&A vendor with a special flag. That will help us treat expenses from that vendor in a different way.

- If we run it through the E/R side of things, it will be very minimal effort and input from the user. Most of it will be done and distributed behind the scenes.

- Inventory still in place, keeps get hanger costs. Once it sales, that hanger cost stops and it gets recorded. Otherwise, it is sort of in a state of flux.

- If we get to the tightest level that we are thinking, it will add value for owners and managers to see what it costs over time to keep bigger on hand inventories. Being able to see past what is on the shelf and what that costs. Pros and cons to different inventory stocking models.

- If we hang (add hanger costs) to an E/R, we could reference (key word reference) the PO, invoice, item, sub item (sub inventory), etc. It doesn't add any weight to the current flow, it would just be a reference to those other pieces and/or items.

//////////

After Sean left, John and I were talking about some server stuff. I mentioned to John about getting him a higher percentage of adilas (as a co-owner) than what he currently has. He's playing an important role and doing server stuff, backend code, as well as frontend design stuff. I think that he is doing a good job. We will just keep refining things and playing well with others.

We ended up talking about servers, moving hardware to a new section within the Hostek environment. We also talked about internal developer training that is coming up, subjects, topics, and ideas. We really want the developers to virtually own or have ownership of and for their projects.

Research on companies that invest and/or acquire software companies. We have a SaaS (software as a service) type model and just looking at options. We don't really want to sell but we do want to raise some capital to help push this thing to the next level. Checking out some of our options.

Meeting with Bryan to go over progress on the time settings. We did some work on setting up the new time template and what settings to set. Spent some time playing with the setting defaults and figuring out how to auto add or sub control the templates. Basically, we deny the users the ability to update these special time templates. However, we need some of their input in order to make it flexible enough to solve their needs but not full control (that would be too hard to code to for this specific usage scenario).

How we are doing this is denying them usage of the main add/edit tools that we use to add or update normal time templates (too flexible). We then put some values or show them a smaller (paired down form) in the settings page. They interact there (with a super limited number of fields) and we pull the rest of the data over and stamp it where needed. In that way, they feel like they have some control over the output but really it is a super limited view of all of the options.

It ends up being an internal one-off to control key pieces and not let the user have full reign and freedom over which things to choose. That could screw up our code or make it harder to do a certain task.

Recording notes both in the shop and inside of adilas. Spent lots of time doing notes for 5/2/23. Lots of good meetings. Slowing making progress.

Steve and I going over SG&A costs and maybe using expenses vs PO's. Going over some of the ideas that Sean had the other day (see element of time # 10085). Sean ended up joining the meeting and then he and Steve were talking about ideas. We keep taking the next logical step and getting closer and closer to the goal. That's about the only way that you can do it, keep taking the next logical step and advancing the ball.

As the guys were talking, it was clear that operations needs to lead the accounting - almost every time if not ever time. Otherwise, it gets all messed up. Steve was talking tot Sean about accounting principles and how we then to simulate or emulate those pieces or procedures. We use different means, but the principles are still the same. It really is a form of inventing, prototyping, and experimenting. I kinda like it.

While the guys were talking and going over things, I was looking over emails in the background.

This is for me, but yesterday I was reviewing my notes from a gospel related conference session. These little words stuck out to me  - "Begin again...". I can think of all kinds of ways to apply that. If something isn't just right, keep tweaking it. Refine it, make it better, constant improvement. If it totally fails, just begin again. What did you learn, what could you do differently, etc.? Instead of feeling stuck with whatever you've got, you could just begin again. I realize that doesn't apply to everyone and everything, but those words gave me courage to get in there and see what I could do to alter things (whatever things that I need to - personally, business wise, physically, or even spiritually). We are free to choose how we will act and respond. Good stuff!

Cory joined the meeting. She, Steve, and Sean were going over a few different projects. They were talking about combined PDF's (previous uploaded docs per item, per sub, or per PO) to generate delivery manifests and what not. They were talking about all kinds of stuff for an upcoming demo in the next couple of days. After those other guys left, Cor and went over projects and did some project management stuff.

We went over some cross corp mappings for a client. We removed a few mapped items (just the mapping) so that they could redo a small portion. We got onto the server and looked around by pulling queries on the database. We modified three small records and that should be enough to let them redo the section that they want to do.

Next, we started talking about a new project to allow customers to have vehicles added and assigned to them on a one-to-many basis. We have a machanic shop that really needs this and we can see some other applications down the road. We went over what it would take to set this up, build it, script it, add pages, add logic, and general data flow. We also need this info to be available in the shopping cart and show up on invoices and quotes, as needed. We talked about settings and other pieces that would be required. I thought that it was a fun session.

We will treat this new assign vehicles to a customer similar to how we allow for additional customers to be assigned to other customers, invoices, and quotes. We may use that existing functionality as a handrail or guide for where and how this new assign vehicle relationship will show up and function. I can't tell you how important some of these existing handrails are to our developers. Once they latch onto what the older stuff does, they can virtually back track and/or trace the routes and make the modifications to do the next pieces. Good stuff.

We did some other quotes and estimates. After that we jumped over to ecommerce and were looking at the show subs and sell subs settings. Lots of AJAX (asynchronous javascript and xml) and cascading and looking up choices (manipulating the page on the fly based on a prior selection without a page refresh - one-pager stuff).

Lastly, we talked about some other projects that just aren't ready yet (to even get started on). Some of them have to almost simmer for bit before we really know which way to jump and what to do. If you force it (jump before the picture or vision is clear), you may not get what you really want. It can be painful (to wait or put things off), but some of our best stuff has developed slowly over time (simmering) and we've taken small steps along the way that allow for the next step or phase to happen. Nobody can jump from A-Z, however, if we keep taking the next logical steps, it gets easier and closer to making that jump.

Helping to look-up some custom code for a client. They wanted a new feature, but we had built them a black box page (custom code) back in the day. We ended up having to remove the custom code so that it would flow back into the normal page and code path.

Phone call with a guy who is an investor about options to buy a percentage of adilas. Briefly talked numbers and such. Fixing a small black box code page (custom code) for a client. Emails, text messages, and a quick phone call with John to talk about a server.

Meeting with Hamid (adilas intern) to go over his progress. He is almost done with the billboard site for the "Business Zipper" site. A billboard is basically a site that points people to another place (like to adilas.biz from the business zipper site). Anyways, he had a lot more content this time and it's looking good. This is just a fun starter project. We chatted and made some plans to get the full version up and live. I'll wait until he hands me off the files and then we go from there to review it, push it up, and have it go live. Making progress.

I had a dentist appointment, so I jumped on late. Cory and Sean were touching base when I joined. Cory had me look at a report that was needing a little bit of loving. We spent the whole time looking over code and seeing what was going on. We found a couple of things that were questionable. Most likely, we'll have the developer who built that report look back at it.

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.

Paying credit card bills for domain name renewal, bit bucket code repository fees, new merchant processing integration packets, and web hosting stuff. Recording notes from the past few days and some from last week. Recording notes from 5/3/23 to 5/9/23.