OMI internship update

How was Thanksgiving for everybody. In the last 2 weeks, I have made an immense improvement in learning and implementing the BNA inventory software. Since OMI is a insurance company, not a manufacturing company, the inventory of the company is classified as product inventory, which means each asset, such a chair, a table, a worksurface, has to be tagged and inventory seperately. Among them, they are further classified into capitalized assets and non-capitalizee assets. So when I imported all the assets into the new Inventory software, we were having a hard time to figure out how to make the program recognized which asset is a capitalized asset and which one is not. Then we found out that you can only capitalized a category of asset, which mean, if you capitalized the Chair category, all chairs will be catapitalized asset. So you can not have some chairs as capitalized assets and some are not. But that was the real problem because the company does have some category of asset that can be under both capitalized or non-capitalized. Also, the software has some problem, we called the technical support and they admit that at this point, the software has not figured out how to recognize capitalized or non-capitalized asset. To deal with this problem, I had learn to create an user-defined field in the software that tells me exactly what asset is a capitalized asset and what is not. That was a big relief for everybody because without recognizing capitalized asset, we can not make this Inventory software run together with the Fixed asset software. This coming week, I will run it on the real server because I have been testing the software on a laptop. I'm excited about thissss!!

fourth week at cupcake couture

it is startig to pick up here at the store. More people are coming in for christmas shopping so that is good news. This week we held the function for the Alpha Phi girls. I worked with both of my bosses here at the store from 6 to 8 on tuesday and they were able to come in at any time and enjoy both the food and beverages sam and sara got for them, and a 20% off our entire inventory. The night went very well and we sold a lot of items and got our name out to the new members. Other than that, I am just looking forward to thanksgiving break. It should be good here at the store on black friday they are having 20% off the whole store for anyone, which is a really good deal on denim and so forth.

11/19 internship update

So I was able to finally fix that permission problem I was having, and have made quite a bit of progress this week. Aside from a few cosmetic changes to the application, I have spent the majority of the week working on a new system of inputting product sales data into the simulator. This option will allow for the user to decide before hand exactly how many of each product they think they will sell per month or per quarter (this is useful in fields where your products are very seasonal, like building houses). The old option to have growth based on a monthly or yearly growth percent still exists, but the more options the user has, the bigger the demand for the product. It has involved some of the most intense logic I have had to do thus far (because I'm doing it without my supervisors help) and I am really quite pleased with how it is turning out. I expect to finish with this section in the beginning of the next week (not including the week we have off).

Ninth Week at Vista Hills

I have been quite busy this week with Vista Hills. Every day I have tested the Rose' wine at Panther Creek Cellars for pH and Brix level. I am happy to state that the wine is making progress, yet it is experimental enough that the wine makers do not know how it will turn out. On Friday I spent a number of hours at Panther Creek filling special barrel caps (known as bungs) with Sulfur Dioxide. This liquid prevents oxygen and organic materials such as bacteria from entering the barrel, but gas is allowed to escape as well. I also worked at the tasting room this week.

-Chris

Third Week at Cupcake Couture

Cupcake has been picking up which is very nice. They got six bokes of clothes today which is exciting. A lot of new brands and styles to see and learn. We have all the clothes now for winter so the store is stocked and looks great. As far as the fashion show, I picked a charity for the spring: Habitat for humanity. I could still use advise from anyone about where would be a good place for the event to be held. let me know if you know of anywhere that would be good. The window displays look amazing so if you get the chance to walk by i would sugest it. Other than that, everything is going well and pretty much the same. I hope everyone had a good week and is happy for the weekend. Good luck to all!

It's been a while, but I'm back and blogging again! Since my last post I have made a huge amount of progress on the software application I have been working on, and can start seeing it as a product people will actually want to buy! My skills as a programmer have improved immensely, and everything is really starting to come together. Now when you open the application you can edit details about every facet of your business from your employees, outstanding loans, assets, and tons of others; which are all saved in a database so the information can be retrieved later. When the simulation is run, a complete income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement are generated for each from starting today and extending to 60 months in the future. This is extremely useful because it allows a business to see where their business is heading financially and plan ahead for possible downturns. There are a variety of settings for the simulation itself that can be selected, including several different types of sales growth rates, production numbers, and even a way to check how your business will do in the case of a recession. I feel that once this product is finished, it has the potential to be a popular business tool as it eliminates most needs for an accountant. More recently I have been working specifically on the cash flow statement, and troubleshooting a problem that isn't allowing the application to be packaged for internal testing. When my supervisor gets back from France we will have a sit down and put our heads together in order to solve this issue, as I can't do much more work on the application until it gets resolved. Hopefully by this time next week the problem will be solved and I will have a new development to share.

Eighth week at Vista Hills

This week I was very busy with Vista Hills. On Wednesday I joined 20 other students at an event at Dr. Hellie's house with three wine experts. I poured wine and participated in the wine tasting as well. Erik McLaughlin, a Linfield graduate and the National Sales Director at Willamette Valley Vineyards described the wines and was helped out by the director of the International Pinot Noir Festival (also a Linfield Grad) and the winemaker at Lemelson Yineyards in Carlton. It was interesting and encouraging to hear the success stories of Linfield graduates who have made it in the wine industry. They were honest about what it takes and I enjoyed speaking with them personally afterward.

Thursday I woke up at the crack of dawn (before dawn, actually) to pick grapes at the vineyard. One block in particular was grafted with Rosé grapes, and after class I spend more time at Panther Creek in the afternoon. These Rosé grapes will come up again in my posts because they are a special project for the interns.

Saturday I worked in the tasting room pouring wines, and despite the heavy rain, there were many visitors eager to taste. Saturdays are by far the busiest day of the week, and this is the first time I've received a truly overloaded retail experience at Vista Hills. The three of us working in the tasting room had our hands full, but the afternoon passed along smoothly.

Sunday I came to Panther Creek relatively early to barrel the Rosé wine. I have been assigned with monitoring this wine for daily measures such as pH level. Therefore I will be visiting Vista Hills daily and checking in on the wine. I spent the rest of the day barreling other wines.

-Chris

Update update

I did not write last week because I'm still working on my inventory project for OMI. This week, however, we are getting very close to finishing updating old number to new number for inventory. Some of the descriptions of inventory have been off, so there will be more work to go back and check the actual inventory. Really that is all I have been doing because this is a huge project and updating data in the software is one of the crucial part of this. However, when it gets to the new part of inputting data into the new software, it would be very exciting to me and I'm very looking forward to it. It would be challenging but hopefully I can do it!

Second Week at Cupcake Couture

Well not a lot has changed since my last blog yet. Im starting to work on the fashion show, however, and that is pretty exciting. I get to pick a charity, location, theme and everything so hopefully I can do well for my first big event. If anyone has any ideas for a good location it would be very much appreciated! I also get to help out with the window displays for Winter so that should be fun, but considering my creative side, it should also be pretty interesting. Other than that the stores been pretty slow, so I am hoping it starts to pick up for the Holidays. I hope everyone else has been having a good week.

Seventh Week at Vista Hills

This week I was active on Wednesday and Thursday for my internship. At Panther Creek on Wednesday I helped clean out some containers of grapes and learned a lot more about the grape pressing process. I also spent some time cleaning out and "steaming" barrels. These barrels were purchased second hand so that Panther Creek can increase production, but are all french oak and not older than a year or two. The steam is supposed to expand the wood to tighten any cracks or reveal cracks to large to fix.

Thursday I worked on random projects around Vista Hills, preparing literature and helping out in the tasting room. A group of 50 people came in at one point, which was quite hectic. I am definitely more comfortable in the tasting room now than I used to be, and can run it myself most of the time.

-Chris Norman