Ref. Where to put consultancy work for clients - #3 by johnnydecimal
“She says that they were never allowed to start work without a ‘job code’: to which customer and project does this work belong, and to whom is it billed?” cannot be emphasized enough. If you’re running a business, then know who’s paying you for what before you work. (If you’re donating your time, engaging in some other form of pro bono work, or working speculatively, that’s fine. Give the work a job code anyway and track it anyway. You just won’t bill that particular job.)
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That way lies madness: The Curse of Xanadu | WIRED
Or not. Who knows?
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why not use OIDs? That’s what they are created for: Private Enterprise Numbers (PENs)
Because I was waiting for you to tell me about them! 
Brilliant. Thanks. I’ll register myself one.
Responding to this with just an idea Johnny, but maybe you want to use something like https://synthetic.new to build your API-enabled backend? Everything they run there is an open-source model, so if one day this part of your business is going really well, you’d be able to in-house your “backend” onto a powerful at-home computer with no other changes to your tech stack. Might be better than depending on OpenAI who could upend your dependencies at any point to harmonize their costs.
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Ah lovely, thank you. Will spend some time there today.
My little app can already run against either Ollama or OpenAI. The interesting thing about AI-based apps is that the API becomes a really small part of the whole, even though it’s so critical to it.
With JDHQ, my integration with Stripe (for payments) is really specific and detailed. I have to send them exactly just so and I get back exactly these details and if I don’t handle them right, you don’t get an account. Fiddly, is what it is.
Whereas here, much of the work is done in-app. I’m gathering data sources and crafting the prompt, and the prompt is then this big glob of stuff that I just kinda lob over there at OpenAI and say, hey, what do you think? I don’t really have to care about its structure. It’s English words that can change at any time.
And they tell me what they ‘think’, and now it’s back on my app to handle the response. It feels therefore that switching out the ‘brain’ is a lot simpler.
But yes, the general point of flexibility and OSS and trust in providers is going to be critical.
Programming notice. Mon-Fri I’ll keep these posts JD-relevant. Weekends might be leisure time.
Lucy has been drawing ‘Bum Man’ since the early 1990s. A man who is primarily a bum, he “came to her in a dream”. She used to keep paper beside her bed so she could draw him when she woke up. Here’s the latest.
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Sharpened up and using the Blackwing Pearl as well. Jeez that’s a nice lead. Quite soft but luscious to write with.
I think this entire endeavour, my life’s work, is to remove from the world a type of stress that I’ve come to immediately recognise. It’s this one: I know it exists and I’m stressed because I don’t immediately know where it is.
So I just want to note that stress here. I see you, tiny stress. I poke you in the eye.
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I was editing this JDex entry the other day and it struck me that it was an exemplar, the Platonic ideal of what a JDex entry should be. So I thought I’d share it.
Wednesday will be ‘guest post by Lucy’ day. 
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This is cool. Something I’ve done, I don’t use 1Password but KeePassXC, and I’ve given my mother and brother a copy of my password database file.
I’ve written the password to that file down on a piece of paper and gave it to my partner.
I’ve told them all that in case of my untimely death, they should bring the pieces together and unlock everything I’ve left behind (banking, emails, etc.).
I’ve then given them all training on how KeePassXC works for themselves so they all know how to have their affairs in order, and everyone (including my elderly mother) have started using it for themselves.
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I’ll maybe prioritise this one as something to talk over on video. Me and Lucy gave this great consideration earlier in the year and I think it’s important. Coming soon to a YouTube near you…
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“In You’ve Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly is positioned as virtuous but naive, a hopeless romantic stuck in the old way of doing things. But I agree with her, I think more businesses should be personal. In 1998, her proclamation could be seen as proto-nostalgia for a soon-to-be bygone time, but now that we’ve actually experienced the Joe Fox vision of the future, the line simply reads as solid business advice.”
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