Awesome Sauce Tinkering

The things you discover when you noodle!

I have two gmail accounts and I have recently been using the second one a little bit more, such that, I have need to actually monitor it a little closer. For silly reasons, like people generally finding it rude if you ignore their emails and fail to respond for a month. (Shocking, I know!)

Although Google does have an "add an account" capability, that allows you to run two Google accounts in the same browser, there are some hiccups when it comes to using other Google services. I don't use the other services very often on this secondary email, so I wanted another solution that would do what I really want Google to do. What I want Google to do, is for a user to be able to use the multiple inbox feature to have multiple gmail inboxes in one screen, not just divide your inbox by labels, filters or what have you.

So. My solution.

First, I went into the settings[1] of the second email (example@gmail.com) and set up mail forwarding to the first email[2] (me@gmail.com). I also set up the forward to automatically mark forwarded email as read[3].

After following the steps to verify that I own both accounts, I set up a filter in me@gmail.com with the "to" parameter as the address of the example@gmail.com. This filter automatically labels all forwarded email and archives it as soon as it hit my inbox.

Make sure you select to apply the filter to however many matching conversations have already been forwarded from example@gmail.com, or you're not going to do an easy search based on the label/filter later.

Here is where the magic happens. Enter settings, labs, and enable multiple inboxes on me@gmail.com. You should look through some of the other really cool stuff the labs team has done. Like, ridiculous amounts. I'll wait. Ok, now, make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom and click save.

Then, go back into settings at the "Multiple Inboxes" tab and delete the automatic fields that are there and enter label:example in Panel 0. I want the second inbox to be below my me@gmail.com inbox, so I select that option and click save.

Then more magic happens. Click on "Accounts and Import." Then under "Send mail as" I added example@gmail.com, and verified (again) that I owned the accounts I was trying to send mail as. After that is verified, then a fancy little thing shows up.

You can reply from the email that the message was sent to. So, for instance, I get an email to example@gmail.com, and I get it at the me@gmail.com address through the system I just set up. I can click reply while still in the me@gmail account, and it will send the email as though I am signed in as example@gmail. Without signing into the other account. Ever. Brilliant. And, if you click compose, in the "from" field, it automatically enabled a drop down that allows you to choose which email address you want to send the email from.

There are still some issues to work out, for example, handling the email that is sitting in example@gmail.com, marked as read. I suppose it will have to be a learning process where I add filters for incoming mail as I get it, so gmail can delete it if it's X, or archive it if it's Y, but once that is all settled, it's going to be a nice little operation.

Another issue is that the only way for me to no longer see the messages in the second inbox for example@gmail.com that I have read is to delete the label that was assigned to them upon landing in my inbox, or delete the email itself, which I may not want to do.

Google does all kinds of awesome stuff, so hopefully they will come up with a solution for the issue. Or just make this work-around redundant by enabling what I just did with two clicks and a verification in multiple inboxes!

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Speaking of awesome, have you checked out Google Keep yet? It's like Evernote and Google Tasks had a baby.

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More awesome is the program that I used to create these screenshots, Snagit.

Full disclosure, Adam works at TechSmith, and Snagit was used for the creation of these lovely screen shots. The heinous editing is all mine, however, and I was not compensated in anyway for this post by Google or TechSmith for the use of Snagit or the plugging of their stuff. I just think it's awesome.

Whoa! Who's That Chick?!

Whew! It's been a bit of a whirlwind since I posted that I wouldn't be blogging for awhile.

After the break-in it was rather jarring and hard to calm down and be excited about anything.  But it was really easy to be upset about a lot of things. So here is a re-cap of the good and the bad things that happened since I last blogged.

After the break-in we were scrambling around to protect our identities because one of the laptops that was stolen had our recently completed taxes on them, as well as some other documents that were useable for stealing identities. We also had to clean up the mess they left behind, then the mess the police made trying to help catch the guy.

Adam had recently decided to leave working on his PhD full time and find a job. He was on an interview when the bastards broke in in February. A month later he was offered all three jobs that he interviewed for, and he accepted the place he was most excited about. I'm very happy to report that he loves his job and he can't imagine being anywhere else.  He can't believe that he's been there 6 months already.

In March I was selected to interview at a non-profit. At the end of March they offered me the job and I accepted. It is a great job, a new position, and I love it. It's a very small office but we are doing good work. I've been there for 5 months and I can't believe it either! We're doing a lot of exciting things and hopefully there will be room for even more expansion soon!

Around the same time however, we learned some bad news. My Dad had been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer sucks. They caught it very early and he's going to be fine. At his last check he was cancer free. So, he's been cancer free for close to four months now.

Once Adam accepted the offer for his job, we started looking for a house.  We found one, made an offer, then another, the second offer was accepted and after many issues with our loan officer being incompetent, we closed on a single story ranch house with a full basement in a suburb of Lansing on Adam's birthday. It is a fantastic house and we love living here. How we moved in was very complicated, because we had planned to stay out our lease at our rental house on Lansing's east side.

And then it was burglarized again.

The second burglary happened the Monday after Adam's birthday, which also was the Monday after we closed on the house.  We didn't spend another night in the house. We stayed with some friends in East Lansing for two weeks, and moved out the Saturday after the second break-in, and into a storage unit and into the sun room of our new house. The former owners were kind enough to let us move a bunch of our stuff into the sun room while they were still living here.  After two weeks with our friends, we decided we didn't want to impose on our friends for too long, because we weren't sure when we'd be able to get into the new house. So we moved into a dog friendly hotel near our new house for two weeks.

Thanks to my father-in-law, we had installed a security camera system after the first break-in and were able to give the footage to the police which aided them in catching the kid who broke in. I can't say anything else because the court case is still in progress.

It was a very stressful time in our lives and we are glad to be past it.

We've been living here for four months and I think it's starting to sink in that we get to be here, that this place is ours (and the credit union's) and we just can't believe it. We are close to being done with furnishing the house, and there are curtains and shelves up and as many candles as I can get in!


Unfortunately, during this time, I also learned that a childhood friend was losing her second battle with cancer. This has been incredibly hard on her, her family and friends and I am kind of in shock. You don't expect to lose friends when you're 25. I hope that she beats this thing every day, but I cry a lot about it too, when I'm not in numb shock. Cancer really sucks.

That pretty much sums up the highs and lows of the last 6-ish months. I am hoping to get back on a regular schedule of blogging, but it won't be 5 days a week. I also have to fix how this blog looks in Chrome on Mac, because it looks funky.

Hug your loved ones, and tell them you care.

Here's a cute picture of Tesla.

A Break for Awhile

I know that I haven't been posting a lot lately, and no where near as much as when I first started Fondant is Gross.  Life has been kind of crazy for me and I haven't quite managed to find a balance yet.

I also need to have some time to re-think about what I write about and what I put on the internet in general.

Three weeks ago today, our rental house was broken into.  Many things were taken, but we were relatively lucky. No one was hurt, and Tesla is fine even though she was loose in the house when it happened.  We also have several family things going on and it's just time for something to give.  I am tired of feeling guilty for not updating this more, so, I am taking a break from blogging until I can get my head on straight.

I will still update my weight stats when I can and I hope to be back soon doing full posts.

Take care of yourselves and we'll talk soon.

Jenny