October 2020 Update

Hello search engine bots, web crawlers and Denise.  And maybe one or two other people that might end up reading this. It's a pleasure to have you here.

What have I been up too? Lots!

How much progress have I made? Quite a bit!

Could I have made more progress? Yeah, probably. 

Do I hate myself for not doing more? Not entirely

Will I be doing more and continue to progress? Yes. Yes I will.

So, what's been going on?

Well, let's get the bad news out the way first.

Exercise & Diet

I have been really crap with exercise. And pretty crap with diet. On a slightly better note, I haven't really put on much weight, I seem to have stabilized at around 17.5-17.10  stone and I fluctuate between the two.  Not great, but hey at least I'm not going in the reverse direction.  And for those unaware, I am 6 ft 3 so, while that's heavy, it ain't quite super fat. And I started this journey at just over 20 stone! But damn, I need to take this seriously... especially if I want to win my HealthyWage bet. The VR exercise was instrumental to me, and was working fantastic, but I fell  out the habit... why? Just kinda, interrupted my routine when I switched headsets.  That's literally all it was. Such a small thing!  Ridiculous. I need to get back on it. Immediately.

My parents were kind enough to get me a ScanWatch for my birthday, which is awesome because I wouldn't of been able to justify the cost myself right now. It's going to be interesting having that data available, I wonder what we can find out from it?

Business

Business has been fairly good! But still fairly gradual progress, but I do think that might be in part due to my warped perceptions of certain aspects that I am not yet familiar with. I spent a LOT of time setting up our ERP system and getting organized there, and I almost gave up a few times because I was stuck on some aspects and was questioning whether it was worth it, or I should just take action on the more material aspects of the business and figure out that later, but damn am I glad I figured it out in the end.

It is fantastic to have a unified system to view all the data about the business and make informed decisions. It's still not 100% setup because we are using ERPNext (100% FOSS!) and it has sooooo many  features. But all the stuff we need to actually start using it and implementing it into the business processes is complete!  And that is awesome.

There's also a ton of features and changes I would love to make to ERPNext, some of which are simple enough that me as an intermediate and rusty programmer should be able to implement myself, keeping the investment down. And the rest can go on the long term to do list for when we have spare developer resources or the cash to hire a contractor to make the magic happen.

I've sorted out our processes for a lot of what we do  - and we are getting closer to where we can scale and not worry too much about being able to fulfill the work to a high level. I do not want to sacrifice quality in the name of scaling. Perhaps in a few small ways, but I am going to keep a close eye on that.  If it's a  1-2%  decrease  in quality and is still a very valuable service offering, then it's not so bad.  But if we are providing 50% of what we are before, I am not happy with that. I am fully aware  that sacrifices often need to be made  to scale, but I also think (and  to some  degree, know) that with some innovative thinking and some good implementation, we could sustain the current level of service, scale and hell, maybe even  make the quality  higher and  the price cheaper. Sound impossible? We shall see.

Other bits and bobs.

There's been plenty going on outside of the two above  mentioned subjects, but it's coming close  to the end of my  alloted t ime to write this post so I'm gonna do a quick summary.

Had a great holiday with my parents in the beautiful countryside of Wales.

My lovely niece is turning 6 this weekend, and I can't wait to see her lil face again.

I am feeling good, but still looking to improve and carry on further!

With that being said, I'm going to leave  it there, especially as this is really for myself rather than anyone else - search engine bots probably are  not super interested in any of this. And I feel like this exercise  has given me enough clarity to carry on, and I am going to nip off some todos before bed. See ya!