Welcome, so glad you're here to nerd out with us for another episode of the nonprofit show. Today we have Alicia Eastbold in the hot seat joining us from your part-time controller or as we will reference YPTC quite a bit. Alicia serves as an associate at your part-time controller and she's gonna talk to us about what it's like to leverage your financial statements to help you tell that NPO story. So stay with us. We of course want to remind our viewers and our listeners who's here. So good morning to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Also myself, I'm here. I'm Jira Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. It was questionable this morning if I was here or not but I'm here so grateful to be alongside you Julia each and every day to have these conversations. We are so very grateful to have the ongoing support, investment and truly trust from these presenting sponsors. So thank you, huge shout out goes out to our besties at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, be generous, your part-time controller. Again, where Alicia joins us from, nonprofit nerd, nonprofit thought leader as well as staffing boutique. So thank you, thank you, thank you to these amazing presenting sponsors. So glad to have you here part of these now marching towards believe it or not 750 episodes. I know before it was like 700, 600. So we just keep counting. I know it's been a lot of fun. So if you missed any of the episodes, you can find them on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo for those of you that are podcast listeners like Moa, you can also listen to the nonprofit show wherever you stream your podcast. So without further ado, Alicia, you've been waiting so patiently and we are so very glad to have you here. I want to give a huge welcome to Alicia Eastvold again, associate at your part-time controller. Welcome. Hi, nice to meet all of you and excited to be here. I listened to your show a lot and it's fun to be a part of this. So. Awesome. Well, I hope you have like one of those giant Super Bowl big screens that you can watch yourself on the rebroadcast and archive. Cause if you've been listening, that's one thing but when you have to watch it and you watch yourself. Yeah, way better. Well, you know, this is a podcast. So like I, I'm not in my pajamas today. I'm actually dressed, which is good, like really nice. I've got a good looking outfit on. So all of you listening through Spotify. Yes. You know, we're very well dressed. That's right. My mom always thought I'd be on Spotify with like a singing career, but it's gonna be accounting. Well, you can be the singing accountant. Okay. Yes. There you go. Well, that's the next level guys. I think it is an X level. Sing, sing us. Don't sing us the blues. Sing us a poppy about financial statements. And the first thing that you're gonna tell us which I'm like stunned is that financial statements don't all look the same. And to me, I kind of always thought that there was like a strict protocol that they have to be presented exactly the same way. Yeah. One in my mind. You're like, what? No. Yeah. I think it depends. In your audience, if you're getting an audit, there are a lot of requirements for how it should be presented, but for most of our decision making, they ought not be one size fit all. So, you know, but the problem is when they come out of our accounting softwares, and I mean, we find this no matter whether you're using QuickBooks or MIP or anything, they're pretty generic.  They're gonna keep you dry in the rainstorm, but they're not gonna be good for a sunny day on the beach or a training day for like the Alaska and Iditarod or you can continue with the analogy. We've had a lot of fun trying to figure out, but basically it covers you, but that's about it. And the software, it can group the data, but it doesn't do a good job of interpreting it and or analyzing it and help you make decisions. And so as a result, your financials are noisy and it keeps your readers from focusing on the important story. And as a result, they're not very compelling. Like you're spending so much time where to look on the page, whether it's maybe it's not even on the first page, maybe it's the second or third page that you can't make decisions, you don't know what questions to ask. And so we can really tailor them for each of our users to make decisions. And there's different users and there's different needs. So, you know, your director, they're gonna need reports that show them like how to make decisions about operations. Like how much do we have left to spend on staffing? Are we over budget or under budget for each of these little specific things that I'm tracking? How much cash do we have left? Or your board, they're gonna need to talk about like high level, financial sustainability, key trends. And your funders are gonna wanna know all the funds we gave you, are you spending it on the things that we said? And each of those reports are different. And they can be even different reports. Like if I'm monitoring cash, I might need to see something like a cash forecast that brings my budget together and helps me know when I'm gonna be tight on cash using my budget. Or if I've got grants, I have this funny story where I put together the standard financials out of, you know, QuickBooks for a client. And, you know, I have my statement of activities. It's called an income statement. And I'm, you know, here's your financials. And she looked at it. She said, I don't get this. This isn't helping me at all because I got grants that started last year and are ending two years from now. And I don't know how much I've left to spend. So that income statement, when you have to follow some accounting rules and recognize revenue in a prior year, it's really hard to read an income statement or statement of activities and understand it. So something like a net asset schedule that we make, that really helps. Or you got money set aside, like maybe you got a grant and they gave you the funds up front. And you're a little bit tight and you're not sure if you're using that cash to help fund some other programs, which is a real issue in the nonprofit world is tracking your restricted funds. So understanding your statement of financial position or your balance sheet, it's gonna be really important. But you can see each of those has really different needs. And there's different ways to put all that together. So Alicia, I'm gonna warm it up that in my time over, I would say 35 years of board service, there's two types of boards. One that they're really intimidated to ask questions and they feel like the accountants and the bookkeeper and the CFO, they've done all this work and you're not really to question it or ask too many questions that that's for the audit and finance committee. And then there are others that get down into the weeds, like, well, why are we buying that much toilet paper?  I see it all the time, yes. I mean, how do we mitigate that? And is that why we need to be looking at these financial statements differently or is that just gonna be part of the deal? No, I mean, I really think, I mean, I was talking with a colleague just the other day about what she's hearing from directors about the relationships with the boards. And the challenges of figuring out funding and strategizing, like they need help, they need their board to be stepping up. But when we cloud it with a ton of information and I'll talk about in a little bit about some of the traits of reports that kind of keep people from asking questions. But when you need to empower your board, you need to give them clear, concise information so that they can get to what's important. And you gotta get rid of some of that detail and focus them in on the parts that really help them make those decisions. So I actually believe that like if your board or your readers are not asking questions, that's a sign that you might not be doing a great job with how you're presenting it, you could do better. I actually think more questions and the right kinds of questions. So like you talked about the toilet paper situation, that's a different kind of, that's not gonna help you make decisions and you need to focus your reader on what they have. So I have a few pitfalls I've come up with where I say, all right, these are the things like stay away from this because that's gonna lead you to quiet board members or nosy people, it's not nosy, they're just doing what they think they're supposed to do. But like empower them to help you, you gotta design these a little better. Well, let's talk about that. So let's talk about some of those common pitfalls of ill-fitting financials because Alicia, I laughed about the toilet paper, I've seen it where the board gets into the day-to-day operations and that's why I laughed. I do a lot of strategic planning for organizations and regardless of the age, I kid you not, the CEO will tell me, can you please remind the board what their role is? Because it's not the buying of the toilet paper, right? Like that's a day-to-day operation. So what are some of these common pitfalls of ill-fitting financials that you're talking about? Yeah, and these are all things that if you do it right, you are reminding your board what they're there for. So one, disorganized, I've got three things. One is disorganized and information overload. So disorganized is like, you don't know where to look on the page for the information. This is usually like if you've been doing the accounts for a long time and somebody throws in and maybe your personnel, it's the most important expense but it's on like the second page or you got all these account code numbers or things. I just call that just messy. Like it's time to go do some cleaning, some Marie Kondo on your financials and spark some joy. Make sure it makes sense, you're welcome. Yes, and then I think also information overload is just multiple pages, more detailed than is necessary. And we kind of have a saying in YPTC that anything that you can't fit on one page, it probably needs to be another report. Like you shouldn't be, you should, if you can't fit it simply on a page, it's probably time to rethink how it lays out. So consolidating information, grouping things together is really important. So that's the first thing. And then the second, I think this kind of goes with one of your stories that you talked about, but we call this irrelevant information or I like to think of the story of report creep. This is when someone a long time ago said, oh, I wonder how much, what percentage we're spending on X? And also we've got a dashboard or some chart made out of Excel and like your financial package is 10 pages long and it's got these crazy charts that nobody really asks questions about. And kind of it's because everyone's too afraid to take it out because they think they should know what it's for but they actually don't. And I think that's a real thing. Like we don't want to look like we don't know what we're doing, but the truth is like, if it's not obvious, it's probably time to rethink it. And I think we need to be a little bolder about it. And as directors, like we need to do a better job of making that decision for our board to help them. But another part of it relevance is like what you're comparing to. Sometimes we don't even compare to things, we just show here's our statement of activities as of today, but I got to compare to something so I can see where we've been or where we're going and what you compare to is important. So like I had a booster club, I was making a statement of activities for. And I compared to the year before, but we realized, wait a second, it was a pandemic year and they weren't really operating. Like what's the point of comparing the last year if it's not a good helpful comparison? Maybe you compare to the budget or compare to a year that you are reaching for. There's just so many different ways we can do it or the last month so you can see what changed in a month. So, and then the third one I say is assuming the reports we print out are easy to read and interpret, which they're not. We make our readers do all the heavy lifting, it's like inviting someone over for dinner and saying, all right, go to the fridge, make dinner for us because they may be really good cooks but the whole idea is that like we're there to make the dinner. So like, and what happens is that's what affects your readers, they don't ask questions. They're afraid to look uninformed or unknowledgeable but we're making them. And then they're using all their brain juice to try to figure out how to read your report in the meeting rather than actually ask good questions. It doesn't empower them. They're not gonna be able to help you and your financials, they're not working for you. They're just a checkbox, but we could do better. Okay, so I have two questions along those lines. Are you an advocate of sending this information to the board early so that when they get to the meeting in theory, they will have read through these and written down or thought about questions. And then the second part of this question is, we know this and Jared and I talk about this a lot. Board members are generally on lots of other boards. And so they're doing this process. If you come before this board member and you have a different looking, if you will, non-conforming or ill-fitting financial but it doesn't look like all their other reports, are they gonna be skeptical or are they gonna be like, wait a minute, this isn't enough information? Like, how did those two pieces fit? I know that was a big question. No, there's two questions there. It's like, when is the delivery? And I think that's a really good question that kind of depends on your board and what you expect them to do in the meeting. I think you need to be really intentional.  Can you put something together? And we did all sorts of thoughtful work to present it but I could see the board was like, they heard it but they were just, it was too much. They couldn't process the information and give good questions. And so we really had to rethink, like, okay, we need to backdate this to when that we need them to have that information to think about it. And then what every board needs is a little different.  And that's an ongoing process. So figuring out what your board needs is a, it's not a, there's no tech that's gonna figure that out for you. You're gonna have to really think, there's tech that'll help it be easier, like a good tool in a kitchen. It may help you do it faster so that you can focus more time on the analysis but really you have to, you have to do that work of thinking of what they need. Alicia, I'm curious, and my understanding are what I've seen with many boards is they share the same financial reports month over month or quarter over quarter, whenever they meet. Are you suggesting, and I'm curious if you do, that we stick like whatever it is we think works for us, we stick with that report or should we change our report month over month or quarter, however often we meet? What is your rule of thumb with that? My rule of thumb is what's the question? So, I mean, that gets down to how you tailor. So like I have all these tools for like how to make it look good on a page or how to get the story across but really like this gets down to how you tailor it is you start with the question, that's your rule of thumb. So if your question is, what's the question that you need to be answering? So what does that particular reader need to have answered to help them do their jobs better? You know, I had a client, they came to us and they said, you know what, we're drawing from our strategic reserve and our goal over, we got to figure out how long we can stay in business before we got it closed the doors. So I had a whole, that was my question answering. Those were the charts and the graphs and the pictures I created and the financials I honed them in on that question. But guess what? They started a great fundraising campaign. They got some funding, they got some grants and after a few months, that wasn't the question anymore. It was changing. And even that changing that in-between process isn't right away. We've had to really listen and say, okay, I think our new question is like, how do we wanna grow? Where can we have more staffing or what kind of programs do we wanna start? I like that. It's a totally different set. But if you start with the question, it really guides you and you have to just keep, you have to stay close to the people. I mean, that's the heart of it. And I mean, gosh, we tell that story all the time on your podcast about storytelling. We're telling it to our fundraisers for our funding, for our grant funding. All of it is about stories. We gotta do it with our financial information too. Who needs to start? What's a story? What do we need to do? How are we calling our readers to action? It all leaves together. We just need to do a better job with it with our financial statements. And we need to understand how to read them. I mean, I feel like that could be its own podcast. It was like, it's hard to understand what you're looking at sometimes. So yeah, it's draining your board how to read them as well. I love the financial narrative to go with the data visualization. It's like, this is the interpretation of what you're seeing. And when you first came on, Alicia, you were talking about really the three audiences, right? So we have the board, we have the funders, but then we also have the executives that are running the organization. And those three financials and those three stories might be a little different depending on the audience. Is that right? Oh, totally. And you could add probably 10 more audiences to that list. If you're going to a bank, applying for a loan, they're gonna probably want your audited financials. So each group is different in stepping back and seeing what they need and building that. What about your internal staff? Like your program directors who need to track their budgets. Like that's its own thing. And when you talk about those grants, that is a big one, especially in my line of work. It's, you know, we might get a million dollars, but that's for the next two years. So how are you tracking those restricted dollars and being able to report on them? Yes, yeah. And it is a lot. And it takes, when you see a good report, you're like, I got it. Like I understand it. That's when I feel like I've hit it with my clients. I can see, and I mean, I just think of that story of, like I'm sitting across the table from the structures, like I don't get what this, I'm gonna say income statement, but statement of activity. I don't get what this means. This isn't helping me because she had grants in lots of different years and she could not get under it. So we had to develop a different report. It's still told the same information, but in a different way that hones you in. And there's tons of ways too that you can make things simpler. And like consolidating is just so helpful because it respects your reader's time. Like it's respects that they are intelligent people. It doesn't mean that they need all your information. Like your job of grouping things and saying, I don't, I respect that you don't need to be an expert in every detail of this business to make really good decisions. I'm gonna give you the details you need. I'm not trying to hide anything. I'm just trying to focus you in. If you need more detail, we can get you that too. But let's focus our readers and doing it with a picture, doing it with a graph sometimes, I can throw a graph on my, before my financials and it might tell the story even better and quicker. I can see, oh, we're running out of cash in March. Yeah, red flag, red flag. Hey, Alicia, one thing that happens here in these conversations is we might have a viewer ask a question in real time, which lucky you we have. So one of our viewers wants to know if there is a resource that you can point them to that would provide some good examples of a variety of these financial reports you're describing. I know YPTC offers gosh, tons of information on the website. Is that where you would point them or where can they find good examples of these reports? Yeah, I really would, I mean, I'm so proud of our work on the DVG team at YPTC because I know how important this storytelling is. And we're all trying behind the scenes to figure out ways to show this information. But our DVG team has done a great job of showing examples of how you can capture in one picture or even the financial statements, seeing what our packages are, ways that you can consolidate those things. So I go check out our showcase on our website and see because there's some really good resources and ideas there. Yeah, yeah.  So to our viewer that asked that question, YPTC.com would be where that's at. And then the DataViz group has continued to add more posts about that. And really a lot of this, Alicia is actually available within the software. A lot of times we just don't know that we can run these reports that way, right? So some things are available in the software. I mean, and we have worked left and right to figure out every tool we possibly can to get it out of our software. That's our goal. But the truth is they all have their barriers. And there's tons of things that I think every nonprofit should look into the tech that you can... There's all these API integrations now that coordinate with things like QuickBooks or others that could do some of that financial planning and analysis for you. And the truth is we haven't found the perfect tool. We need a few. And truthfully with, I think with nonprofits, there's some extra layers. Personally, I think tracking grants and trying to figure out how to do that reporting that goes over fiscal years. I don't think QuickBooks quite has it figured out. We've found some workarounds, but really what we do in our group is if we can't find the tool, we build it. And so we're kind of starting with, all right, what is the stuff that we got to pull out? Because the goal is you got to do this on a regular basis. Like, when your professor told you to write an essay on the Civil War, she didn't tell you to write 100 pages or as many pages you want. She said 500 pages and you spent all your time. You're trying to do your 10 pages was the easy part. Putting it in 500 words was the hard part. So I feel like simplifying and then doing that efficiently, that tools can help you do that. And we've tried to find or build the tools that can help us do it because we do have to do it often and it does take work to simplify. Well, it's not going away. I think that we get more and more board members who have this experience where they get some really great information, they can be better leaders. And then they're like, holy moly, they go back to their next organization that they serve or down the road and they're not gonna be satisfied with that dump of paper. And, see you later, figure it out. I mean, we're gonna be educating our board members, thank goodness, to do and expect more. Julia, do you remember one of our guests came on and they made the reference that for a new board member, it takes them about 18 months before they feel comfortable and confident to ask questions at the board meeting. And that was such a sobering statistic for me because I think that could be halfway towards their three-year term, right? And so half of their time is already absolved into them just kind of sitting back being passive. So I would love for this, telling the financial statements so that a board member can do what they're there to do is to guide the mission of the organization. But Julia, do you remember hearing that? And I just thought, oh my gosh, that's horrible. You know, we talk about that a lot in our board training with the American Nonprofit Academy is that you have got to expect an easy 12 month integration into that leadership. Because think about it, in a lot of cases, these board members, maybe they're only coming to you four times a year. That's right. Or six or eight times. And so you're expecting them to have the confidence to have the knowledge and to have the presence to make extremely important decisions or engage in that because most of these people are high performers and so they're not gonna step outside the lines if they're not 100% confident. Hey, you have helped build us a lot of confidence here today, Alicia. If you joined us in the green room chatter, we were teasing Alicia about how Jared and I are always like, ooh, accountants on the nonprofit show, are they gonna be good? But we love the YPTC folks. You all seem to have a lot of energy. You help engage and explain and educate us. And so it's really been fun and we're so thrilled that you could join us. Check out Alicia Easefold's work with that data visualization group. You can find more information on yptc.com, your part-time controller, because you really do delve into a lot of things that not only just speak to the accounting side, but I think Alicia, they speak to the human side. Like how are you gonna get more, you know, stronger outcomes with the people that we work with? Right? Yeah. I mean, it's really like in light of what you were just saying, we're giving your board or your decision-makers a leg up. Like we're saying, all right, you want them to be empowered to help you make decisions. Host the room. Be a good host. Set the table. Don't give him a link on show. Gonna take more work. You got a vacuum, you got to get it all set up, but we can do that in a hundred ways, whether it's with our financials or not. Part of it is you got to understand it. You got to know what you're looking at and know how to pull it out of your system and make good decisions, but yeah, it's being a good host. I love it. I think that's just amazing. We've never heard an accountant tell us that before in all these episodes, but I love it. I appreciate it. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us. Again, if we haven't met, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, joined by my personal nonprofit nerd, but the nonprofit nerd for all of us, Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. Again, we wanna make sure that we thank all of our presenting sponsors who are here with us day in and day out. As Jared mentioned, we're finishing up year three, moving into the start of year four. And so Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, be generous. Fundraising Academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader and nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that have been with us day in and day out. They make a huge, huge impact and investment in our sector. And we wanna make sure that we express our gratitude. And to you, Alicia, this was fantastic. We appreciate you being in the hot seat. Glad to be here. Yeah, every month, every organization that's supporting us has a representative on the show. So Alicia was joining us today from your part-time controller. So excited to have nerded out with you and appreciate all of you that have joined us either live or perhaps on the recording. If you are watching the recording, I hear that we're a good binge series. So you can just sit and watch one and then before you know it, you've watched six of them or something. Yes, past the popcorn. So really glad to have you here. We have quite the lineup this week. And as we end every episode, we like to remind you, ourselves, our viewers as well as our guests to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks, Alicia.


Hello everyone. Today, we are going to talk about gestational diabetes and what kind of diet you should be on if you are diagnosed with gestational diabetes. This is Dr. Ahmed Ergin, and I'm an endocrinologist. I am primarily located in Florida. We see patients virtually across Florida. So in this video, we will go ahead and give you a summary of gestational diabetes and what you should be doing for your gestational diabetes for your baby and for your pregnancy. And congratulations on your baby. Hopefully, you will have the best outcomes without getting into any sort of complications that can arise from gestational diabetes. So before we dive into gestational diabetes, how to treat it, and what kind of diet we can actually use, I want to explain something and to be clear. And most of the time, doctors may not go over that with you. And I don't want you to panic over it, but I want you to understand why we really treat diabetes. Because if we do not treat diabetes, I mean gestational diabetes in the sense you may end up having some problems during or after pregnancy, and your baby may be affected. So what are these problems that are potentially can happen if you do not control your gestational diabetes, which is, by the way, is not that hard to do. But if you did not do due diligence and control your diet or use some medications if necessary, then your baby may be large. When the babies are large, that may result in more C-section, because then, as you can imagine, a very large baby will have a difficulty during a natural birth. Even if you try a natural birth, you will really have severe tears and some problems. And occasionally, also babies can get into trouble as well, because when they are trying to go through the vaginal canal, the birth canal, they may have what we call shoulder dystocia, which is the shoulder, you know, basically dislodging and causing nerve problems in the baby and so forth, which are the complications we do not want to really see. That's why most of the time, these large babies end up with C-sections to avoid these type of complications. On the other hand, even before the delivery, a pyrachlansia can happen, which is elevated protein in your urine and elevated blood pressure that can be very severe. And unfortunately, occasionally can cause death of the mother and the baby as well. And after even the delivery, the babies who are born to mothers with gestational diabetes that are uncontrolled tend to have higher risk of diabetes and obesity later in life as well. So babies may also develop low blood sugars right after delivery and can have breathing difficulties as well. Now, hopefully, none of this will happen. And let's move on some of the definitions of gestational diabetes. And we will, right after that, going to have to manage that with the diet and go from there. Now, most of the time, your doctor will test you for gestational diabetes unless you have a history of it or you already have diabetes, but most normal women will be screened for gestational diabetes between week 24 and 28. So at that point, if you are positive, then they will start monitoring your blood sugars more often. Now, how do we really diagnose gestational diabetes? There are two ways of doing that. Some people prefer two-step testing, which is the first step is doing a 50-gram glucose challenge test or tolerance test. And if that is positive, and that only lasts one hour, and then if that's positive, then they will go for the three-hour one with 100-gram of sugar tolerance test. Now, some people prefer one-step approach, which is, in my opinion, easier. And it is only two hours, and you only drink sugar or sugary fluid, 75-gram in total. And then you get diagnosed or not, and that's pretty much one-step test. That's why I like it, because that's less trip to the lab and less problems with waiting around and hanging around. That's not always the fun. And sometimes, you know, patients after drinking so much sugar does not really feel that good either. So, but let's move on to the definitions of the positive testing from these one-step or two-step approaches. Okay, so basically, if you have a one-step approach, which is 50-gram, I'm sorry, two-step approach, we do 50-gram of glucose tolerance first. And in terms of what is positive at the end of one hour, it depends on the doctor's opinion. Now, what I mean by that, there are different thresholds. Some people prefer a lower threshold to diagnose the disease, such as 130 milligram per deciliter, and is 7.2 millimole per liter. I say in millimole, too, because a lot of our viewers are not from the United States, and they request that type of measurement as well. So, you know, 130 is the lowest threshold, and you know, it can be up to as high as 140 milligram per deciliter, which is 7.8 millimole. But as you can imagine, as the threshold goes down, sensitivity becomes higher, but the specificity is less, which means that the false positive diagnosis is common if you use a very low threshold. On the other hand, I still prefer to diagnose women with gestational diabetes at a lower threshold, because there is actually a linear relationship between blood sugars and complications of diabetes. So, the lower the blood sugar, the better. So, as a result, I do not really wait or set up a high threshold to diagnose gestational diabetes. Now, let's move on to the threshold for the second step if you are positive for the first step, or if you're a doctor, things that you're positive for the first step. But before we move on, I will also mention that the 50-gram one-hour glucose result is more than 200. We may not need the second test, just because then we can pretty much confidently tell that there's something seriously wrong, and that can definitely put them to the presumptive diagnosis of gestational diabetes in this case. Okay. Okay, assuming that you have basically failed the 50-gram tolerance test, and your doctor ordered the three-hour glucose tolerance test, then you can look at the results and we will go over it right now. So, basically, if you are getting a 100-gram three-hour glucose tolerance test, the diagnostic criteria is as follows. Your fasting blood sugar of 95 milligram per liter or 5.3 millimole per liter. At one hour, if it is 180 milligram per liter or 10 millimole per liter, at two hours, 155 milligram per liter or 8.6 millimole per liter, 3 hours, 140 milligram per liter or 7.8 millimole per liter. So, what happens is you get this test done in the morning and you fast overnight at least 8 hours. So, glucose concentrations greater or equal to these values if it is two or more points. So, as you can see, we have four points starting at fasting one hour, two hours, and three hours. But if two out of these four are positive, then the diagnostic criteria is met and then we diagnose gestational diabetes. Now, if we do two-hour glucose tolerance test, which is the one-step method, okay, let's look at the one-step method, which I prefer, which is only 75 grams per deciliter, I mean, I'm sorry, 75 grams of carbs load, which is what we call the glucose tolerance test. Then the results will indicate gestational diabetes if the fasting blood sugar is more than 92 milligram per deciliter, which is 5.1 millimole per liter, or if one hour is 180 milligram per deciliter or 9 millimole per liter, two hours, 153 or more, or 8.5 millimole per milliliter. So, the diagnosis of gestational diabetes is made when one or more plasma glucose values meets or exceeds the values we discussed. So, one out of these three, if it is positive, it could be fasting one hour or two hours in this 75 gram oral glucose tolerance test, then we consider that a positive test as well and diagnose gestational diabetes. Now, let's talk about the diet part, which is I am sure you're most concerned about. Now, the diet is really depends on the patient, but I'm going to give you some general guidelines here that you can stick to. Most of the time, pregnant women actually use a lot of carbohydrates and they need more calories than usual. So, most of the time, we recommend them around 175 grams of carbs total in a day. It is not a time that you should be going no carb or a keto type of diet. You have to have carbs because you cannot be in ketosis during pregnancy. There are some studies that actually indicating that if you are staying in ketosis for a long time, your baby's IQ or mental capacity can be affected. So, here we have to find a balance where we prevent the blood sugar spikes at fasting and after meals, but also we do not want to put you at risk of ketosis by restricting your carbohydrates excessively. So, this is a balance we have to find. Not that we have to test your ketones constantly to make sure you're not in ketosis, but we just have to make sure that we are putting on a diet that keeps you out of ketosis, but also prevents your blood sugar being too high. So, we typically recommend to pregnant women to basically eat three to four times a day, main meals, and two to four times of snacks as well. The key here is to keep the carbohydrate load minimum or distributed throughout the day to prevent the blood sugar spikes. Remember, when we test you, we give you a lot of sugar load. The reason we do that, we want to see your tolerance to the sugar. So, if you are having problems at the early stages of the third trimester, then you will have more and more problems as the pregnancy progress.  So, as a result, we want to give you less carbohydrates. For example, a rule of thumb could be, you know, eating 30 grams of carbohydrates, 30 to 45 maximum per meal, and maybe having 15 to 20 grams of carbs with snacks. So, if you add that up, that will be around, let's say you're eating on average 40 grams, let's say that's 120 grams with meals, and then you're eating 20 grams of carbs with, let's say you do three snacks, that's another 60, that becomes 180 grams of carbs. Again, that's not a lot, and that's actually what you would need, but also your needs depend on how much your blood sugar spike at one hour or two hours after meal, which depend, we have different criteria which will go over how much your blood sugar can go at one hour or two hours after meals, but your fasting blood sugars are also very important. So, what we have to do is, yes, we have certain general guidelines, but your specific goal should also be based on how much your blood sugar is spiking.  We cannot limit your carbohydrates less than 30 grams per meal and less than 15 to 20 grams of carbs per snacks. At that stage, unfortunately, we have to do something. We can't, we sometimes use pills, sometimes we use insulin, but we do everything or take every measure to make sure that your blood sugars at one hour and two hour and fasting are under control to prevent the complications of gestational diabetes. Alright, so how much calories? So, we talked about the carbohydrates, but how much calories in total do you really need during your pregnancy on a day-to-day basis, right? That depends on your BMI. So, BMI is body mass index, which you can just find a calculator online and easily find out what your BMI is, if you already don't know yet. But basically, you calculate your BMI. If your BMI is normal, like between 18.5 and 25, then you can have 30 kilocalories per kilograms. Again, if you are in the American measurement of pounds, which I'm in America, but I have to use kilograms because that's more of a universal measurement. So, you can eat up to 30 kilocalories per kilogram. If you're on the overweight side, which is BMI of more than 25, but less than, I would say, 30-35, 35, I would say. In this case, you are limiting your calories a little bit and I would say 22 to 25 maximum. If you're on the more the heavier side, maybe down to 22 calories, but if you're a little bit overweight, maybe 25 calories or kilocalories per kilogram. If you are overweight, like 35 BMI and above, then you should really reduce your calories to 12 to 15 kilocalories per kilogram. Again, if you're more overweight or obese, we are reducing the kilocalorie per kilogram because, to be honest with you, as the kilogram goes up, we reduce the calories per kilogram. So, that is still somewhat similar to someone who's thinner, but the bottom line is we have to restrict the calories a little bit more if your BMI is higher. So, if you're going by the trimaster specific, let's say the calorie intake, typically in the first trimaster, most women don't really need extra calories. They may be craving things. That doesn't mean that they have to eat extra calories because the baby is very tiny. It doesn't really need much, but then in the second trimaster, your caloric needs will go up to 350 calories per day extra in addition to your pre-pregnancy intake. So, what happens is the appetite really goes up. In pregnancy, women gain a lot of weight sometimes, although even if they don't develop gestational diabetes, just gaining excessive weight and putting up excessive calories during pregnancy can still increase the complications during pregnancy as well. So, obesity or excessive weight gain during pregnancy is a complicating factor as well. So, in the third trimaster, most women require maybe a hundred, 450 kilo calories extra than their pre-pregnancy caloric requirement. So, these are some general guidelines. Again, as an individual patient, you will need to be assessed by your doctor, by your educator, your diabetes coach, or whoever it may be, your dietitian to understand your specific needs. And again, at Sugar MDs, we do that on a day-to-day basis. We can remotely monitor you. We can basically see your numbers even if you don't tell us. So, we have special meters and special blood pressure cuffs and we can actually track everything, even you without recording anything. So, this is a cellular technology. Everything you enter, actually, every time you test, I would say, your blood sugars, it will be automatically recorded in our system. So, we can tell if you're not doing well. We can set certain alarms, your blood sugar goals personally for you, and if your blood sugars are going above the range, we get alerted. So, even if you don't see us or you have another appointment, let's say a couple of weeks later, but things are not going right, we can nail that down even before you talk to a doctor. So, this is the technology at Sugar MDs we have. We have a great support staff that can educate you with your diabetic needs, especially during this challenging period of pregnancy, if you have gestational diabetes. The goal is not to put you on medications and that can be achieved up to 80% of women if the provider, the doctor, the nurses, and the patient work together. And so, that is the goal and if we can achieve that, then we'll be happy to do so. If you have any questions, concerns, let us know. We only serve in Florida and New York as of right now. So, if you're from another state, unfortunately, we may not be able to help you, but we are expanding, so be on the watch out. So, now I'm going to move on what the glucose goals are based on the, based on your gestational diabetes level. So, if you have gestational diabetes, you want to make sure that your blood sugars are less than 95 at fasting. So, the first time you wake up, we want you to be less than 95. And that's actually pretty generous goal. But I say generous because I based this based on what's normal pregnant women actually have. And basically, most of the time, pregnant women wake up with 75 to 80 blood sugars if they do not have gestational diabetes. So, we are trying to keep it less than 95, but hopefully the lower the better. So, if you can get it down to 80 or 75, that is preferable and that is doable as well. And at one hour, if you check your blood sugars at one hour, which may be easier to remember and that's what I prefer typically. So, 140 or below is our goal and 120 or below at two hours is another goal. So, you can stick with the one hour goal or two hour goal. Fasting, we always check. We tell women to check their blood sugars at fasting and one or two hours after meals. I prefer one hour. Some doctors prefer two hours. But even if you don't remember at one hour, you can do that two hours. As long as we know it's a two hour value, you know, we will evaluate accordingly. Typically, two hour values are lower than the one hour values. So, that's why we set the threshold a little bit higher at 140, but most normal women do not spike more than 120 actually even at one hour. So, the lower the better, but our maximum tolerated threshold for one hour blood sugars would be 140 or below at one hour and 120 or below at two hours and the fasting always has to be less than 95. Now, you're going to ask me the question, how am I going to really control my fasting? Because I am sleeping and if my blood sugars is rising at night time and I'm not eating, right, so how are you going to really control the blood sugars? And number one, you can exercise, especially in the evening, that will definitely bring your blood sugars down overnight. On the other hand, you can always use insulin sensitizers if the lifestyle changes is not helping, you'll reduce your carbs, you're exercising three to five times a week, which is recommended and you're still waking up with the fasting blood sugars more than 90-95, then you may need some sort of insulin sensitizer medication, which we use sometimes, you know, metformin is a commonly accepted medication still for patients with diabetes and pregnant, because we know metformin is safe during pregnancy. We also sometimes use galiburide if that does not cause like severe low blood sugars, which it can, and it's not something that I prefer, but it is still in use, so if your doctor prescribes galiburide, don't be mad about it and if it works for you, it works for you. And then the next option would be taking maybe a one injection at night time to bring your blood sugars down overnight is also another acceptable option. Again, when you go on these medications or even on insulin does not mean that you will be stuck with these medications immediately after pregnancy, everything will go back to normal right after pregnancy. Now, of course, when you have gestational diabetes, that tells you that you're at risk of developing diabetes in the future. So it is not a bad idea to actually keep being screened every six to 12 months after pregnancy, since you may develop diabetes. And of course, trying to lose the weight that you have gained during pregnancy, especially if you developed gestational diabetes are very, very important in order to avoid developing real diabetes in the future as well. By the way, I forgot to mention that we had to mention the European values as well for the blood sugar measurement. I am an American doctor and that's the part of problem that we don't deal with the rest of the world. But basically, I have to still tell for the sake of all the audience. So 95 or above we said is not acceptable if you have gestational diabetes and that's around 5.3 millimole per ml. Now, if you are having, you know, like we said, 140 less than one hour, and I'm going to copy that because I'm not really good at this millimole thing. So 140 I think is around 7.8 millimole and 120 milligram per liter equals to 6.7 millimole per liter. So basically that is the conversion rate since I'm getting these questions all the time. Can you please tell us about this conversion and so forth? But Google will answer that question easily for you. You don't want to look into Google for how to treat gestational diabetes, but you may want to look into conversion quickly. That's not going to hurt you at all. Again, everything we talk about here is general guidelines. If you have specific questions, you may ask us if you're one of our patients in a private channel, in a private way, but we do not really publicly answer private questions. It's just that in the United States that's not legal. We cannot do that. It's a violation of patient rights and so forth. So we don't really do that and we cannot do that. So I'm so sorry about that. If you have personal questions, if you live in Florida or New York, we'll accept you as a patient, but law really restricts us in order to give advice to you guys. Although I will still try to give a general advice to you, but I may not just go ahead and just treat your blood sugars online without creating a patient-physician relationship. Now we have a lot of videos about diabetic diet. If you just search on YouTube, diabetic diet and sugar MDS, you will be able to find our videos about the details of general diet guidelines. Again, we look for low glycemic index. We are looking for whole grain. We are looking for the complex carbs. You can search for these terms and try to educate yourself about the carbohydrates that do not really spark your blood sugar too fast. But there is really no established gold standard carbohydrate or diet definition for every pregnant woman with gestational diabetes. It just depends on the patient's culture. The patients believe, patients what they enjoy, what they can do, what they cannot do. Social problems, financial problems can play a factor in the diet as well. So it is hard to dictate one single diet for everyone. But we are giving general guidelines and I hope that helps. Again, I said 30 grams of carbs. That's up to you how to make that 30 grams of carbs per meal. It could be an apple. It could be two slices of whole grain bread if you prefer that. But as long as you stay away from refined sugars, as long as you stay away from bakery, and you stick to healthy foods and try to pay attention to the total amount of carbs you're eating, even if they are healthy, I think you will be successful. Monitoring your blood sugar is the key. Again, you will need to adjust your diet also based on your blood sugars. So you don't have to sweat too much just because you get diagnosed with gestational diabetes. And then your blood sugars are not really spiking and your fastings are okay. Your after meals are okay. You don't have to worry about it. Sometimes fasting blood sugars may be a more of a problem than the after meals. In this case, one single shot of insulin can just take care of this temporarily during the pregnancy.  So I hope that doesn't happen. And if you are still having problems with gestational diabetes, as I said, we are available in New York and Florida. All you have to do is just call us in that number and you'll be good to go. Again, make sure you remember to subscribe and share this video if you like it and give it a thumbs up and we'll appreciate it. Have a wonderful day and hope you have a great pregnancy and outcome and a great baby.


media wiki documentation server. So I did a video while back and we've been using this for a while and as we use things we always add tools, modify, change the way we're doing things. So this is a August 2017 update of how we're using the server. I was against and my employees were four using a WYSIWYG interface on top of it. So we loaded the WYSIWYG. I gotta admit I kind of like it but I still dropped to the code because I don't know I like the formatting of the Wiki markup language which just I don't know I'm more of a code guy so it's easier for me but maybe not everybody likes that. It also does have the ability to eat very easily paste spreadsheets into here which is kind of a huge factor for the way we accumulate a lot of data that we may need for example when we do an entire network scan and the results of that scan we may want to keep in a customer file well that is kind of handy to do when you're doing a long list that it makes it a lot easier with the WYSIWYG. So we're going to show you some of the modifications we've done to the system. I will talk a little bit about installing the visual editor. People have asked me about showing how to set up the media Wiki. I probably could do a video on it but the reality is the instructions are really good the only problem I ran into is the passing the cookies part and I'll throw that in there. It's really easy to do it's just the one part I missed and the reason I missed it because when most of the documentation wills Wikis are open to the public. This isn't open to the public it's not available online this is internally hosted with a self-sign certificate and then has a series of rules through the firewall because it's on a separate network that only certain computers are even allowed to get to or visibly see the machine. That being said we still require login as you can see right here in the back login required to get anywhere and we have two factor authentication put on this. So I'm going to go ahead and log in and show you the media Wiki and some of what we're doing with it some things will be blurred out because this is our production one but I didn't feel like spinning up a duplicate copy with a bunch of fake data just for the video. I'm just going to blur out the client stuff. So you can see that I can't see anything recent changes help whatever there's nothing you can get to without logging in so everything is starts with the login. Then the two factor token and now we're on the main page and we actually have our main page set up to have recent changes that were made because often if you're editing a client or actively working on it those recent changes are often you go right back into the same client go I added this I added this got a little save along the way type of things that we do. Now that's pretty easy to do and I'll show you the source for this real quick. All you have to do is add the word special pages recent changes and I put slash 50 so it gives me I think that's the last 50 recent changes that show up so that makes it really simple to give me the page with the recent change on it so I know any of the clients that have changes going on is recently done here and we're actually going to look at test page 007 but one of the things is really nice I'm going to expand this and I set up test page 007 as an example in here this wiki detail logs everything because all the logs and we change history is very well logged in wikis tells you exactly what you change you can easily go back and look at a specific change from a specific user so I know who edited anything into wiki and if they edit it and they edited wrong like you know for example if someone thought they set the password to be something new but they never actually changed it that actually had happened once the password change didn't save but they did save it into wiki no big deal just roll back roll the wiki back we can see what the previous password is it doesn't lose that information same with files if someone goes and deletes a file we can always go back and restore any of those files I don't have any purging turned on on this and I believe that's a default I don't think I had to change anything to do that it queues and makes a deleted page of files but does not have any way to purge those out other than going into the command line and actually deleting them out of the file system directly so this is what a client page would look like and all this is filled in we put a client somewhere at the top are they a part of our msp plan because we're kind of a mixed environment we don't mind having break fix clients but obviously if they're msp they're going to get more of a priority service and we also have better insights we know they're going to be in the dashboard so when they call we look them up the wiki is searchable and you can actually add it to your google toolbar at the top so when you type in wiki I can actually find the clients like test page 007 just like that it'll bring me right to the page or search from here it's all cross index and searchable and it autocompletes that's just a built-in feature of the wiki media so client summary here at the top what email do we provide them web hosting backup that's the email g-suite email is either office 65 or g-suite we actually have some clients have mixed environments because they own multiple sites and one site someone we deal with a lot of craziness we also will put in there who's managing it because we actually have a client that self manages uh because they want to they feel better in control of it we're fine with that that leads to the problem of when an employee will call us and have a problem we always have to defer back to whoever's managing it we haven't won at the office managers decided that we don't need the password to that's a whole nother discussion but we just kind of roll with how clients are now the contents page is built automatically I'll show you the source here no need to build a contents page it's just not in here that is automatically generated once you have a few headings now this lets me jump to certain headings we also as we put all the tables in have them set to collapsed and the reason for that is it just makes a cleaner look and all their passwords aren't just you know some of these get really long if they have a list of different servers so if they have hosting there's the c-panel wordpress g-suite this is all generic information in here uh there are firewalls windows servers uh and we'll repeat the server if there's multiple logins for it so we may have different admin logins in there uh printers the devices the location ip address username password for the printer um and what the device name might be now this is the solar winds or iDrive both of them uh supporters a few other backups that we're have different clients are using this is just the most common ones iDrive is when they want to manage themselves uh well we don't set it up for them but we if we can we'll track the passwords in case we ever have to restore something for them um the solar winds product i did a review of you can find it on my youtube channel that one uh when we manage it we put it all in here it makes it very easy so when we understand what each company is now that's really important because it's what's not kept in the solar winds panel or the iDrive if you're using full encryption for compliance the key you create the AES key so it's encrypted before it leaves the computer you really have to keep track of that key because if you lose that key you can't do a restore there's no way to restore directly from the dashboard without the AES key on the local machine software licenses another thing we track where they registered random things to because it seems that clients can't keep track of that at all and see we use this even for our non-managed clients because if we have information and we do a project for them we still document that project and save it that way as of you know the time we did it we have all the information and clients seem to often immediately lose all the information and this is very handy for us because we just had a client they replaced their computer the other one died they did it themselves they called us they're like we don't have quickbooks we had their quickbooks information from when we installed it a year ago it's already in here so it makes it really easy for that now we've installed a visual editor and that's the part that was a little bit tricky to install and I'll show you how it works so the visual editor as you can see nothing really seemed to change but it lets me right away start editing and inserting things now we always throw a couple pictures in there these are some random ones a couple I found on the internet and I put them in for the client but we'll actually put pictures sometimes of different things in the com room that way if they call us we can look at their com room and know what it should look like and say hey this is the box you need to reset or unplug or this light should be green if it's in what's the color of the light that little information is going to be off to the side here sometimes we have multiple photos because we have a few fast food places that we support and it's got to be visual for some of them they a lot of times they we take pictures of what's plugged in where because that's our biggest problem is they just unplug stuff so here's how you edit a table if I want to insert a blow I could just make another row just like that and add information to it and the same thing if I want to get rid of that row I can just go in here and delete row same thing for here or here or anywhere and then we go to properties and this is where you choose if it's collapsed and if it's collapsed initially so if I didn't want that table to be collapsed I do that and like this one for example we don't have it collapsed because we want it right there to summary so as we hit the client we know you know those couple little details about them and this is a general template because this is a wiki there is easily different ways we do things for different clients for example if I wanted to insert another heading right here notes for software and we could just put notes for how a software install works and that's really important because some of our clients have weird tools that they use and we have one of them we got a documentation for of the services they have to be stopped every time we load an update to their software that runs their carpet company there's a few simple steps they're not real hard to do but it's important that we have the notes in there because you got to put a couple key things that are odd so we have the notes for how that software install works so it makes it really easy just to then add those notes and you can put it we have a couple of what we've went as far as put screenshots in and by putting screenshots in it makes it really really easy so when someone else has to do that same thing later we can go reference that software and solve for that client know exactly how it's done so you do that and save changes and it confirms that you're saving it's going to log that I saved it now let's show you how a password change looks real quick so we're going to go ahead and go back to editing and we'll change this to on another oh my god spell right another password we'll just hit save save now we're going to go back to the main page well we're just going to go right to the recent changes page and we can click on it and we can see directly that password change I just made so this was the old password this zone shows it in line 22 so I can see that and if I want I can go ahead and restore it and roll back the edits really quickly so I can go back to older edits and kind of walk through the different edits we made so here's some of the stuff I did there notes for software install was changed and this makes it really nice for tracking everything that's going on at this particular client so I can have the entire history I know who did the history it tracks each user and I know the differences that were made for this client so it's very well tracked now the nice thing is with security it's all internally hosted this is all physically one virtual server in our box very locked down I have problems a little bit because just throwing it all in some third party one that third party becomes a very hot target for hackers because well everyone has a lot of documentation in the same system the second problem is that it becomes a problem that company goes down I mean hopefully they don't go down and don't have a problem but if they do you immediately end up with potential security issues for yourself you can't service your clients if they go down you don't know what happened to the data if they go down and for disclosure would they reveal if they got compromised at all you know that's another thing because it would devalue their company so there's a lot of this you know for example the Yahoo they didn't want to disclose they they were compromised because they were trying to sell the company so that's one of the reasons we hosted all internally now the last thing I show you is how the files work in this which is really simple now we had to make some modifications and at the end I'll show you the config file that we modified so you can see it the file modification is allowing it to do more than just images because that's the default now the one thing about it is the visual editor doesn't do the best job of handling non-image files so I usually when I want to add an image file you just go right here to files and edit the source and I'm going to show you I'm going to drag a file in so we're using the drag and drop tool and I'll have all the plugins that I'm using listed so we do that upload this file insert link save and there we go there's the first file there's a second file maybe we want to make it prettier so we'll put a line break between them there we go now there's the files and I could have named it something different but now I can see this file and this file and any other config files that we upload for their system these are the ones for pf sense but whatever their config files or whatever they're using whether it's unify or whatever we upload those files to here so we have a history now we can replace those files every time we update their firewall we go ahead and put a latest copy in here so we have it have their copy on file very handy keeping that in here because when we do have to replace things like a firewall we just run in here we can grab the config push the config to the firewall and when we get it out there we just plug it in so if the firewall dies the we just pull from the config that we have in our customer file and we can restore it or when someone else plays with the firewall that's not us and breaks it then we easily have a restore that's happened before too clients sometimes because they won't want passwords to things I'm not going to deny under passwords and then they play that's that's a whole another one of them just went in and to the council and reset it on thinking that was what they need to do and they cleared all the settings easy easy to solve copy this file over and restore it back to the last change so that's pretty much how it's set up now let me show you a little bit inside of what plugins were using all right so as far as the plugins go we left the default extensions that came with it in here which is site site this page gadgets uh partial functions poem and a few others rename user uh all pretty straightforward stuff the uh uploader in here is the ms upload wiki editor oauth for the two factor authentication and then the bigger extension in here the one that's a little bit trickier to load but just follow the work instructions is called the visual editor now the visual editor I have it all set up to enabled here so these are the settings for that which is nothing special uh but this is the part that's important this wg virtual rest config modules parsed forward cookies equals true you have to forward the cookies if you set up a private wiki so your login token allows the parsed server to talk to the wiki on your behalf that's an important this was the only line that was really missing for me to make it work and it's confusing because it doesn't give you an error that's easy to trace um so that was that was mine my little oversight because I it wasn't a documentation I found but it wasn't as obvious uh and what par suede's is this par suede is a module that allows uh I believe it pulls all the files uh pulls all the wiki data into the visual editor into like a java stream uh to make editing a lot easier so if you go to set that module up and you set up a private wiki like I am make sure you have this uh wg virtual rest config modules the other thing to note is I have it on 8142 if you read through the documentation that changes with what your server using we run debian therefore it's 8142 is where par suede's loads on it loads apparently on 8000 on some of the other ones I think is what I read in documentation but uh just make sure you're paying attention to the port numbers because well that's really important the other things we have is the array of files that we allowed UNF for unify cfg zip files odg and a few other things in there so text files xls so those are different things log files we sometimes zip because sometimes we'll keep a log file for something that we may want to look at later and everything else is just the default permissions for like the visual editor in here so there's a couple we just pasted in all the default settings on here which defaults to using it which is what we wanted so that's how the visual editor works now the last thing I'll show you here is actually just q he didn't change anything is pasting any spreadsheet so here's a stock tracking sheet that I was playing with inside of google docs and I can just go here and do a copy and then we're going to go and edit this page and just do a paste it's a standard wiki table now one of things I'll show you if you look at this we're going to go ahead and save the changes save and we look at the source class wiki table symbol please note it only copied the data none of the html forward adding none of the embedment anything like that so this is all just pasted right in and that's really handy because you don't want it to be the linking externally now you can link externally which is kind of cool and we've done that for a few uh systems where we want to link directly to a page um and have a change but it's kind of cool that you can do this well I can't really say have a change it just link do you can just put the links in uh but this is kind of cool so instead of embedding it doesn't support iframes that I know of uh it's not embedding the google doc it is just copying that data so if you if we have a client that has a bunch of data that we put all into a spreadsheet which of course if it's ever going to go docs in case anyone's wondering it's non confidential information it's sometimes just you know ip lists and convenience when we're there at the client then we come back here and we just paste it right into the wiki and makes it easy it also supports pasting I believe uh find from other things like excel if you use excel but pretty cool that you can do that uh another side note for those of you using screen connect uh it will do this too and this is kind of novel so if we go here I'm going over and grabbing my computer all right now I got a copy of the link directly to my computer and if you don't know this in screen connect if you filter for a computer and then copy the link at the top because it changes so right there is a link to my computer at home and then when I click it it it's in screen connect which I'm already logged in and I can get right to my computer and yes my home computer is referred to as tom lords pc because my employees thought that was funny and yes some game whatever my kid was playing is what's on there um because it's my gaming computer at home so it's kind of a novel the way you can do that and it's handy because sometimes when you're in there we link to each one of the client servers in screen connect so we can directly jump right into the server uh it still has to be logged in a screen connect but it creates a really handy quick link okay here's the server and here's a link right to the server so we can get right to the thing we need to do uh been real happy with that feature and uh it's once again it's all about servicing the client fast and the quicker you can have data at the ready and have the answers you're looking for or being able to say have a client go hey I'm having a problem with this thing jumping to that client page with the right documentation being able to get right into the server and have all the information and credentials right at your fingertips is very convenient and very scary because there's a lot of information a lot of data for a lot of clients in here which is why we are really strict about how this is accessed and that we keep it in-house and I know there's a lot of companies offering external storage for all this I'm just worried a little bit about that that's why we decided to do it all in-house so uh that's how we're using this media wiki here in 2017 of August as if we change how we use things I'll maybe I'll do another video uh question concerns and comments concerns someone told me this is an absolutely horrible way to do it but I said okay and they never really followed up and I said what's a better way and there was just dead air uh people love telling me I'm doing things wrong as I've always said if I'm doing it wrong let me know how to do it right that would be great so I can improve there are some other companies that offer internally hosted things this is the only open source one that I'm aware of and I say aware of because well there's probably something else out there I'm just not aware of there's a big world out there anyways if you like to content here like and subscribe and questions and comments leave them below thanks


Greetings my esteemed subscribers! Today I want to talk a bit about books. I have a great teaching to share that will hopefully make your reading a bit more rewarding and insightful. Now to explain this I will share an anecdote. A few years back I was at an event in good old Netherlands and there were many supporters of mine there as well. One supporter in particular, shout out to you if you see this, a connoisseur of Whiskey. We started talking about Whiskey and he had brought some fine Whiskey with him. Now as you all know I'm no fan of alcohol, I never get drunk or anything like that. Now I didn't want to pass up an opportunity to gain some new insights. So I took a few sips and he guided me through the sensation and basically what he told me. And this is what I will tell you to do when it comes to books. So he told me to focus on certain flavours and to focus on certain sensations when I took the sips. And it made sense. It made sense in a completely different way. I had tasted Whiskey before, many years prior to this and I thought it tasted absolutely horrendous. But tasting it again with a different mindset it made a great difference. Now you can say the same thing about coffee for example. You can have this Gourmet Coffee right here and it says on the packaging. Characteristics, chocolate, red berries and citrus. Then if you're a connoisseur then you can try to find those flavours within the coffee. Same thing if you're a connoisseur of wine. You try to find certain flavours within the wine. This can be applied to anything including books which brings me into my main point of this video. I read this book a while back. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. A true classic. Now if you read this with the intention of just wanting to be able to say that I have read this book you will fall asleep 10 pages in and I can't blame you in the list. It's not a particularly good or interesting book taken outside of its context. However, here is the main point. If you know the context of it then it becomes supremely interesting. So what is this you might ask? It's a novel. Yes, but it's more importantly it's a discussion on morality and it's a historical document as it were from Russia during the 19th century. So written a few decades prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, so one of the most horrific events in world history. That is what makes it interesting. So if you approach this as a connoisseur you know that why am I reading this? Yes, I'm reading this because I want to get a glimpse at the discussions on morality in Russian society leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution. That is why this book is interesting. If you don't read it with that in mind it will not be a good book. This is not an interesting book in terms of characters or plot or whatever. The interesting part is the social commentary. Now I read this and yeah, it was quite hard to get through, not particularly exciting as such. But I got a bit of a taste for the works of Dostoevsky so I decided to read notes from underground. Now this was much more enjoyable because I knew how to approach the book in a different way. So I had learned how to read Dostoevsky. I knew what to look out for in the book. I know what sort of things I could expect. So now I actively looked for discussions on morality. And this is a good book to start with, by the way, especially if you want a good discussion on the... Yes, it says the underground man, the lower that I've talked about before, the mentality. So it can be a good way to put yourself into the mind of such a person. And whatever you do, don't read it just so that you can say that you've read it.  Now, of course, there are many books. If you are just starting out, I suppose all of you are interested in Roman history. I can't imagine I have any subscribers that are not. So I can recommend Harry Sidebottom. He is a historian. I've mentioned him before. I think he writes really well, really insightful. So this is set in the waning years of the Roman Empire, so not the golden years anymore. So basically this is historical fiction, which is good if you want something that is more easily digestible. You can read in the sun whilst relaxing. So keep that in mind. Why do you read something? Yes, to gain a certain insight into something. Don't just read to be able to say that you've read because that's a waste of time. So if you aren't interested in a discussion on morality in the Russian society during the 19th century, don't read this. Don't read it. If you are interested in Russian history, the social developments that led up to the Bolshevik Revolution, then you can read it. Otherwise, no. Now, what is absolutely mandatory to read? Of course, I've said it before. Absolutely aesthetic. So this, as it says, it's a handbook. This is how you should approach it. You should approach it in the sense that you try to find some teachings you can implement successfully in your life. Find habits that you can implement in your life. That is the purpose of it. And of course, some social insights as well. So point being, know why you are reading a certain book. If you have that understanding, I'm reading this because of X, Y, Z, whatever, then you know what to look for. If you don't know what to look for, you will just skim through it and you won't get any appreciation for the material. So before you begin to read, say to yourself, OK, why am I reading this? Then you start reading, then you know what to look for. Just as a connoisseur of whiskey or coffee or wine, he knows beforehand sort of what to look for and how to enjoy it. Same thing with these books. So anyway, that's how you should approach at least Dostoevsky. In my humble opinion, there are those who are much more well-read than I am who have better takes on Dostoevsky. This is just my impression. I've read two of his books, so by no means an expert. But if you read, that's how I would advise you to approach the material at least. So anyway, thank you for watching. Looking absolutely juicy today. If I may be so bold, this fine polo shirt is also available at legugloria.com, same page as Dauntless. So if you haven't already ordered Dauntless, do so immediately. Any arguments to the contrary are totally invalid. Now, thank you for watching, XXO, boom!


The next item of business point of order yesterday, the Cabinet Secretary for Education announced several significant updates on this year's school exams on Twitter. This morning's substantive changes contained within today's Covid-19 statement were leaked to the media, including STV and the BBC ahead of its delivery in Parliament. That has become common practice for the SNP Government this session, and I have raised it with you on numerous occasions. Each time I have, you say, and I quote, all significant and substantive announcements should be made to Parliament. What steps can now be taken to end this contempt? What can be done to insist that the Scottish Government respects your good office and the Scottish Parliament? I thank Mr Kerr for that point of order, and I can advise Mr Kerr that I intend to address this issue before we move to the statement this afternoon. We will continue with topical questions, and the first question today is Colin Smyth. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an explanation of its decision not to proceed with the sale of Glasgow Presswick Airport at the present time. During our period of ownership of Glasgow Presswick Airport, we have sought to do what is right for the business, the taxpayers and the economy of Ayrshire. Glasgow Presswick Airport has developed as a specialist airport carving a niche in a very competitive aviation market, and the annual accounts laid before Parliament in December show that the business continues in a positive direction with a profit posted for 2020-21. We were pleased that the recent sale process attracted bids from credible investors and very detailed and extensive work was done by all parties involved. However, following careful consideration of a recommendation by the Presswick board, we took the decision not to proceed with the sale at this time. Our intention for Presswick Airport is still to return it to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity, but any decision must be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and the contribution that it makes to the local economy. The cabinet secretary has just said that the Government rejected bids for the airport. One preferred bidder, but it seems more than one bid. Can the cabinet secretary confirm reports that two bids were received from the preferred bidder for Presswick? Now that this process is at an end and seems that there is no longer a preferred bidder, can she tell us exactly why those bids were rejected by ministers? Our reports also correct that the second bid was lower than the first bid due to withheld information on the condition of the runway coming to light after the first bid was made. Can the cabinet secretary also tell us before those latest bids were rejected in the nearly 10 years since the Government bought Presswick, has it received and rejected any other bids for the airport? I thank the member for those questions and I know that there is a lot of interest in this. I am certainly happy to come back to the chamber to answer some of those points more fully. Throughout the sale process, there has been speculation about bids and bidders with a number of companies mentioned. I would stress that much of it has been inaccurate. We will need to continue to respect commercial confidentiality and not comment on the identity of bidders or the substance of the bids, which I hope is something that the member appreciates. That is hugely important to provide confidence in any future sales process, either with previous bidders or with new bidders. I can be very clear that the commercial bids received were assessed against the commercial case and the wider economic case for the region. It is on the basis of independent advice and following a recommendation by the board, the Presswick board, that we decided that the bid did not, at this point in time, represent the value for the taxpayer that we are looking for. I would welcome a further opportunity, because that vague answer is simply not good enough. There is no preferred bidder for Presswick at the moment, so that the cabinet secretary cannot hide behind an on-going confidential process that, frankly, is no longer on-going. The sale has collapsed. I would ask her to reconsider her answer to my question and tell her specifically why the bids that were on the table were rejected. Given that there is significant investment needed in Presswick to give it a sustainable future, that is no longer going to come from any new owner any time soon. Can the cabinet secretary tell us exactly where the needed investment for Presswick will come from, or is it a case, as it seems, that a decade after buying Presswick, the Scottish Government still has no plan whatsoever for the future of the airport? There are a lot of questions in there, and I appreciate that you want short answers, but I would like to answer them in detail. In terms of the identity of the bidders, whether there is a live bid or not, we should note and cannot comment on speculation about the identity of bidders. I appreciate that there is a desire for more information on the detail of the bids that were received and rejected, but it is hugely important that I hope that all members would understand that we need to safeguard the integrity of those commercial discussions, both because we are bound by commercial confidentiality and to avoid undermining any future negotiation with current bidders or previous bidders. I can be clear, as I have already said, that the commercial bids that were received were considered on the basis of independent advice, not to be adequate right now to secure value for the taxpayer. Any return to the private sector needs to be on the right terms. We need to make sure that we are confident that any sale would not only represent that value for the taxpayer but also puts the business on a firm footing going forward. The long-term commercial sustainability is important—the business needs to develop and support jobs and the economy. In the most recent sale process, we were not satisfied on the basis of independent advice that those objectives had been met. Given the importance of the Esher growth deal investment in South Asia, primarily focused around Preswick Airport, can the Scottish Government give assurances that any future potential buyer for the airport would be supportive of the Esher growth deal and the Spice port? I think that the member makes an important point that emphasises the comments that I have already made about meeting the objectives that we have set. Of course, any potential future buyer would need to take their own decisions about what is right for the business, but we are clear that the Esher growth deal provides significant opportunities locally, not just for Preswick but for the wider region. We need to do all that we can to encourage any future owner to engage with local growth deal partners. Colin Smyth tried his best to get an answer to this, but the cabinet secretary was having none of it. I ask the cabinet secretary again what was the reason for the bid or bids being turned down? Was it down to the price being offered, investment, jobs or a combination of all three? Answering that in a number of different elements, we were pleased that the current sales process attracted a significant and credible interest from bidders. We considered those offers carefully from each bidder and a revised offer from the business that remained in consideration. We reached the view informed by the advice of the Preswick board and professional advisers that the sale should not progress further on commercial and broader economic terms. We agree with the Preswick board—this might go some way to answering the member's questions—that the market conditions are not particularly favourable at this time to maximise the enterprise value of the business and the value to the Scottish Government as a shareholder. That conclusion was reached again following independent assessment. The business will continue to develop its commercial and its growth strategy under the Scottish Government ownership. The last point that I would make is that the accounts were published in December, and I am sure that they were of great interest to the member. Those annual reports and accounts published on 21 December show that diverse revenue streams have helped to mitigate the Covid impact on passenger numbers in 2020-21, but there is no question that Covid has had an impact on the aviation sector. An operating profit before exceptional items was £500,000, and the total profit after tax for the year is £12.8 million. The business is progressing. We need to ensure that it is the right bidder at the right time that maximises the economic asset. To ask the Scottish Government how it will assist young people to access the expanded free bus travel scheme. The potential transformational scheme opened for applications yesterday, and there are a range of ways in which people can apply. Those are detailed on the Transport Scotland website. For example, online applications for either a Young Scot national entitlement card or a national entitlement card can be made at getyournec.scot, the improvement services online portal applications can also be made directly through local councils. I believe that, as of this morning, more than 37,000 applications had been made via the getyournec.scot portal alone. I know that there have been some concerns expressed about the complexity of the online process, but the process in place for the young person's national entitlement card is broadly similar to that for older people. It is also obvious that it is not ideal to be launching the scheme in the current circumstances. Given the situation with the pandemic, we are encouraging all the children and young people whose travel is essential this time to apply. As I said in my letter to MSPs last week, we are striking the right balance of enabling children and young people and families who potentially have the most benefit from free bus travel to access it at the earliest opportunity, whilst maintaining plans to fully market the scheme at the right time, potentially helping bus services to recover from the impacts of the pandemic. I thank the minister for that answer and the fact that he wrote to all of us MSPs and MPs last week to update us on the plans. I am certainly going to do that, but I cannot promote the scheme in my constituency. Ministers are right that it potentially is a transformational policy. I want to know how the minister will ensure that children and young people who might benefit the most get their entitlement cards as early as possible. I have had some concerns raised with me from parents applying about the complexity of the application process, particularly on the proof of identity that is required. Is the minister concerned that that might limit its success? I welcome the member's positive comments about the scheme and her commitment to promote it. There are no additional proof of age, personal or address requirements when I apply for a young Scotland NEC with a free bus travel product on it. The only difference is that parents, guardians or in some cases carers have to apply on behalf of children and young people under the age of 16 if they want an NEC or a young Scotland NEC that is free bus travel product on it, and they have to provide proof of that status in order to protect the children and young people. However, I want to give good reassurance that we are committed to delivering the scheme in a way that is safe for children and young people, and that there is still confidence in parents and guardians, and that we are absolutely determined that the children and young people who might benefit the most from free bus travel do not miss out on it. We will, of course, be monitoring the scheme and responding accordingly as we go along. I thank the minister for his reply and what he has just said about monitoring the scheme. I specifically raised the topical question, because I wanted to ask about one particular group of individuals in the application process. It has been raised to me by foster carers in my areas for care experience and looked after children. The fact that they might not have ready access to their birth certificates might have to have that additional process of going to the council's social work departments for access to them, which might complicate or extend the process for them. Obviously, those children and young people cannot be disadvantaged. We need to make sure that there are no additional barriers for them. Can the minister give some comment on that specifically and how we can make sure that there are not only barriers for care-experienced young people? Joi Martin raises a perfectly valid point. I want to offer other re-issues that we are aware of the potential challenges for foster care and kinship care families. Clearly, local authorities, which are corporate parents, are responsibly here to help families access this benefit. We are working with local authorities to ensure that that is happening. However, I say to members that if there are any issues that emerge involving their constituents, please contact my officer. We will seek to assist. The current Young Scott card has already been calculated in its part of the age standard scheme in Scotland. Why can young people not use that until they receive their new cards so that they can benefit immediately from the free bus travel? Many existing young Scott card holders are under the age of 16, so they need to apparent guardian or carer to apply for a replacement card with the free bus travel product on their behalf. That is because we are committed to delivering the scheme in a way that is safe for children and young people. For those over the age of 16, local authority partners need to ensure that they are sending a replacement card to the correct address. As details held, they are not necessarily current, hence the need to apply for an additional card. There are also offline young Scott NEC replacement processes in place with local councillors. However, I get that Mr Whippield has any specific cases in mind that he should get in touch with me. How does the Scottish Government's approach to concessionary and free bus travel differ from that of the UK Government? There are some obvious differences between the free national bus travel for the age of 60 and not state pension age. Essentially, what we have here is a determination to expand national provision of free bus travel and not shrink it as far as that is possible. That concludes topical questions.