Cope With It

Well, its that time of year again…though quite a bit earlier than last year.

View out front

Well its been about a month and a half since I posted about my attempt to migrate my email, and I have to say that I’m pretty much done at this point. There is really only SPAM going to the old address, and the occasional notification from some software company where I asked to be notified of new releases, and never bothered to un-subscribe.

I’ve taken advantage of Gmail’s accounts, filters and labels to track all of this. Gmail is currently set to POP the old accounts and then it filters them, assigning distinct labels to email from each of these accounts. Making it easy for me to search using the different advanced search keywords: “label: is:unread” is a good one, it lets me grab all the new items that have been filtered into a given label, making the tracking very easy. It even tells me if matching items in SPAM are there without actually bringing them up on the results listing.

I’m pretty confident that I will be able to allow my old email address to slip into the digital netherworld later this year when my subscription expires, and not worry about missing anything important or, even worse, having anything show up in someone-else’s inbox if they register the same name on that service. Definitely a concern, and one that needs more attention when it comes to Identity Theft discussions.

I came across this quote in an email this afternoon and felt like I should share it:

Quote of the Day:

“If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an
equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no
other.”

– Carl Schurz, (1829-1906) German born U.S. Senator and Union Army
general during the US Civil War

Reading through the Wikipedia entry on Carl Schurz shows a couple of other great quotations. How have I never heard of this man before?

I’ve said it before, "I need to blog more!".  I’ll say it again.  The biggest issue I have it seems is that no matter how simple the blog framework is, it still poses a barrier to entry for getting the post made.  I have yet to find a web based editor that feels natural to me for creating or editing a post.  I’ve tried a couple of client based editors, and was not ever really impressed.  I know Word 2007 has the ability to publish to a blog, but it seems to be overkill.  I don’t need a full up word processing package to write a post.

Right now I am giving Windows Live Writer a try.  Its a lighter package than word, while having more features than many of the other packages I have tried.

Lets see if this works, only time will tell.

More reasons to vote for Obama this presidential election:

This video basically closed out any possibility that I will vote Republican in the 2008 General Presidential elections. I believe, like I know many people do, that there are not many real differences between the two major political parties any more, but so long as the republican party thinks that John McCain is their ideal candidate, they will not get my vote.

This man is dishonest and delusional, there are no other words for what he is. Any presidential candidate who says, on tape, that he disagrees with what the majority of the US Population desires is unfit for office. This man needs to go back to his high-school government course and re-learn the whole “By the people, Of the people and For the people” portion of the lesson.

There is one thing that scares me more than this man though, and that is the blind army of “vote the party line” republicans out there that will blindly vote for this man simply because he wears the badge of the G.O.P. on his chest, and not because they know anything at all about either candidate and where they stand on the important issues.

I fear for the next generation, the burden that they are going to have to shoulder because of this one.

Wow, I’ve been having some fun for the last couple of days. I decided, as a cost saving measure, to not renew a paid email hosting service that I’ve been using for 7 years. I set it up before leaving the military so that I would have a professional looking email address for doing my job hunt. (I always cringe when I see someone’s resume and it has cuddly_bear97226236@hotmail.com or some such on it.)

Well, it just kinda stuck, I paid it up for three years initially, and have just been renewing it since. All my email went there, and it was a great service. All my friends and family used it to contact me. Recruiters still use it to send me job offers.

When Google started trumpeting their 1GB Gmail service, I was laughing because I had 10GB, plus file storage. Not a bad deal.

Lately though, I’ve started running into issues where my email was being blocked due to the service being on some spam black-lists. Not good, and even worse, I submitted the information to the service so that they could address the problem, and got nothing. No response, and the email is still blocked. Thankfully I have a few email addresses floating around, so I would just use another one to get around it.

Thinking about how to save some money I was looking over my bank statements and realized, that not only do I pay for my email service, but I also pay for my hosting and as part of that I can have unlimited email addresses, also my host (Dreamhost) has a fairly automated system to push your email hosting from them over to the Google Apps for Domains systems.

The light went on, and well now I am in the process of switching over, and I have to day that I am glad that I have started this early. I keep finding new and unusual places where I need to update my email address. I’ve started collecting a short list of things to think about in order to do this cleanly without interruption in your email.

1. Give yourself plenty of time, dont expect to be able to do this in a day, or even a week. I’m looking at having 6 months of transitional time.
2. Make a list of all mailing lists and commonly used accounts that are linked to your email. Go through each of these and change your address.
3. If you use a desktop client such as Outlook or Thunderbird to grab email from your old account, stop. Most email services have a forwarding option, set this up to forward all email to your new address.
4. In your new email service, set up a filter/rule to highlight/label/tag/sort all email that is being forwarded from your old account. This way you can see when you’ve missed something. When you find something labeled as such, deal with it right away, update the account, unsubscribe or whatever, just solve the problem. You should see fewer and fewer of these as time goes on, the eventual goal is to only have the spam going there.
5. Using the old address, send out emails to your contacts telling them of the switch, and ask them to update your information in their address books.
6. For handling the stubborn, use your new email address to reply to and initiate conversations that are forwarded in from your old account. This should at least get your new address on their radar and in their message history for when the old account goes dead eventually.

So far these are the base rules I am following and things are happening smoothly. I haven’t had any lost messages, and people are getting the point to move over. All of my mailing lists are still coming in, and any subscriptions from various websites are being transferred or unsubscribed as they forward from the old address.

When I was in the Navy, everyone had their lists, whether it was list of work to be done, list of people to hate on, list of places they visited…. it didn’t matter. By far the most popular was the “List of reasons to get out”. I had mine, (as I recall it was up to about 160 or so, I’ll have to try to dig it out), and we managed to come up with some others. This is one that circulates from time to time, and was just forwarded to me from an old Navy Buddy.

The Top 100 Reasons McDonald’s is better than Submarines

1) No McORSE
2) If you have to take a piss, you can go take a piss. No questions asked.
3) You’ll never have to go port and starboard on the fryer.
4) Better pay.
5) The Damn sun.
6) Air.
7) The boxes of food at McDonald’s aren’t stamped “Rejected by Hardee’s” or “Not fit for human consumption”.
8) The ability to call in sick.
9) The ability to quit.
10) McDonald’s doesn’t get their uniforms from the same company as the state penitentiary
11) McDonald’s doesn’t deploy.
12) They have actual janitors.
13) No McDrills.
14) The grill breaks, you CALL someone to fix it.
15) At least your boss accepts that he’s a clown.
16) No McResin Discharge.
17) No all night hydro on the fryer.
18) One word: overtime.
19) Every day is slider day!
20) At McDonald’s, you will never, EVER, worry about being put in
prison for ten years because you told your wife what the secret
sauce is.
21) They pay you for training.
22) You’ll never die a horrible, excruciating death from the crush
depth implosion of a McDonald’s.
23) No steam piping.
24) No time at McDonald’s will you hear your boss give a thirty
minute dissertation over the P.A. on the importance of being
at the register 15 minutes early.
25) They won’t ask you about Taco Bell operations on the
advancement test.
26) You get to leave work EVERY day at the end.
27) McDonald’s will eventually fire the really stupid employees.
28) two words: Happy Meals.
29) McDonald’s doesn’t look like a big black turd.
30) Grimace don’t do Vulcan Death Watches.
31) McDonald’s has a slide out back.
32) To do something at McDonald’s, you look at the color coded chart, not
OP
umpty-squat,chapter
whatever, reference 3, ACN B, rev 1700.
33) If McDonald’s catches fire, you LEAVE.
34) No McSmall Valve Maintenance.
35) No McCOB.
36) Leaving McDonald’s in an emergency doesn’t require a steinke
hood and a lot of praying.
37) The coffee’s better.
38) Someone else makes the water.
39) You don’t have to live there to work there.
40) The only cones come from the ice cream machine.
41) McDonald’s doesn’t go into drydock. (again and again)
42) ALL the tests are multiple choice.
43) Their TV commercials are a lot cooler.
44) Three words: Sea Foam Green.
45) Stock in McDonald’s is worth something. The Nav is a part of
an operation that is 6 trillion dollars in the hole.
46) Special sauce isn’t “hand made”.
47) No McBilges to clean.
48) Opening for business doesn’t require a full day of
preparations and everyone to show up for a brief at 0230.
49) Three words: Stupid ass hats.
50) Personnel inspection requirements are written on the door.
(No shirt, no shoes, no service)
51) At McDonald’s, dislocating your shoulder is not considered
getting the good deal.
52) McDonald’s never had an accident that cause a person to be
stuck to the ceiling impaled on a french fry. (ie. No Mc-SL1)
53) Because you deserve a break today.
54) Even the little Hamburglar is cooler than a goat.
55) Mayor McCheese doesn’t wield a righteous thumb of
indignation.
56) You can choose which McDonald’s you want to work at.
57) If you want to buy your boss a beer, that’s okay.
58) If you want to tell your boss to fuck off and just die
fucking die, that’s okay too.
59) There is no Uniform Code of McDonald’s Justice to deal with.
60) The news comes from USA Today, not Ric Crawford, GS-12.
61) No one will rack you out at 2 in the morning to start the
grill.
62) Chances of you getting called back after you get off work are
pretty damn slim.
63) Putting the pickle on the hamburger doesn’t require an QA-34
and a signature to be used against you in a court of law,
should they want you.
64) The only guy in a silly yellow suit is Ronald.
65) How many McDonald’s were sunk in W.W.II?
66) Fixing the register doesn’t require a rubber room and a rope
man.
67) Nothing on the menu contains the phrases, “Horse cock” or
“baboon ass”.
68) At McDonald’s, the riders would have to leave at closing
time.
69) $2.99 is a meal price, not a daily wage at McDonald’s.
70) You don’t have to go single register operations if someone
spills a Coke.
71) McDonald’s doesn’t require a 24 hour Shutdown Register
Operator and McRoving Watch.
72) McDonald’s doesn’t call your house at 5:30 in the morning
blaring some god-awful antiquated song about a bugler just to
wake you up.
73) No McRadcon.
74) At McDonald’s, your boss will never make you drive him around
for two and a half months so he can spy on Wendy’s.
75) You will never be locked in for 24 hours pretending to
operate everything. (i.e. no McFastcruise)
75.5) You don’t have to come in to work at 7:00 only to wait
around for three hours waiting for your boss to tell you things you
already know.
76) At McDonald’s you will never hear, “Shake machine
troubleshooting team, and all off watch drinkmakers, lay aft.”
77) No McGMT, McEngDep, and McDivision training.
78) At McDonald’s you don’t have to route a 1250 for a new stack
of cups.
79) If you burn a hamburger they won’t take away half a month’s
pay for two months and restrict you to the playground.
80) Knowledge of the material of construction and variable
operating characteristics of the grill are not prerequisites for
operation.
81) You don’t have to take apart the shake machine once a quarter
just because.
82) You don’t have to share your bed with two coworkers.
83) You don’t have to shave off your goatee when the district
manager comes.
84) At McDonald’s, when the toilet clogs, you don’t rig
pressurized air to the shitter.
85) You don’t have to shut everything off and call in the last
shift to start the grill.
86) Early in the morning, you don’t cycle the drink machine on
and off just for practice.
87) You scrub the floors because it’s dirty, not because it’s
Wednesday.
88) There is almost always plenty of parking. If not, drive
through.
89) Don’t like what you got? Take it back.
90) You don’t have to take a turbidity prior to putting a new
catsup dispenser on service.
91) Failure of the warming oven door to open is not a panic
causing event. It will also not preclude you from starting another
fryer or pulling the fries out of the vat due to interlock.
92) No Mc-HPACs.
93) No one hates it so bad they refer to it simply as “The Mac”.
94) No 16 hour days at McDonald’s prototype making burgers in the
middle of the desert for no one.
95) If you wipe up a catsup spill at McDonald’s, you don’t have
to let it dry before you throw it away.
96) They won’t secure one of the register operators to keep track
of the people going into Burger King.
97) You don’t have to have permission from the Manager, Assistant
Manager, and Register Operator before going into the
freezer.
98) At McDonald’s, the toilet paper stays in the bathroom, not on
the dinner table.
99) You don’t have to completely undress to pinch a loaf.
100) ALL of the articles of the Constitution apply to you at
McDonald’s.

Here is the whole wedding party.

Jennifer and I:

Exchanging the Vows:

The Rings:

The Families:

The Bride: