Hammerstone · Oct 1, 2021
<div>Sean went pheasant "hunting", Aaron gave a live coding presentation, Colleen is building out nested filters</div>
Aaron
Okay. We're back, all 3 of us, for the first time in a couple weeks, I think, unless I'm misremembering. So what's going on with y'all? Colleen, do you wanna go first?
Colleen
I feel like Sean has an exciting story to share, so I would kinda like to lead with that.
Sean
I went pheasant hunting. I went Europe, and I so I just wanted to tell you guys a story because I think it's hilarious. This is I went I did this because I love my uncle and he loves doing this activity, and he just really wanted people to do it. So I was like, okay. And so he he was very excited this year because we got to go European style pheasant hunting, which so we had you had to have you had to have, like, enough people to do this.
So we finally got, like, 30 plus guys, and we we all go. I never hunt. So I don't I don't own a gun. I had to go. We had to, like, drive and, like, make a detour to my uncle's house.
My my dad went with me to get some shotguns from him. Like, and then, you know, like, we're getting there and we're we're gonna start, like, you know, killing these birds, and I'm like, I don't even know how my shotgun works yet. I'm trying to, like, figure out, like, how this how all this works to just to set my my level with you guys. But okay. So European pheasant hunting.
There's a big field, and everybody, goes in these boxes, like, around the field. They're sort of evenly distributed around the field. It's just big old fields, like a couple football field, field size field. And in the middle of the field is a tree, and there's, like, a tree house up in the top of this tree. And some guy goes up there, brings these boxes of these pheasants, goes into the little box, and then rings a little bell or a siren or something to say, like, alright.
It's happening. And then just starts throwing these birds up in the air out of the tree in the middle of this field. These birds have no idea what's going on. They're like
Aaron
Wait. So he he brought the birds to the tree himself in, like, in a box?
Sean
Yeah. There's, like, a 100 we bought a 180 birds. So this is not actual so we bought them Not and then they bring these crates of birds into the middle of the field. So, like, right. We're all set up.
We're all surrounded them in these boxes, like, staring at the middle of the field. Just just imagine just picture that because there's there's some consequences to this. So the so then the birds come out. They don't know what anything you know, they have no idea what's happening. There's these stupid birds.
They get out. They're like they sound like the turkey kind of, and they're like they just kinda fly. They suck at flying. And then, you know, they just they literally start, like, coasting, like, gliding. Like meanwhile, it's like a war zone happening because they're surrounded by people with shotguns trying to kill them, like, as they're flying through the air.
And most of the people there have no idea what they're doing too, like me. So so and it it's just, like, it's insanity because you're shoot out shooting at each other. And the guy in the middle is getting shot for sure. He's just in this box. So, like, but you're all shooting basically at each other.
So you have to wear safety glasses because there's literally shotgun shots just like Oh,
Colleen
my goodness.
Sean
Raining on you.
Aaron
Like, I was It's such a bad idea.
Sean
Hit by these things so many times just like spraying my face. I'm like, you know? Like, it sounds like rain, like, in the forest behind you,
Aaron
you know? Like
Sean
and the and the birds, like I mean, I did. I actually got I murdered 5 of these birds. But, like, it was because I had to I I learned the like, what I learned was shotguns, you can't shoot past, like, 20 or 30 yards. But these birds are, like, a 100, 200 yards away. So, like, my dad and I, this is one of the first birds that they're releasing out, and it starts coming towards us.
And we're still, like, not sure how our shotguns work. You know? I'm like, I think I've got mine up, you know, and I'm like I just start, like oh, like, we're like, oh, it's coming towards us. Okay. Here we go.
This is ours. And, like, we have to, like we're, like, shooting. And I'm trying to, like it's so far away. Like, I'm having to sort of, like, lob the shots at it. You know?
It's sort of like a arcing. I'm like, oh, I can lead it, like, way out here and it gets kinda close. But we're shooting and shooting, and then it's getting closer and closer. It's just flying directly at us. And, I I ran out of ammo.
So then I'm like, oh, crap. I gotta reload, which I don't really know how to do. So I'm, like, getting my gun over. I'm like, oh, I gotta hurry up and reload before this is try and shoot at it again. And my dad has this, shotgun.
He doesn't know how it works either. He's, like, he shoots it once and then he can't figure out how to get it to go again. So we're both just, like, in this box, like, frantically trying to load to shoot at this bird. And then the bird, it just lands just right in front of us. Really?
And the guy we had dogs. We had a guy with a couple of guys with dogs hired for this too. And, he was next to us, and I just we're we're doing that, and my dad and I are both like, oh, shit. Like because you can't shoot them once they land. And it's right in front of us.
Aaron
On the ground?
Sean
No. Because the dogs. It's a safety thing for the dogs because they immediately wanna go, like, try and get this bird. And the guy yeah. The dog guy just starts laughing his ass off.
He's like, you guys, you have to wait until they're, like, right, like, 20 yards in front of you before you shoot. I mean, there's another time that we're
Aaron
just a firefight.
Sean
It's, like, flying over us. Both my dad and I are, like, just shooting, like, okay. Almost got it. And then I guess I have this picture, this vivid image in my mind of this pheasant just, like, coasting, just peacefully, just whoosh,
Aaron
right over And
Sean
then it landed in a tree, like, right behind us.
Aaron
I gotta say, you had every advantage in this situation. And it sounds like sounds like the birds still did pretty well.
Sean
They they did. We missed, like, half of them. But then you go back later with the dogs and you flush them out with these dogs. They're crazy. The dogs are amazing.
That's the best part of the whole thing is the dogs. They're so cool. They go and they flush them out and then, you know, you shoot them when they pop up. And that's basically like playing duck hunt.
Aaron
Like, it's exactly like what I was thinking.
Colleen
While you were describing
Sean
this. It's exactly like it except in real life. I mean, it's I
Colleen
think in
Sean
general, I think in general and then all of a sudden it pops up and you have to, like, you know, shoot it really fast. Yeah. That's exactly it. So anyway, that was a hilarious experience.
Aaron
Never ever heard of European pheasant hunting. So thank you for illuminating us. Yep.
Sean
Just like I'll never get the image out of my mind of these birds just, like, just flying in the field, like, coasting. They're in their minds. They're like, yes, I'm starting my new life. Gonna go off and
Aaron
I'm out of the box. Over here. Yeah. Man. Well, I think I've been dev hunting once when I was like 8, so I would have been right there.
I would have been right there with you in terms of proficiency.
Sean
Yeah. Like, I can't believe I actually got any. I, like, couldn't believe it. But I did. I probably spent a $100 on ammunition.
That's a Oh my gosh.
Colleen
Wow.
Sean
I mean, I don't know. Like, many boxes of ammo. And, of course, Colleen, you know the guys that I work with. I told them this story, and they were all laughing their asses off at me.
Colleen
I bet they loved it. Yeah. My so I have a family member who's in that. Anyway, I have a family member who shoots guns for a living. So he took me shooting once and taught me how to shoot.
But I have never been pheasant hunting. That certainly sounds interesting.
Aaron
Yeah. Me either.
Sean
I don't know if it counts as hunting, to be honest. Right? Like
Colleen
Right? When they throw them in the air, they fly right towards you.
Aaron
Yeah. That's that's cheating.
Colleen
Oh, so my husband's grandfather, who has now passed away, was, like, semi famous bowhunter. And so, like, that's, like, really intense, like, you know, very focused kind of hunting. But, like, he used to hunt animals with a bow, like bow and arrow.
Aaron
That sounds pretty cool.
Colleen
Yeah. It was I mean, I'm not into hunting, but, like, it was, like, the whole the whole ecosystem of that was really fascinating.
Aaron
Yeah. I bet that's a whole subculture. I've seen the only places I've seen that is on the the show, what's it called? Alone? I think it's on Netflix.
I don't know. Oh, man. It's great. It's where they drop them out into the wilderness and they just have to survive. Yeah.
Yeah. I was talking to a guy. We lost Sean. I was talking to a guy at work recently about how much I don't like hunting. Cause you go out, you have to wake up super early and then you have to go sit in the cold and be quiet and just sit there all day.
It's like, I would just much rather stay in the cabin and drink some coffee. Yeah. But some people some people are super into it, but
Colleen
I imagine especially in Texas.
Aaron
Oh, yeah. Being in Texas? Yes. Very much so. Lots of hunters.
But, not this guy. Okay. Well, let me see. I'll Slack Sean and see if he's coming back.
Colleen
Okay. Cool.
Aaron
My Internet's crap reloading. Okay. So he'll be back. So you wanna tell me what's going on in client world? I saw Oh, there he is.
I saw you got inline errors, which looked great.
Colleen
Yeah. I'm pretty happy with them. I think work. You know, all of this detail work, it's always more things than you think it's gonna be. So I have been, the past couple weeks, just working on, like, those kind of details, which I think has been really good.
Yeah. So I showed you inline errors, so I'm happy about that. My next big task is still gonna be I need to do some deep work on how to do these filters without, you know, using the big table as a join table, which we have talked about before. And I have talked with, our point of contact over there about some options we had, because what you had showed us, Aaron, was saving the filters, and that's kind of what I had been thinking. Like, if you wanna build a product filter, you'd that filter would then be saved, as they already are, and then you can pull up that filter when you're trying to do the higher level of filtering.
Right? So when you want that nested filter, it would just be in line and you'd pull it up. That would be really cool, and everyone loves that idea, but that is not what they want right now.
Aaron
And they want so they wanna be able to build, like, child filters inside
Colleen
They want in line
Aaron
at runtime.
Colleen
Correct. Correct. And so that is outside of the scope of what we have designed. So I'm not saying it's gonna be a huge problem. I just have been doing all this other, like, kinda littler I don't wanna say littler.
That I don't mean to take away from, like, UI stuff. Like, that's really important. But I have no I was gonna say,
Sean
Collin, you're, like, describing my entire job here. Jeez. I'm
Aaron
just kidding.
Colleen
Terrible. Like, I No.
Aaron
You're good.
Colleen
I really am. So that stuff is really important and I'm really happy with how how it's looking. And, you know, there was a lot of detail. Like, what happens if the Flexbox wraps? Like, what does it look like?
You know, stuff like that. So, oh, my gosh. Sean just got frozen on the most amazing face ever. That was awesome. Anyway, so the next And I've been kind of busy so, I haven't had time to do, like, the deep work to figure out this inline child filter at runtime situation.
That's the next, like that's really the big push. They need to make sure that's gonna work. And so I have been asked to do that next.
Aaron
Did they have the UI solved for that?
Colleen
I know that you're waiting
Aaron
on that.
Colleen
Yeah. So they gate not exactly, but that's filter that has already been saved UI.
Aaron
Mhmm.
Colleen
And that looks that looks snazzy. I like how that looks. But I had saw, I had seen that UI diagram and I had made the assumption that, that, that was what they wanted next. And again, they want that eventually. Like, we'll have time.
But the next thing is the inline child filters. And the UI, I'm just gonna kinda wing it, and then we'll we'll work on it with the designer to make it better.
Aaron
Yeah. Because that's gonna be I mean, I don't know how I don't know how that UI is gonna fit. Because basically, they're wanting to show, like, contacts who have purchased a specific product where, you know, the the product is an entire filter on its own. Right?
Colleen
Right. But why is that, why is that UI a problem? It's gonna be literally what you just said. That'll be it.
Aaron
Right. But then so everything kind of goes left to right. You know? So it's like where they've purchased a product that and then in that last column, are you gonna put the entire product filter over there and it just keeps going? Do you see what I mean?
Like, we usually just have one thing at the end. It's like a drop down, and you say the color is red. But in this case, the one thing at the end is the entire product filter that in itself has 3 columns. Does that make sense? It looks like no.
Colleen
What do you mean no no? What do you mean it has its own 3 columns?
Aaron
Columns? So, like, the product filter has, conditions. You can be like color is red, size is large. Right. So that's 3 columns.
Color is red. Right?
Colleen
Yeah.
Aaron
Then if you're taking that filter and putting it in another filter, so then you want, like, has purchased a product where color is red, size is large. So now, you've got 5 columns wide. Yeah. Does that make sense? Sean, am I making sense?
Sean
Yeah. It's gonna be
Colleen
I don't think it's
Sean
It's gonna be Colleen, I think it would be it's gonna be weird. It's gonna be hard to figure it out. Because you have to be in
Aaron
the zone.
Colleen
Right? So you'd
Sean
That they want to convey to the user. So and because it's like an entire separate filter of entire separate table. So, like, it's not the refinement. It's kind of a refinement. It's like but I don't think we could do it within refinement UI.
They'll have to be broken out into its own, like I don't know if it's gonna be, like, it's gotta be its own screen on, like, sub nested subsection or I don't know what to do make that look not overwhelming.
Aaron
Right. Because then you'll have in that last column, you know, has purchased product. You're gonna have multiple columns in that column and multiple rows inside one row.
Colleen
Is that Right. So maybe we when when they define it, we make them I don't know. I gotta look at it. Maybe we make them more, like like, constrain it more when they define it in the back end, so we don't give them, you know, 3 additional columns. You give them one additional column.
Aaron
Well, you'd still need at least 2, because you're gonna wanna choose color
Colleen
is red
Aaron
is red. Well, that's 3. You know, sizes large color is red.
Colleen
Yeah.
Aaron
So there's, there's your 3 right there. So yeah. I don't know.
Sean
Yeah. Because it's gonna be it'll basically, like, grow it's gonna grow it out horizontally and then also vertically come down with a weird, like, gap over on the left. If you we just did it that way. It starts to get kinda unwieldy. But maybe this is, like, an advanced feature.
I could imagine, like, building, That's not how if they're doing it in a drop down, so kinda limits the UI expectations, maybe. Or maybe we make it, like, a mega drop down, which takes over more of the screen, and then it interacts more like a single page application within the drop down for building the query. Then you can do stuff like flip the page, like, click on this, and now you're editing the new, filter in its own screen and then go back to go back to the original
Colleen
I wanna share my screen with you guys. Can you see my screen?
Sean
That's good
Aaron
podcast content. Yes. Yeah. Seriously. Let me describe in detail.
Okay. So it's a browser window, and in the browser window
Colleen
Look at this. It says purchase purchase history. Customer has placed an order at least 2 times in the last 2 weeks. Why wouldn't this just be contact has selected, you know, whatever, a product that is red? Like, why is it harder than this?
Sean
Well, because there are gonna be multiple rows Mhmm. Under there. It'll just keep going. It's just gonna be like a run on sentence.
Colleen
Right. It's just it's just gonna be a long block. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's just not gonna look
Sean
Right. Well, it
Colleen
And that's
Sean
It's gonna look, like, for listeners, I'm making a
Aaron
Yeah. I mean
Sean
gross face. That's what
Colleen
I'm making a gross.
Aaron
Yeah. In in the UI there, I think Sean's right. That's a restricted number of options. Like, the UI that you just showed is as long as it'll ever get. You know, 2 Yeah.
Colleen
You're saying this will continue
Aaron
This could be infinitely long.
Colleen
Right.
Aaron
And then Yeah. We would be switching from, like, the condition per row paradigm to you just, like, keep adding, things on and you lose the ability to do ores then because you're not
Colleen
having groupings. Exactly. My thought on this, guys, is, like, let's yeah. I thought about that. We'll talk about that when we get there.
I think my thought on this is, my plan is to get it working with, you know, however it looks out of the box. And then they there's a reason they have a full time designer. Right? Like, he can big time. We can work with him, and we can work with our contacts over there to figure out because this is a very specialized request, I think.
Mhmm. Like, I don't know that that this is gonna be a I don't know. Maybe it will be coming. I don't know. But I don't think we, the 3 of us, need to obsess too much over it because I think they're gonna give feedback in terms of what they want it to look like, and then we can iterate once we have that information.
Aaron
Yeah. That seems fair.
Colleen
Okay.
Aaron
It will be very, very cool if you could just reference on the back end, reference another filter, like basically use a filter as a as a condition. Attribute.
Colleen
Like, as a Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Attribute.
Sean
Yeah. Yep.
Colleen
Yeah. That would be super cool. Right?
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, we could, my company, we could use that right now. Because like I showed you, we do that. We do the, like, you have to save the filter and then you plop it into the other filter. But, yeah, to be able to build those on the fly, that'd be really cool.
Yep. So Nice.
Colleen
Yeah.
Aaron
Anything else exciting?
Colleen
Not for me. How about you? Let's talk about your life coding.
Aaron
Live coding. You did
Colleen
so great,
Aaron
Aaron. Thanks. Oh my gosh.
Colleen
You were amazing. I was
Aaron
I was
Colleen
You even threw in some, like, funny jokes.
Aaron
I know. I felt like I was vibing. It was great. Sure. Yeah.
So I did a Laravel Worldwide, meet up. So it's like a meet up, but online. And got to present, sidecar. So I showed them basically how to deploy a couple of Lambdas, how to interact with them from your Laravel application. And so I was live coding and, like, pushing stuff to AWS live, which made me real nervous.
But, yeah, I was so so I took 2 days off. I took Monday Tuesday off. The talk was on Tuesday. And and, you know, Monday morning, I didn't have anything. So I took Monday Tuesday off to prepare and then to give the talk.
And, man, it's it's a lot of fun, but boy, is it nerve wracking to, like, do a live talk like
Sean
that. Yeah. Plus live coding.
Aaron
I was brave.
Colleen
Live coding.
Aaron
Oh, man. Yeah. I was super afraid something was going to go really wrong and I was going to be so nervous that I couldn't figure it out. And everybody was gonna be like, hey. It's obviously, you know, that thing right there.
Sean
Yeah. And then, like Yeah. The YouTube comment lag is I know. Makes it hard to do anything.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. But it went it went super well. I didn't have any unrecoverable errors. I forgot one thing, but I knew immediately what it was and was able to fix it.
I had prepped a lot before. I had run through the talk maybe 3 or 4 times, and I had, I had, like, basically all the code off on my second monitor, so I didn't have to type it all. Oh, smart. And so I typed a few things, and then when it was time to, like, do a bunch, I just copy and paste it and then walked through, like, hey. This is what I did, you know, line by line.
So I wasn't, like, fat fingering everything. Because when I get nervous, I start hitting the wrong keys and
Sean
so Yeah. There's just, like, forget how to do anything.
Aaron
Yeah. Exactly.
Sean
I think I was a computer programmer at one time in my life.
Aaron
And you have you have all these shortcuts memorized, but you can't like, if you think about it, you don't know what they are. You don't know what they
Colleen
are. Yes.
Aaron
Yeah. That's the worst. I was super afraid of that. But, yeah, I got a lot of really, like, positive feedback. Some people mentioned that it I should do a Laracon talk, which would be amazing.
That would be ideal. Yeah. So, yeah. I finished it, Tuesday afternoon when I when I finished it, I ran inside because I'm out in the shed, and I ran inside, and it was my wife was watching it inside while she was feeding the babies. And because of the lag, I was just, like, barely finishing up inside.
And so I came in, and I was like, I did it. It's over. I didn't mess up. She was like, I didn't understand any of it, but it seemed like you did great.
Colleen
That's awesome.
Aaron
Yeah. So super pumped. And then just like afterwards, I was just so exhausted. I think I was riding the, like, riding the high up until the talk, and then after I finished, I just kinda crashed. And then the rest of this week, I've just been I've just been so low energy, like like jab exclamation point, you know, super low energy, which has been tough because I've, like, got a bunch of stuff I wanna do, but I'm pretty I'm pretty gassed.
So been kind of a downer rest of the week. You know, on our call yesterday, I was pretty, like, zoned.
Colleen
Yeah. You were.
Aaron
Yeah. It's just been it's been a tough tough week after that. Just really worn out.
Sean
So I don't know if it'll make you feel better, but I was always the same with all that stuff. Like Yeah. I hated it. I think, eventually, you get used to it if you do it a lot. I never really got totally used to it, though.
Like and the other problem with me was I the the ones that I did, I I ended up doing these I did these well, I would always end up being surprised by the number of people, which is like, you know, you sort of, like, set your mind up for, like, oh, I'm just gonna have, like, you know, dozen people or whatever. We're just gonna be like, go to a meetup or something, and you're just gonna, like, throw together a presentation for some other programmers or something. Mhmm. But then, like, I remember one time, I was in Arizona. I was visiting my in laws on vacation, and I had scheduled a a talk with I did.
It was I was when I was doing joint venture webinars trying to sell my book to make money. So I was like, okay. I'm doing this joint venture with this guy. Guys, I gotta take a break, and I gotta go in the other room here and, like, do this presentation. I'll be done in, like, an hour.
Mhmm. So they're all out in the living room, like, doing Christmassy stuff, and I'm in this room, like, getting set up, and I and I hop in to do the JV webinar. So, you know, I'm just, like, in this room over here, they're over here. And then I jump into this this room and, like, almost 500 people are, like, logging in
Aaron
Oh, wow.
Sean
To listen to me talk. And I'm, like, oh, shit. And then you probably experienced this yesterday. It's very weird to be giving a talk to nobody, but also know that it's, like, enough people to fill, like, a small auditorium. You're like it is so hard to wrap your head around that.
I think and and yeah. And after I was and it was also weird because I could hear my family in the other room, like, you know, and I had my brain my mindset was not, like, prepared for this at all. I'm like Yeah. Woah. But, yeah, I'd had a few I had a few I had another one locally that was like that too.
I showed up. I think my topic was really interesting to people, and, normally, you know, they don't have that many people show up. But, like, I'd I went to, 8th flight, which is, like, the consultancy here. I did a talk and it was just about Flexbox. You know?
Like, this was a long time ago when it first came out and I was just, like, gonna do an overview of it. There are hundreds of people. They, like, filled this whole room and they had no room for people to sit. I was, like, oh, no. This is not what you guys think it's gonna be.
Yeah. Anyway, sorry. It's, it's very exhausting. I would be done for the week. Every time I would do something like that, toast for the week.
Like, I I couldn't really I couldn't yeah. So I think it gets better if you do it a lot, but for me, it never it never did. I didn't do it enough, I think, to get used to it.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. That kinda also I mean, that leads into I mean, we have decided we we're going on retreat next week. So we I think, Sean, you and I fly in Thursday. Colleen, you get there Wednesday.
Colleen
Yep.
Aaron
So our original goal well, our well, our most recent goal was to have the Laravel view stuff wrapped up or, you know, published before retreat. And I think we have decided that's not gonna happen. And so I think that's part of it as well as I just feel like I don't have I don't have that much energy left right now and trying to get that done in the next week would be way too much. And so since we are, you know, in charge, I think we've decided to push it for sanity's sake. So I would still love to get it released by November 1st, which I think is imminently reasonable.
But, yeah, I know we have talked on here about having it done by October 7th, but that plan has changed, and I think that's okay. Yeah. I
Sean
think we wanna get it done by then because then we start getting into holiday season time and it's hard to get people to actually care about anything at at that point.
Colleen
Yep.
Sean
But, yeah, I think we're I think we're I mean, we're close to hitting the deadline as it is.
Colleen
So I was thinking about the presentation we're putting together for retreat. I only have, like, 4 slides. So I k. Probably not tonight because it's Friday. But, I really think there's a lot more.
I was thinking about it while I was listening to you this morning, Aaron. There's just so much more, like, we can expound upon in terms of this discussion that I do think there's an opportunity for us to add, like, a lot more detail. If you guys have any time over the weekend to look at that, that would be cool. I will try to look at it again too. Because I was just, like I do real stream of conscious, like, blah blah blah.
You know? Like, word vomit style. So I think it would be good for us all to take a look at that, because then people will look at it before we go. And so, like, that kind of low hanging fruit feedback, like, we'll get that before we go so we can be really focused.
Sean
Did we link Aaron's backstory podcast?
Colleen
Did we link Aaron's backstory podcast?
Sean
Yeah. Like
Colleen
in Someone did. Yes.
Sean
So they'll stick that in the slide and be, like, read this and then our outlines will make more
Aaron
sense. Yeah.
Colleen
Do you have a transcript? Do we have transcripts for that?
Aaron
No. But I think I think Sean gave me his Descript login
Sean
Yes.
Aaron
So I could drop it into Descript and
Colleen
I don't wanna give you more to do. I mean, people can listen to it. It's not that long. Like, I but,
Aaron
Yeah. It's not that long.
Colleen
It's not that long. It's easy. It's, like, 20, 25 minutes.
Aaron
Yeah. Okay. What areas do you think we should expand on? I haven't looked at the slides you've done yet, but if I had done this weekend, what should
Colleen
I do? Yeah. All I did is, like, I literally have a slide that's like Hammerstone products, and it's Sidecar and Torchlight and Refine. And I feel like Sidecar and Torchlight both have a whole ecosystem surrounding the amount of like, it's worth talking about that, like, the amount of hype and the, you know, all of the good things those are doing for the company. So that's specifically what I was thinking about.
Aaron
Great. I can do that.
Colleen
Yeah. And as and I think just, like, continuously, we wanna keep the focus on what we think we wanna keep the focus on, so make sure that that's clear.
Aaron
Right. And we don't want to keep the focus on, you should have launched already, but we do want to keep the focus on what is our repeatable strategy. Is that kind of what we're trying to focus on, or what's the big takeaway we're trying to get?
Sean
Well, I I know what I want to get out of it. I have 2 things that I would like to get out of it. One is, well, what you just said, Aaron, which more specifically would be what main channel should I go after? Like, marketing channel. What's the what's the best guess?
I mean, we're gonna have to try stuff, but, like, what's everybody's best guess? And we kinda brainstorm that with everybody because also some of the because I think, like, for example, going after integrations strategic integrations with different platforms, that makes a hell of a lot of sense as a channel for us to go after. Except we have the constraint of that adds extra work to you, Aaron, because of, you know, we're doing, like, Laravel integrations or whatever. So maybe no for now. Right?
Like, maybe that's not what we go after for now. What's the so, anyway, I wanna have that whole conversation with them. That's good. So that's 1. 2 Yeah.
I am unbelievably busy, which is awesome. I really like my life right now. Like, it's great. But, like and, like, career wise, I can't imagine things being any better than they are now. It's ridiculous.
I'm just gonna, like, enjoy it while it lasts. But the, the problem is I have so many responsibilities, and I'm, like and only finite amount of energy. And, like, I'm not do I'm doing, like, a mediocre job everywhere on everything, which I think is a problem a lot of people run into. But I'm, like, I feel like I hate having the productivity conversation typically, but I do feel like I need to level up that for myself a little bit. And I think that that room would be a good room to talk to about that.
Like, how do I more effectively get because I'm it's not like I'm not working. I am getting I'll put it in hours, but, like, I don't think I'm getting the most out of my hours and, like, the energy that I do have. Mhmm. I am doing a good job, I think, of not burning myself out. So at least I know I've got that managed, but then I'm, like, okay.
Like, I can't just push harder on, like, getting outcomes without pushing myself past where I know I can't go. So what do I do? Like, how do I get more, you know, more done? Which is what I want. I do want to be more I know that I have a lot of, like, slack that I could pick up without adding stress.
Like, I think there are some things I could do, and I think that room would be great. So that's what I want. Those are the 2 things I want. And they're both related to us. One's a little bit more me, but obviously relevant because right now, I think we all agree on the bottleneck.
I'm like, this thing getting done is, like, Sean's gotta finish the front end. So, like and that it'll it'll be that way for a bit. So now I wanna I wanna remove myself as the bottleneck.
Aaron
Smart. Okay. Okay. I like those. Colleen, you, I think, need some space to talk simple file upload as well.
Right?
Colleen
Yeah. So I actually have a whole other slide deck. So I separated the slide deck. So I have a whole other slide deck for that, to talk about. Of course, everything intersects when we look at, like but I have one that's more about me.
All about me.
Aaron
Perfect. And we don't have you don't have a separate slot for that. So we need to reserve some of our
Colleen
more slots. You look at the
Aaron
Oh, you do.
Colleen
It looks like Bucky, actually gave us each I thought he was gonna give us, like like, an hour, but he gave us each a slot if you look at it, I believe.
Aaron
Oh, I okay. Let me
Colleen
I think that changed somehow.
Aaron
I was under the impression that he slotted us all. Yeah. So Aaron at 9 AM, Colleen at 10 AM, Sean at 11 AM.
Colleen
So I could just do 3 hours. Yeah. Okay. Originally, we were only gonna get, like, 1 hour as a team, but now we have 3 hours.
Aaron
So I'm thinking we will do hammer stone for as long as it takes, and then, Colleen, you'll take, you'll transition to simple file upload all within that slot. So I don't think I'll go at 9 and Sean will go at 11. I think Hammerson will go, and then simple file upload will go. Does that seem right to you?
Colleen
That sounds right to me.
Sean
And we should prioritize the Hammerstone stuff. Like, if it's just the 2 things that I wanna talk about, then let's prioritize those. But, also, like, Aaron, I don't know if are are you just like, what I wanna talk about is what you wanna talk about too?
Aaron
Yeah. Basically, I don't have I don't have a a discreet thing that I wanna talk about, but I I will flesh out some of the torchlight stuff, and then we can all talk about that stuff, the hammer some stuff together.
Colleen
Yep. Sounds good to me. I think a lot of these issues overlap. Right? Because it's about
Aaron
Yeah. For sure.
Colleen
Like, what you want out of life slash your business. And so I think, like, Sean's particular concerns, like, that that's a hammer stone thing. That's also a Sean thing. Right? Mhmm.
Mine are the same. Cool. Cool. Cool.
Aaron
Speaking of front end, Sean, you've been working on some stuff.
Sean
Yeah. View front end's come along. It's nice to switch gears to work on that instead of the Hotwire stuff. Like, the Hotwire thing's cool, but it was such a big stretch for this app. It's as Colleen is now experiencing.
Colleen
Yes. Yes. I am.
Sean
It's so stupid, but whatever. Well, I shouldn't say that. Oh my gosh. It's not stupid. It makes so much sense.
They get a lot of benefit out of doing it that way, and our future customers will get a lot of benefit out of doing it that way because there's no other dependency. It's awesome. But it was, like, I don't know, very hard to figure that out. So, yeah, the view thing is better. The view thing, like, the view thing is awesome because, like, I'm kind of I'm pumped about the view thing because, like, I have the builder mode, so, you know, the thing you'd normally interact with.
But then I have also this other mode where you get to just, like, statically put in queries, which is super useful and and really cool. And I know that our client has already asked for that feature, which I felt was very validating because I, like, did all this work to to do this. And I was like For sure. Pretty sure people are gonna want this. And, yeah, first client wants it.
So I'm excited about that. And then, you know, it's also just nice to play around with Vue stuff. It's it's better than what I was doing. So, yeah, that's going well. I'm doing, I'm working on adding ores because where we'd left off with the view thing was we weren't we weren't sure, like, how we wanted to do that, and then working with our client kinda shaped, like, what that looks like, design wise.
So I'm just putting that in. And then, and then I'll do and then I'll do refinements or, actually, probably inline errors first, Aaron. Does that make sense to you?
Aaron
Yeah.
Sean
And then and then we could do refinements. Yeah.
Aaron
Because I feel like refinements could get cut if we wanted we wanted them to.
Sean
And then, like, the thing is, like, we could start integrating now except I have to, at some point, stop and figure out how to do the build the package, which I'm definitely procrastinating that because it's just truly not looking forward to figuring out how all of that works. But that's just part of the grind we're gonna have to I'm gonna have to bite that bullet at some point here so that way we can integrate and fix all that, clean all that up, and then and then go.
Aaron
Yeah. That sounds great. Yeah. I I really do think we could have hit we could have hit next week. We're we're that close, but it's just not worth it's not worth the death march to do that.
Yeah.
Sean
I agree completely. Although at some point, it's kinda like at the end, there's gonna be a little scramble. Like, when we do actually start throwing in some customers, there's no avoiding it. Yep. It will be a little bit of a scramble at first.
Yep. But then but then we don't have to but we don't have to, like, do that to ourselves. Right.
Colleen
Right.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. It's no matter how much we prepare the first couple of weeks after a customer's using it, there's gonna be a lot of, oh, crap. I gotta fix this.
Sean
Yep.
Aaron
So yeah. I think last thing, and I just thought of this, is do we wanna spend any money before the end of the year? Because we've got money, And if we don't spend it, it's gonna be taxed, and we gotta figure out, you know, how that's gonna flow through. And does that mean we're then gonna take distributions to cover the taxes or, you know, whatever.
Sean
That's tough.
Aaron
It is gonna flow through no matter what. So do we wanna spend money on anything to, you know, make that easier?
Sean
Any spend that I can think of right now would be requiring me to spend more time on it, and I don't have the time.
Aaron
Because it would be a front end.
Sean
I'd hire the things I could think of would be, oh, let's try sponsoring podcasts and advertisements and advertisements and stuff. Or let's try hiring a front end developer to free me up, you know, so that they can do maintenance stuff and new features. And either one of those is gonna require time, which I don't have. We may get there in November. And it it's like, maybe I do wanna do it now because then I'm starting to get them like, start the process now.
So I'm starting to get them up to speed. But, also, I mean, honestly, guys, I can't do it. Like, there's no way. My brain's too scattered. I'm hiring people at work.
I'm, like, got Yeah. 3 projects at work that I'm trying to juggle. I've got I'm gonna be out of town traveling for over a week next week. Wow. So yeah.
I was just, like, I can't I can't really I can't do it. I'll do a shitty job if I do. So we should not do that. Yeah.
Colleen
Okay. No.
Aaron
We don't need to do that. The only other thing that I could think of would be and I don't even know if we need this. Hiring, like, a designer for because we're gonna need like a landing page for refine.
Sean
Yeah.
Aaron
Right? Right now we just have like kind of a tailwind UI homepage. So the only thing I could think of would be hiring a designer to give us like a cohesive site, and perhaps a landing page for refine, and like, branding for each of the different packages.
Sean
I love that idea.
Aaron
For torchlight and for sidecar.
Sean
I feel like though, again, that's another thing where to get the most bang for our buck, it's gonna require time, like time.
Aaron
Hour time?
Sean
Yeah. Because we need like, that's a job that needs to be done for at some point before we do, like, a proper launch, before we really start, like, pushing it out and not just, like, asking people that we know that are interested in it to to sign up. Right? Like, when we get reach that phase, we really need our marketing material to actually, like, say something cohesive, which is really a thing that we all 3 of us need to sit down and, like, spend several hours going through together to make sure that that's all, like, cohesive and lines up. You know?
Because it it's like a both needs to reflect what customers want and, like, also us and, like, how like, the combination they're in. And so to have a marketing person do that, like, add the pretty to it now, it doesn't make any sense. Got
Colleen
it. That makes sense.
Sean
This is just what I think is Vito me.
Colleen
I feel like you're also the most experienced in this particular, area. This is kind of your area of expertise of the 3 of us.
Sean
So I have actually been paid money to do
Aaron
this. Yeah.
Colleen
I mean, that makes total sense to me, Sean. Like, I I agree. Because I think a good designer is not gonna be cheap, and so we don't wanna spend the money now when we're not really ready to optimize it.
Sean
Yeah. And then even then, the design is way less important than we get our copywriting. Way less important.
Colleen
Yeah.
Sean
So
Colleen
Okay. Sounds good to me.
Aaron
I wonder, like yeah. I'm I'm thinking less of, like, getting the getting the landing page right, and I'm thinking more of, like, all of the different packages and the hammer stone kind of like like because the hammer stone logo is like a vector rock that I found.
Sean
Yeah. Let's do some branding. We could do a little branding if we wanted to.
Aaron
So if we could get a cohesive hammerstone, torchlight, sidecar, and air drop, which is another package. If we could get, like, consistent logos and, like, branding done, I feel like that would be helpful, because we'll need that at some point, but we definitely don't need it right now. But if we're looking to if we're looking to do that, we could do that right now.
Sean
Yeah. I like that. We could spend the money on, like, my illustrator. I like to go that's the path I go to down is, like, get custom illustrations from somebody that's really, really good. It really elevates the, the design.
It also costs a couple $1,000. So, you know, up to you guys if you think that's worth it. But
Aaron
but I don't know. That's more of what I was thinking. So we could, like, have have banner images on the GitHub, repos. And so everything looks like hammerstone touch. You know?
Sean
Yeah. That's that's definitely a thing we could spend money on now.
Aaron
Okay. Alright. Let's do that. Let's think about that, and we'll do that after the retreat. No need to start doing anything now, but that would be a good way to get something of value that we do need without having to be super involved in it right now.
And, you know, paying taxes on profit is not the worst thing in the world. So we can do that too. Alright. Anything else? Nope.
Oh, we
Sean
could also make a donation.
Aaron
We could. Yeah. I would be open to discussing that as well. Donate donation to Colleen's bank account is what her face is saying. What am
Colleen
I gonna donate to? We can talk about it next week.
Aaron
Let's talk about it next week. Alright.