Explore Toastygirl LLC’s Vision and Expertise
This page is an online real life “art” project to help introduce tech concepts we are working on/thinking about. These posts outline Toastygirl LLC’s commitment to delivering expert ERP consulting, showcasing our dedication to innovative technology and continuous professional growth.
November 4, 2025: AI is Not Magic
Tuesday is Tech Post and Pizza Day! Please enjoy today’s Jen Zen Tech Topic
AI is Not Magic
I’m a huge fan of AI but I hate how most are handling AI adoption. I’ve been surprised at how fast so many have fallen into promoting the “magic” of AI – it might seem “magical”, but AI is not magic.
I remember the first virtual AI demonstration that I attended as a Senior Consultant at a Big 4. I was dutifully taking control of my career, attending educational experiences that would maybe, finally, make me Manager material. I was eating lunch at my desk with 900 open tabs running on 3 monitors and listening to the conference call. The analyst tasked with presenting the demo was talking enthusiastically about the neural network, Generative AI, LLMs, all the AI basics and their wonderous technical capabilities. Then the speaker mentioned the word hallucinations.
Pause for an ethereal, imagined record scratch sound in the universe as my mind was blown.
Before this AI conference call, I had 2 constants in my life, math and computers. Math doesn’t lie, it can’t, it’s either wrong or right. Computers don’t lie, they use math, math doesn’t lie. A hallucination is a lie – it’s made up – it’s not real – there is no “math” behind a hallucination to explain its existence.
People lie; people hallucinate and make up things that aren’t real. Computers are not supposed to hallucinate and lie -unless someone teaches the computers how to lie. In implementing AI, people have taught computers natural language, which opened up their ability to hallucinate, to make something up, to lie.
I am down to 1 constant in my life, thank you math. Like everyone else, I am trying to navigate this new technical landscape without drowning in possibilities. I’m trying to keep up with the AI generated F1 cars on the AI adoption highway, but I’m maxing out my 1995 Chevy Cavalier of a brain trying to finish the first lap of this “race”.
The current universal AI adoption non strategy is CRAZY. We are so fucking greedy that it seems that we’ve lost the ability to appreciate innovation and technology for its own “magic” of advancement and usefulness. We are racing at full speed, cash in hand, eyes closed, to implement half-baked AI code and build data centers for the money it will generate, instead of appreciating the benefits it brings.
I’ll stay in the AI slow lane for now, taking in the scenery – it’s about the journey anyway.
Thanks for reading, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think!
November 8, 2025: Birthday Cake ERP Recipe
LinkedIn Post
The Birthday Cake ERP Solution Recipe
I call this diagram the Birthday Cake ERP Solution recipe. It’s for a small Adult Use Recreational Dispensary with 2-5 locations and delivery services. The infrastructure reminds me of a birthday cake – it’s got the base cake layer, in this example it’s the Google Cloud (or OCI or AWS) Tenancy that houses the business end of operations and acts as a data repository for the organization. The GCP/base layer is a great foundation for whatever toppings or “applications” that you want to add on top of the cake. In the case of this example, for my “toppings” I chose a SaaS POS vendor, a SaaS HCM vendor, an IaaS vendor for integration, and a SaaS ERP vendor hosted on GCP. I’ve included Google Workspace (easy breezy) for business operations, and some storage and instances for building the future. It uses Google products for communications and integrations, Google Infrastructure, and has the flexibility of “subscription” type SaaS applications – it’s literally going to the marketplace and choosing what’s in season and is the best.
I built this diagram for my own imaginary adult use recreational dispensary company. My website/alter ego, Toastygirl.com, actually originated in 1998. I’ve always been hooked on technology and remember exactly when I picked up my first laptop. I figured out the internet connection, bought/invented the URL toastygirl.com at an early webhost provider, and have been playing around with the online storefront ever since. Originally I was going to be the first online weed dealer in 1998, but it’s 2025, and we are closer to achieving that goal but obviously not there yet.
Currently Toastygirl.com is my ERP consulting “shingle”, as well as a great way to showcase some of what I can do when I have the time. The website is usually constantly changing – just like it has since 1998. Thanks for reading and Enjoy Yourself! It’s later than you think!
Mise En Place
November 18th, 2025
Mise En Place = everything in its place. Mise En Place describes one’s workplace: your space, your tools, ingredients, notes, everything that is needed to be successful, is in its place.
As a chef in the kitchen, you prepare your workspace in advance of the dinner rush for maximum efficiency. You “pre-think” your kitchen tasks, so that you don’t have to think about where the tools or ingredients are during rush; you can simply execute.
When in the tech “kitchen”, it’s also important to prepare the workplace with Mise En Place activities. This is a healthy way to start a tech build, patch, upgrade, etc. I’m building the ERP Birthday Cake Recipe that I created for my own imaginary dispensary company and will be recording my successes (and failures) along the way. Thanks for reading – Enjoy Yourself! It’s later than you think!
Day One: ERP Birthday Cake Build – Mise En Place workbook build
Step one: create my project Tech Deck – AKA my project bible; it’s a simple project workbook that guides my way in building my solution/project/recipe.
The goal of a chef and a cloud solution engineer is roughly the same – to build recipes for a successful outcome. We build the recipe, record the steps and results, so that we have a clearly documented repeatable process – a good recipe that can be shared and enjoyed easily.
Mise En Place Workbook Tab Examples
You probably have a way that you like to organize your work but I’m sharing and example of information that I record in case you would like some ideas.
- Action Items. Name/description, owner and status of action items. If the action items aren’t named, assigned an owner, and owners held accountable then nothing will get done. I need to complete my business plan and articles of incorporation – these are my Action Items.
- Passwords. I know – bad idea, but for now I’m a company of one. Will incorporate a password manager in the growth plan.
- URLs. This is a DBA habit taught to me by a wise old DBA long ago. Just a listing of description and URLs that I find important to keep.
- Resource Hierarchy. A simple infrastructure map with maybe some data flows .
- Common Commands. Another DBA habit.
- Credentials. Credentials for APIS, DNS entries, etc. Again, just a company of one but will implement Git Hub, Putty, etc. in the future. Additionally using Google API Manager.
Discover Insights with Us
Engage with Toastygirl LLC’s expert insights and stay updated on ERP solutions and more. Submit topics of interest, feedback, and requests to be included in the Toastygirl LLC weekly online zine distribution list