River City Connections—2026-04-25 (Patreon)

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SYSTEM OVERHAUL by Hayes Markel

Some days, I wake up and don’t know what city I am in. Roman and I have been traveling—I still think it’s a bit extravagant that I go with him, but we both really love it—a few times each month, so sometimes as I’m dispelling that morning fog, I have some work to do to get oriented.

Today, I woke up in my own bed in Collierville. Tonight, Roman, Cindi, Michael, and I are at The Side Porch Steakhouse in Bartlett for dinner. Conversation was light and easy through the salads and the middle of the entrees.

Then, Cindi asked Roman about work. “Do you have any big projects coming up?”

Roman sighed. “I made a little security patch to one of my apps, and now I need to push it out to thirty-seven customers. When everything was small, I rushed into creating products without devising a system to update them efficiently.”

“So you push the apps out to every customer?”

Roman nodded and Cindi’s forehead furrowed. I could almost hear the gears spinning up.

Then her eyes lit up. “Why don’t you host all the apps on your box, then push out a client app to all your customers. The client app can connect to a jump box that handles authentication and connects them to your application server based on what they paid for.”

“Like Adobe’s Creative Cloud…” Roman nodded. “I thought of that around customer twenty the first time I had an update.”

Cindi was glowing with enthusiasm. “You could set it up so that all you have to do is update code on your application server. You could have the customer client connect to the authentication system, which could connect the customer client to whatever they’ve paid for… Download as needed… You’d just need to write connection code for the apps you already have running.”

Roman looked at his plate, nodded, and looked at Cindi. “You could do that.”

Cindi visibly deflated. She took his response as a jab, but I understood what he was thinking.

“Cindi, he’s not arguing. He means… like you… actually do that work.”

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Roman nodded. “I’m serious. You come on as a contractor or temporary employee. Fix my support problem for me, and I can stay focused on the apps.”

Cindi relaxed and looked at me, then forced a smile. “You want me to code all that up?”

Roman nodded. “You can do it as time permits. Maybe take a couple days off and come to the office so I can show you all the nuts and bolts, then work on it when you have time. How much does your company bill per hour to their clients?”

Cindi shook her head. “Way more than they pay me. Like $200 to $500 per hour.”

Roman looked at me as if I knew LDM’s budget. “What do you think? $200 an hour?”

There was some back-and-forth before a final plan was reached. Cindi was worried that she wouldn’t have the time to do it efficiently. Roman countered that it wasn’t getting done at all so an eventual delivery of the update was better than no update at all.

Michael checked in with Cindi to make sure she wouldn’t feel overly stressed out.

“Just that I’d want to get it done well, and quickly,” she replied. “In theory, it should be fairly easy, if Roman already has a way to push out the apps.”

“Easy for you,” I said. “I’m sitting here pretending to understand what a jump box is.”Michael laughed. “I understood the Creative Cloud part. I just don’t want you to be stressed in a way that causes problems.”

Cindi nodded. “Well, I like the idea of helping Roman. I think I’ll be okay.”

“There’s no rush,” Roman replied. “I could pull my programmers off the jobs they’re doing to work on this, but that would cut into future revenue streams and create security risks. If you get this done while we do that, it’s a win, and timing isn’t critical. The system we have works. Just not efficiently.”

In the end, everyone was satisfied. The logic made sense.

Cindi would be employed by LDM as a temporary, part-time employee. That would keep her from having to deal with taxes as a self-employed contractor.

Roman figured that if he contracted with a company, they would bill him somewhere between $200 and $500 an hour, so paying Cindi $200 was probably a bargain.

By the time dinner was over, a plan had been hatched and the subject had changed. We talked a while about Cindi and Michael’s wedding and honeymoon, then we talked about plans for Roman’s and mine.

I suppose that is fodder for a future post, though.

I honestly believe I could see a burden of worry lift off Roman when Cindi agreed to take on the project she described. Like he said, he can keep focusing on the apps and his customers while she fixes his support problem.

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