Author: Erich Stauffer

How to Sort Emails in Gmail

Gmail originally came out in 2007, but believe it or not there are still people learning how to use it. I recently created this guide for one of my clients and thought I’d share it here to help others who might be learning Gmail for the first time. Here is a guide on how to use Gmail’s filters, labels, and search functions.

Gmail uses Labels and Filters to help sort email. Filters are like Inbox Rules in Outlook and Labels are like Folders in Outlook. Filters can be used to delete, ignore, or label emails. There are a couple of different ways to setup email filters.

Setting Up Email Filters from within an Email

If you look in the right-hand corner of each email, you’ll see a “More” drop-down and one of the choices is “Filter Messages Like These”. When you click that you’ll see options to create filters. Gmail will guess as to what you’re trying to filter (usually by auto-filling in the email sender or the to:address), but you can change these. At this point you can decide what you want done with the messages and do it for all emails in the past or just the future.

Setting Up Email Filters from within Gmail

If you’re not in an email message (or even if you are), you can click on the ‘cog wheel’ Settings menu in the upper right and click on “Settings”. From there you’ll see links across the top like General, Labels…and one of them is Filters. This is mostly used to edit existing filters, but you can also add new filters by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page.

Setting Up Labels

If you like the idea of color-coding your emails or sorting them in a way that makes sense to you, such as with Adsense emails, you can always label things. This makes it easier for you to find things later because you can always go to the search box and type “label:[label name]”. I’ll cover searching in a bit, but to continue on with Labels, these can be applied to any email by clicking the “Label” button above the email or through a filter. Once a label is setup, it’s color can be changed on the left menu by clicking on the color box.

Using the Search Box

As you would expect from Google, this is one of the best features of Gmail. Here are some example searches to show you how it works. For this example, we’ll suppose there is a label named, “Square”. This search will show you all emails labeled with “Square”:

label:square

Fun fact: all emails in your inbox have the label “inbox”. When you archive an email, the “inbox” label gets removed. When you delete an email, the “deleted” label gets applied. All deleted emails are deleted permanently after 30 days unless you manually delete them. This search will show you all emails from erich@domain.com:

from:erich@domain.com

This search will show you all emails you’ve sent to joynreese@gmail.com:

to:you@domain.com

Answers to Your Specific Question

Q, How do I make a folder that will hold all of my emails from a certain sender?

A. Create a Label for that sender and Filter to assign that Label to that person’s email address. The easiest way to do that is to find an email from that person, use the “More” menu in the upper-right of that email, and click “Filter messages like this”. Make sure the person’s email address is in the From box and click, “Assign a label”. If a label does not already exist, click “New label” and then assign that label. You will then have the opportunity to assign all emails in the past or just the ones going forward.

October 23, 2013
e-Commerce Metric: Time to First Sale

This is not just a record of the amount of time it took to get to first sale, a metric called “time to first sale”, but a story about what it took to go from idea to first sale. This is a story of how one idea can lead to another and how people can influence each other. This is the story of how Catchrs and Skinny Coconut Oil got started.

TL;DR; After months of discussions and meetings that started in August of 2011, Skinny Coconut Oil officially launched on August 26, 2013 and had its first sale on August 31. From the first meeting specifically about coconut oil on April 4, 2013 to the first sale on August 31 was 3 months and 27 days, 5 days after the store opened.

How it Started

In 2010, instead of starting a normal job after college like everyone else, Luke Geddie decided to take a year off and travel around the world. It was, “an adventure that would open their eyes to the rare beauty hidden in Southeast Asia.” Luke’s brother Matt accompanied him on parts of this trip and, “with their hearts set on exploration, Luke and Matt Geddie ventured through Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, India, and Vietnam with a desire to see and experience everything.” It was Luke’s time in Vietnam when he met Kim Vo, a local celebrity who introduced Luke to many different people, government officials, and business owners in Vietnam. Through these introductions Luke started to get a sense for the value he could provide the local Vietnamese economy by using the business skills he learned while in college and his connections back in the United States.

On August 1, 2011 I left my day job at First Merchants and went full time consulting. 2 days later Luke’s mom, Joy, called to have me come over and help Luke’s brother’s computer ready for school. Luke had just got home from Vietnam after traveling abroad for a year and Joy wanted me to talk to him about some of the things I had been working on because she knew we were both entrepreneurial-minded. The three of us ended up going out to breakfast on August 18 and that’s when I told Luke about what I was doing with affiliate marketing. Luke started telling me about the ideas he had to have art created in Vietnam, which lead to the first business idea of “art catchers”. This eventually lead to the name of “Catchrs” and after the domain Catchrs was purchased on September 9, 2011 the first official Catchrs meeting was held on September 16.

The business idea went through several iterations, eventually becoming an import/export business. Luke continued working on the business in the United States where he incorporated Catchrs, LLC through the fall, but in December of 2011 he went back to Vietnam to build the business with his partner, Kim. Matt began going to school in New Zealand where he helped Luke and Catchrs by contacting manufacturers and shipping companies around the world. In May of 2012 I helped Luke launch the Catchrs website while simultaneously beginning to work full-time at his mother’s husband’s dentist office. It was during this time that I developed my relationship with Luke’s mother, Joy. After working with her husband’s business for 9 months, Joy and I decided to begin meeting regularly in February to see if there was any businesses we could start together.

I had been learning more about e-commerce as a business as far back as November of 2012 when I began looking into drop-shipping and various e-commerce platforms. This is when I first got introduced to Andrew Youderian at eCommerceFuel.com. At the same time I had just started reading Hacker News and was learning more about programming and startups. In February I started working on a software project called Seektivity, but I quickly hit a hard wall in my software skills. I had also just started a new, stressful job that didn’t leave much time for anything else. However, this didn’t stop me from researching ideas at night while lying in bed. It was during one of these nights that I did a Google search for “where to buy…” and noticed that the second to top auto-complete said, “where to buy coconut oil”.

On March 17, 2013 I reached out to Luke about the rise of 3D printing and on April 2 he asked to have a phone conversation about “traditional medicine and online marketing it in the USA”. On April 4 we had the phone call where we talked about all of the things he had to sell. One of those things was coconut oil. I wrote Luke on April 6, “I’m interested in that because Joy, Suzanne, and my friend, Jason’s wife, Krista, all use coconut oil for cooking and as a lotion. I’d be willing to pay you for a sample to send over so I can have them try it out. I own a website called topical-cream.com and the domain tropical-cream is currently available. I’m thinking that with a ‘cute’ enough package that this stuff could sell well in local boutiques, Fresh Market stores, Whole Foods, and on Amazon.” On April 6th, Luke offered a sample. By May 22 I still hadn’t received the sample so I emailed Luke an image of the Google Trend line for coconut oil.

On May 27 he had the supplier re-send the sample of coconut oil. The original bottle had been mistakenly sent to Luke’s brother, Matt, in California, who would later become much more involved. On May 31 it was shipped from Canada and on June 5 it arrived at my house and by June 8 I had already met with Luke’s mom, Joy about it and had started to reach out to Matt who was still in California. Matt had experience launching his own product and was currently working as a marketing director. I saw him as an integral part of this process.

On June 9 Luke returned to the United States along with Kim, his business partner from Vietnam. On June 11 we had our first meeting about coconut oil as a business and decided to call it “Premier Grove”. On Friday, June 14 we had our second meeting about the business. By July 3 we had a business plan for the company that had been renamed to “Skinny and Co” and who’s first product was named “Skinny Coconut Oil” after the tall and skinny shape of the original bottle. On July 12 we had our EIN for the corporation and could finally start setting up Shopify, Amazon, and Opensky.

On July 9 Matt moved back to Indiana from California and we had our first meeting with Chris Murphy, a boyhood friend of Matt’s who had just graduated from college with a Marketing degree. His mom was best friends with Matt’s mother, Joy. Chris was all about “community” (he even loved the Community, the show). On July 10 Kim visited the United States from Vietnam and we all decided to offer Chris a position with Skinny and Co. He began working on the label design right away and by August 19 we had our first prototype.

After incorporating Skinny and Co. with the state of Indiana in July, the Skinny Coconut Oil website officially launched on August 26 and had its first sale on August 31. Although Luke had offered, I had no equity in either Catchrs, LLC or Skinny and Co. and I had only been paid for the web design work I did for Catchrs. My agreement with Skinny and Co. at that time was to get a percentage of online sales in exchange for my work building out the website’s content, doing SEO, and helping with social media.

On September 3 we began working on our first brochure, an Oil Pulling Guide, and on September 26, Joy went to her printer to have flyers printed for the upcoming Gluten Free Living festival on October 5th. The printer kept staring at the flyer. She began asking questions about the coconut oil and shared how she sold raw chocolate and was looking for a coconut oil to sell, but she wanted to sell it as a subscription monthly. She sold one jar. This is the beginning of selling coconut oil as a subscription and it paved the way for the second event which was a health fair on September 28th in Southport, Indiana.

October 5th was a rainy day. I had to get up early in the morning to be in Richmond at 8 AM. At the same time, Matt and Chris were up early getting ready for the Gluten Free Living festival in Carmel. We had recently hired two interns, Michael and Stephanie, but only Michael was there that day. Rachel from the dentist office also stopped by to help sell. We sold almost 50 jars and I got my first check after 2 years of work. On the drive home Andrew Youderian gave me a “First Sale Shout Out” on his podcast. It was a good day.

SEE also: The Skinny Coconut Oil Story

Update: if you’re looking for a coconut oil that tastes, smells, and feels like Skinny Coconut Oil from Skinny & Co., check out Dignity Coconut Oil (affiliate link). Like Skinny, their coconut oil is raw and they use glass jars instead of plastic, but the best part is their mission to raise women out of poverty.

October 6, 2013
Urban Exploration – My Life Under Bridge

Recently I’ve been exploring the development of an “outdoor adventure” brand and in my market research I ran across this Wikipedia article on urban exploration:

Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the exploration of man-made structures, usually abandoned ruins or not usually seen components of the man-made environment. Photography and historical interest/documentation are heavily featured in the hobby and, although it may sometimes involve trespass onto private property, this is not always the case and is of innocent intention.[1] Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as draining (when exploring drains), urban spelunking, urban rock climbing, urban caving, or building hacking.

I had never heard of that term before, but it brought back memories of my own urban exploration.

Raytown

When I was in first and second grade I lived in a subdivision with a concrete ditch and a storm sewer at the end of the street. The entrance was like an inviting cave beckoning me to explore its depths. My brother and I would pack our lunch and our flash lights and set off through the drain seeing how far we could go. I remember looking up through the storm drains like windows. It was pretty dangerous. Don’t do this.

Southport

After moving to Southport in third grade I began playing under the bridge in the creek at the bottom of the hill in my subdivision. I would build dams and streams using the rocks and sand that had built up there. By the fifth grade I had moved on to other bridges around town where I was actively manipulating the stream’s flow using sandbags, rocks, and any tools I could find.
Franklin

In sixth grade I moved to the outskirts of Franklin into the “country”. There was a bridge and a creek there that I played in, but it wasn’t until high school that I started urban exploring indoors. The high school auditorium had a giant HVAC room in a giant attic. I would climb up into it during choir class and hang out and often thought about spending the night there. I never did.

Grayson

My first two years of college were spent in Grayson which was located next to an interstate highway. There was a drainage pipe that went under the highway that I crawled through. Like in second grade I brought my lunch to eat once I got to the other side and like in Southport I took some time to play under the bridge on my way back. I actually took a video camera too and recorded the adventure, which is part of urban exploration, from what I can tell.

Like in Franklin, the auditorium at our school had a “secret room” which was locked from the outside, but could be accessed from the stage by climbing the backdrops. It was used as a sound and light booth for when they had plays (they never had plays). It had a phone. I would go there and call people to come hang out with me. They would never answer.

One day I signed up for a 24-hour prayer program and my hour was early in the morning around 2 or 3 AM. I’d wake up or stay up and walk around the dorm at night praying as I walked. Because of curfew I couldn’t leave the building. It was hard to stay awake sometimes and because I was mostly alone I started to explore. There was an access panel in the hallway outside of the bathrooms on the first floor. Upon opening the panel there appeared a ladder. I would go in between the walls and climb the ladder to the third floor and back. Do not try this at home.

Milligan College

After Grayson I transferred to Milligan College where I again lived in a dorm. Like Grayson, there was an access panel in the bottom floor of the building and like Grayson I filmed myself exploring what was inside. Unlike Grayson, this wasn’t a vertical shaft, but a horizontal one. It was sort of like a crawl space underneath the dorm that eventually emptied out through a small opening into the boiler room, which was locked from the outside. It was a neat discovery.

My Life Under Bridge

In November of 2008 I set about to tell a similar story using Google Maps Street view and Google Docs Presentations as a medium. I ended up with 19 slides that took me from my home in Raytown to my current home in Tipton. Apparently I’ve told this story before.

“It all started in Raytown, Missouri. I lived in a subdivision with a ditch at the other end of the road which fed into the local sewer system. We would explore the sewers with flashlights and see how far we could go.”

In Southport, “I would go down to the bridge and build dams and tiny rivers in the creek’s sand. There was a hidden waterfall in the woods.” It was near Strawberry Farm.

“Stephani lived off of Loretta Dr. Our older brothers were friends and our families went to the same church. They had a bridge near their house.”

“I dug my most massive canals and dams here using garden tools provided to me on loan from the Stephani’s house.”

“Then I moved to Franklin and played under a bridge near Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church.”

“When I got older, my friends and I set out from church one day to build a new hangout spot under the bridge at the bottom of the hill. We called it the Outdoor Blue Lounge. We painted the walls blue and were blamed for cows escaping. The county Sheriff made us paint over it with white, which later peeled.”

“One day I skipped some class to go on a hike. I packed my lunch and a change of clothes, and took my video camera along with me.”

“Next I moved to Milligan and roomed with Ben. I filmed my exploration of Hyder Mill by the creek.” Oh yeah, I forgot about that one.

About Erich Stauffer

In addition to urban exploration, I also like making custom maps.

September 26, 2013
The Screen – Milligan Movies

This is a story about how I ended up leaving Kentucky Christian College and helping Milligan College produce it’s first feature-length film called The Screen.

I was working at Camp Allendale the summer between Kentucky Christian College and Milligan. My friend, Ben, asked me if I wanted to go on a vacation with him to Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. I said yes.

John Mann and I both happened to, separately, go to Milligan College after first attending Kentucky Christian College. This is primarily because it offered a degree in Film, but I also knew I could study Computer Science there if I wanted to. I was studying Bible and Business at Kentucky Christian College (KCC), but was mostly ostracized for carrying a video camera around campus making videos. The last year I was there KCC put on a play written by John Mann, who was a former student who at that time was already attending Milligan College (Zac Parsons actually starred in that play). It was through this play, which my girlfriend at the time was producing, that I learned about Milligan’s film school, but I didn’t decide to go to Milligan until I saw a marketing poster for them hanging up at my church. I turned to Ben Fair and said, “Let’s go to Milligan,” and he said, “Okay.” I was a little worried about running into my old boss, the son of the camp director at Michiana Christian Summer Camp where I worked the summer before, but it turned out that he only attended Milligan for one year. By the time I got there I had already attended KCC for two years and I was like a freshman who went in with both eyes open – and I took full advantage. I told everyone my name was Dirk Douglas and made it a point to meet a lot of different people and do a lot of different things. I had a lot of stations there and I was mostly happy.

Since I was studying film and I auditioned to assist John Mann and Chad Garrison in producing Milligan’s first feature-length film, The Screen, which is a story about Cameron Jarrett who, like Walter Mitty, lives a boring life – some might even call it “pathetic”. Girls would not talk to him and the ones who did would often break up with him. The friends he has he annoys by reminding them how long it’s been since he’s had a date, but that’s all about to change when he meets a strange man from “Eye N Sky Productions” that turns his life into a television show (you know, like the Truman Show that came out two years before and appears in a movie poster in the background during this scene). If he agreed, he would be paid $1 million, but there was only one catch (there’s always a catch): if he told anyone about this, he would forfeit everything. After that initial meeting things started changing for Cameron. All of a sudden girls were asking him out and he was the life of the party, but then things started getting weird. First a friend got an STD, another was a victim of alcohol abuse, and another got his girlfriend pregnant – he even inadvertently dates a 16 year old. “No!!!” All of a sudden The Screen begins to ask if what we are seeing is really real? Then all of a sudden the movie kind of turns into The Matrix (which came out a year prior in 1999) and his life is all of a sudden really worth watching. Chad Garrison currently lives in Las Vegas and runs Faith Road Productions and SGT John Mann is an Emmy-winning, fifteen year veteran of television and film and is currently serving as a broadcast journalist in the United States Army.

The Screen Trailer (2000) from Chad Garrison on Vimeo.

About Milligan College

At the time Milligan had about twice the number of students as KCC (now called KCU for Kentucky Christian University) at around 1000 students. The culture was more academic and liberal. By that I mean that the professors seemed happy making their classes too hard to pass and the student body seemed to be Christian by title only. Milligan is heavily populated by students from the mega-church in Louisville, Kentucky, Southeast Christian Church. Most of the students who attend get large scholarships. When I attended, it cost $8000 a semester, but I believe it is now around $15000 a semester. The layout of campus is very hilly and is physically challenging to get around. The post office is at the bottom of the hill next to the creek. The chapel is at the top of the hill next to the gym. Just like at KCC, chapel is mandatory twice a week. When ever the congregation stands or sits, the old squeeky chairs would cry out like a thousand hungry babies. The dorm rooms had high-speed internet access, but at the time, there was only one dorm hall with air conditioning.

The college itself is about 20-30 minutes from any sort of shopping center, about 10 minutes from the nearest gas station. Milligan students are called “Buffs” or “Buffalo’s”, which refers to the mountain that can be seen in the Western horizon (It’s got a hump like a buffalo). To give you an idea of how rural this college is, my physics professor took us out to his farm to see his tractor. In 1995 I took a mission trip down to Johnson City/Elizabethton (which are the two cities that straddle Milligan) to help out at a children’s home there. I was still in high school then. The man who ran that home later worked with me in the cafeteria at Milligan where I washed dishes. It is an extremely poor area and so finding work experience for a future job or to help out during college was hard. Although Johnson City seems like it would be a place to find jobs, there is already a East Tennessee State University there with lots more students already filling jobs there. On the social side of things, having a secular college near by did offer some opportunities to meet more people (I attended Milligan in the year 2000 and we didn’t have Facebook then, but we did have College Club).

I knew and met people from ETSU because of Wednesday night worship at a Johnson City Church. I actually went to one church Wednesday night (because it was the cool thing to do and the drummer was awesome), another church on Sunday morning (because I liked the preacher’s daughter who processed our meal cards at the cafeteria door), and went to another church on Sunday night (because they had swing dancing on Sunday nights and cool worship). She made me a mix CD that I still have today, but we only really went on a group date in which she tried to hook me up with her friend. I did hook up with a girl who was working backstage at a concert in Johnson City. I met her on ChristianFriendFinder.com, but had never seen her in person. She was friends with all the bands so was backstage eating with them. I just found the door, walked in, got some food, and sat down next to her. Everyone was looking at me like “Who is this guy? He seems to know what he’s doing, but I don’t know why he is here.” Eventually I found out that I had sat down next to the one I had came to meet and by the end of the night we were dating (if this interests you, read Everything I Know About Women).

I ran a radio show at night at the college radio station with Ben Fair, but I quit after three episodes. I studied in the library at night with Jen from New York. On the first day of school it started raining during orientation and I asked if I could walk under her umbrella with her. She was very elegant, but only dated guys named Steve. I called her Elegant Jen. She was friends with Jennifer, who I once walked to the “college on a hill” across the street from Milligan. Its a seminary. When we got to the top of the hill we were all alone and should have kissed, but I didn’t want to. We walked back down, sealing our fate as friends for the rest of the semester. One night, we went with a group of people to a lake. It was already dark when we left and I asked if we could play the new Third Eye Blind album, their second release. When we got there, the driver (a guy from Southeast Christian Church) drove down into the lake, right on the edge of the cliff. I was scared and so was Jennifer. We squeezed each other’s hands so tight, but we didn’t tip over. We survived.

There were groups of people that hung together and ate together just like at KCC, just like everywhere, but I tried to buck that trend and specifically tried to sit with people who hadn’t asked me to sit with them – especially during lunch. This, for some reason, allowed me to be more than myself. Because I was new, they hung on my every word. They anticipated my responses. I became a hero, a comedian, a real riot. It was not my intention at all, but my signature move was to find one girl at the table to “thank” for letting me sit with them and kiss her on the cheek on the way out. There’s nothing like the sound of a table full of people erupting in hysterical laughter. I only went to Milligan for one semester. It was enough. I have no desire to go back, even to visit. I do not recommend Milligan for Milligan’s sake. What I do recommend is that you squeeze every last ounce out of college that you can and go into it with clearly defined goals. If you wants to go to a Christian college in Tennesee, I recommend Johnson Bible College. If she wants to go to Kentucky, I recommend Asbury. If you wants to go to Indiana, I recommend Taylor, Huntington, or Anderson. You’ll probably make up your mind based on a friend’s suggestion and a marketing poster, but you’re a good person for reading this far.

August 29, 2013
Joss Whedon and Getting Things Done

This is a Google+ Hangout with Jason Cobb about a Fast Company article about how Joss Whedon gets stuff done. This intrigued me because I’m a David Allen/GTD follower and I used to make movies (not like these movies). This movie talks a little about that and how life’s journey has a way of taking you were you were going to go anyway, even if you take another path to get there.

August 28, 2013
Does Hardee’s Serve Biscuits and Gravy at Night?

One of the questions I got on this site recently was, “Does Hardee’s serve biscuits and gravy at night?”

As I wrote about in Everything I Know About Breakfast, Hardee’s is the clear fast-food breakfast winner, but I didn’t actually know the answer so I had to look it up.

I could not find this information from Hardee’s website, but thankfully The Examiner stepped up and let the world know that, “The majority of Hardee’s restaurant locations serve breakfast from 6:00 AM to 10:30 AM. However some Hardee’s locations serve breakfast all day long!”

Bonus Note from Cha Cha Answers: Hardee’s has all you can eat biscuits and gray on Sunday at a lot of locations, but not all of them.

Sucka shut your mouth…and pass me a biscuit.

August 27, 2013
The Rise of the iPhone
It’s easy to forget how far technology has come in the last 20 years. From the rise of the World Wide Web in 1994 to web-based email in 1996 to blogging in 2003 to Facebook in 2004 to text-messaging in 2005 to the rise of the smartphone in 2007. The smartphone is, in some ways, the pinnacle of this technological arc, allowing us to access all of the previous technological innovations in one device. Although I’ve owned a HTC Hero (1,2) and other smartphones, the most popular smartphone is the iPhone, I thought I’d reminisce about my personal history of the iPhone.

CRT monitors and Samsung Flip Phones Can Be Fun
Back in October 7 of 2007 I had the idea to link a trucker’s CB radio to their laptop to allow them to see and talk to other truckers in similar area via Internet location, rather than CB channel. I would also (through Skype I assume) allow them to call their family/friends from that same CB radio interface.

This has all since been supplanted by the iPhone, which came out 3 months earlier on June 29, 2007. I guess I didn’t know the power it would have to supplant and replace so many different hardware and software elements of our lives – and I didn’t anticipate how widespread [smartphone’s] use would be.

———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Sun, Oct 7, 2007 at 10:21 PM
Subject: Telablue Ideas

Hydermill Ideas
- Trucker’s Skype. Enables use of CB Radio over laptop
- Location by IP
- Half-Duplex
- Clear, Static Free Sound
- CB uses USB
- Buddy List For talking to specific trucker friends on the road
- Family Land Line Access – Call Family at anytime over the road using CB Radio
- Trucker Band and Police Band Access – Enables normal use of CB Radio, with clear sound.
The following is the first message I ever got from a person with the email signature “Sent from my iPhone”. It was from sent on October 24, 2007 from one of my friend’s iPhone. He didn’t even tell me he got a new iPhone, he just started sending out messages that said “Sent from my iPhone.” Brady.

———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 4:12 PM
Subject:
To: Erich Stauffer

Sent from my iPhone

This is the first message I ever sent from my first iPhone. It was October 30, 2007 and I had just started working at AllThingsIT for the first time. I recently recycled it to get my current iPhone. Sprint gave me $35 credit for it if I remember correctly.

Yahoo! Mail added it’s own email signature underneath the iPhone’s email signature. This is partly why I don’t use Yahoo! Mail anymore. I was using Yahoo! Mail instead of Gmail on my iPhone was because Gmail only worked via POP or IMAP, but eventually Google came out with a Gmail app.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Erich Stauffer
Date: Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 12:52 PM
Subject: Router problem
To: Erich Stauffer

Sent from my iPhone
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
August 27, 2013
Jobs, Grants, and Everything Else

This is a blog post about jobs, work, getting grants, writing books, watching movies, the state of the Maker culture, and everything Elon Musk is doing nowadays. It started with a conversation I had last night with my wife’s cousin’s husband about these things. This is a summary of that conversation and of my current interests and this blog in general.

How to Be Happy at Work

Happiness at your job comes from being really good at what you do. Being really good requires deliberate practice to rise above the performance plateau that most people reach at their jobs. Once you’re really good you’ll be able to look back at all the good work you’ve done, all of the people you’ve helped, and you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness.

Ultimately, you are in control of your own emotions. No one else can make you feel a certain way. You always have a choice of how you react to external factors. The hard part is changing the habits that cause these reactions, but if you can replace the action within the habit, you’re one step closer to managing your own actions.

How to Apply for a Government Grant

Anyone can apply for a government grant, but for most people the process is too long, complicated, and shrouded in mystery, so this is brief introduction to the grant application process. First you’ll need an EIN (employer identification number) from your state’s IRS and a DUNS number from Dunn and Bradstreet. Once you have these, you can start applying for government grants.

How to Travel the Glory Trail Across America

There is a path across America that strings together some of the most scenic parts of the western United States. If you’re starting in Indiana, you first go to Chicago, then Madison, Wisconsin, through Minnesota, across South Dakota into Mount Rushmore. From there you continue heading west to Yellowstone in Wyoming and up through Montana and Idaho into Seattle, Washington. From there you head south through Portland, Oregon to Sacremento, San Francisco, and Los Angelas, California. After driving through Las Vegas you finally reach the Grand Canyon in Arizona. At that point you can either choose to go back through Denver, Colorado and Kansas City, Missouri or keep south through New Mexico and Texas. I recently did the first leg of this trail in a tw0-day trip, but expect to spend at least two weeks to do the whole thing.

One recommendation my wife’s cousin’s husband had was to buy a National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass that gets your vehicle into any national park for one annual fee. You don’t have to buy it in advance, just make sure you buy it at the first park you come to so you can take full advantage of the price benefits. One other tip is to rent a vehicle for this trip rather than to use your own vehicle. It will cost you between $30 and $50 a day depending on the vehicle and any current specials, but considering the amount of miles you’ll be traveling, the wear on your vehicle, and the amount of things that could go wrong along the way, it makes sense to rent a vehicle that you can swap out if something happens rather than face a big repair bill on your own vehicle while in a remote location.

How to Write, Publish, and Sell a Book Online

You may have heard that books are the new business cards or that it’s a great way to make passive income on the side and it’s both of those, but just knowing that doesn’t make it happen. You still have to do the work. If you’re not used to writing, you might consider starting a blog and writing a few blog posts first. Once you have several blog posts written you could consider rolling these up into a chapter or even a short ebook or white paper. This is called repurposing content and is just one of the ways to get started writing a book.

The easiest way to write a book is to start writing it in secret – don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. You may not know what to write at first, so just start writing about anything and the clarity will come later. Sometimes I find it helps if I start out pretending I’m writing a letter to someone I know. However, you eventually want to let people know about the book if you intend to sell it. While it’s best to finish the book first, there can be some advantages to letting people know you’re about to publish a book.

Imagine if when you were half-way through writing the book that you put up a landing page that let people sign up to get notified about the book when it comes out. In the meantime you start blogging about the book and asking for more email sign-ups. By the time you’re ready to publish the book you’ve got a list of people ready to buy and you’ve established authority and trust from a series of blog posts that are similar to the future book’s material. This is exactly what Nathan Barry did with his iPhone book.

Alternatively you could do the more traditional approach and publish your paper book on Amazon using Createspace or on Kindle using Kindle Direct Publishing, but each of these models has two stark differences to Nathan Barry’s model. First, when a customer purchases a book from Amazon that customer belongs to Amazon, not you. You have no idea who that customer is and you can never contact them unless they contact you first. Second, Amazon takes at least a 15% commission, compared to 5% from your own credit card processing company.

How to Find Good Movies on Netflix

I subscribe to Netflix and have used it to watch everything from Glee to 10 Items or Less, but every since Starz left the movie selection has been left wanting. However, last weekend I watched Primer and this weekend I plan on watching Expendables 2. I knew Primer was good because I’d watched it before once, but since I didn’t understand it the first time I watched it again. I still didn’t fully understand it until I read this blog post explaining Primer. That movie is so hard to explain that when you start typing “what happened in…”, Google autocomplete displays “what happened in Primer” first above the next highest, “what happened in Benghazi”.

Why Expendables 2? While I had reluctantly seen Expendables 1, my wife’s cousin’s husband reminded me that this movie is really a parody of itself and just a over-the-top 80’s action movie complete with all of the 80’s action movie stars. When I say complete I mean Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously? Anyone from the 8-bit generation who grew up watching Saturday-morning cartoons will appreciate this movie even if you don’t like action movies. With a giant wink and a nod, Expendables 2 guarantees a Primer-like trip back to a time when guns were bigger and times were simpler.

To help you find better movies, Netflix has invested heavily in algorithms that help you find movies you might like but this doesn’t always work when one account is used for a whole family. In fact I know it doesn’t work because I don’t actually want to watch My Little Pony despite Netflix’s constant insistence that I do. Thankfully they’ve recently came out with profiles that allow each family member to have their own likes and dislikes. It was with this method that I was able to see Primer after answering a series of questions like, “Do you like mind-bending movies?” I can say with confidence that I was happy to deselect all horror films and children’s films so that I could focus on what I like.

How to Build Anything

We live in an amazing time where we are only limited by our own imaginations and willingness to make things happen. Strictly speaking, we have the Internet which gives us access to more information than we could ever consume, hardware that is both cheap, powerful, and extensible, programming platforms that let us use hardware however we like, credit card processing and ecommerce tools that let us sell anything we could possible choose to make, and a world-wide audience plugged in and ready to be marketed to on Google and Facebook. There is literally nothing stopping you from taking an idea to market with the right amount of dedication and effort.

My greatest fear is that 10 years from now my son or daughter is going to ask me why I didn’t do more with this time I had back then. They will have seen evidence of those who did take advantage of these tools and built something great, something sustainable, or something life changing. In 10 years we will have our next Facebook, our next Google, and our next Microsoft. They will be born out of Arduino boards, iPhone apps, and 3D printing technologies. But by then someone will already have done it and by then it will be too late. The time to act is now – be that person in your child’s past that built that thing that you can look back on with fondness and see how you helped people.

How Elon Musk Builds Things

Elon Musk, co-founder of Paypal, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors builds things using Physics’ first principles, which as Musk explains it, “boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.” One of his latest projects is the Grasshopper

which is a test rocket that can take off and land vertically, allowing the rocket to be re-used on this planet or others. The other project is called Hyperloop, which is a new form of city-to-city mass transit that involves using tubes and cartridges instead of rails and trains to carry people and property quickly between cities. Elon Musk children will look back 10 years from now and know their dad helped make our world a better place. If you like Elon Musk, you might also like Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and founder of Square.

August 18, 2013
How I Lost 40 Pounds in 4 Months Using Slow-Carb Ideas from The 4-Hour Body
4 months ago my weight was hovering around 270 pounds with a high of 275. Today it’s down around 230 with a low of 228. Here’s what I changed.

While The 4-Hour Body came out on December 14, 2010, I didn’t start applying it’s principals until April of 2013. The first thing I did was to stop drinking coke (Coca Cola, Cherry Coke, and Mountain Dew). This alone helped me drop 10 pounds. I initially switched to sweet tea, then half sweet/half unsweetened, and then to only unsweetened tea. When I go to Starbucks, which is often, I get either a plain black iced coffee or a plain black Americano (espresso with water) for a hot drink. All other drinks are water. I drink a cold glass of water every morning, which is discussed in the book as a way to kick start your metabolism (along with using coconut oil).

One of the hardest things I found was knowing what to eat at any given time. I really just wanted someone to hand me a menu and tell me what to eat so I didn’t have to think about it all the time. Before I started this diet food was very important to me. I thought about it all the time. I was always wondering what I’d be eating for the next meal. I’d fantasize about it. I even dreamed of owning my own restaurant so that I could serve myself anything I wanted at any time. I was fat.

One of the things Tim Ferriss (author) talks about in The Four-Hour Body is that in order to lose weight we need to break the emotional connection we have to food. We need to stop looking forward to it and start getting it over with as fast as possible. Ferriss recommends eating the same things over and over and being very utilitarian about the eating experience. This idea helped propel me forward.

Slow Carb vs. No Carb

The diet in 4-Hour Body is a low-carb diet for 6 days a week followed by 1 “carb day” of eating as many carbs as you want. There are many foods that contain carbs, but what Ferriss is really talking about is breads, potatoes, corn, and rice, which all contain simple carbohydrates (sugars) that prevent your body from burning fat (by burning sugar instead).

What to Eat

This is a menu I used and continue to use today. It involves eating low-carb meals for 6 days a week followed by 1 day of eating whatever you want.

Breakfast

Drink a cold glass of water as soon as you wake up and then choose from this menu:
- Fried eggs in coconut oil
- Black beans with taco seasoning
- Scrambled eggs with peppers
Lunch
- Salad with vegetables and meat – Wendy’s is great for this – try the BLT Cobb Salad for starters – no fruit salads
- Mexican restaurant? Get a burrito bowl with only meat and vegetables and/or beans – no chips
- Steak restaurant? Get a piece of meat or fish with a side of vegetables – no baked potato, bread or fries
- Mixed nuts as a snack
- Beef jerky as a snack
Dinner
- Black beans or refried beans
- Lettuce wraps with black beans, refried beans, and chopped tomato with Frank’s red hot sauce
- Chicken breast, fish, or steak with side of steamed vegetables – avoid breaded meats or BBQ sauce
- Baked sweet potato, steamed cabbage, or coconut oil kale chips are all nice treats
- Baked brocoletti with coconut oil, salt, and pepper is delicious as a meal
Kudos and shout-out to my kid’s mom who used to make these meals for me.

Other Habits

It wasn’t just the diet that had to change, there are other contributing factors to weight loss such as exercise and tracking.

Exercise

I didn’t join a gym or anything, but I did go on the occasional long walk and the job I had at the time required me to walk up and down stairs a lot carrying computer equipment around. But this wasn’t all the time, maybe once a week. Most other times I was sitting down in the car (I have a one-hour commute – one way, twice a day) or sitting down at a computer chair (much as I’m doing right now). When I get home at least one of my kids will want me to do “big jumps” by repetitively lifting them up in the air or play the “broken crane” where I lift them up making engine noises until the engine gives out and drops them.

In the beginning of the diet change I felt weak, like I couldn’t exercise if I wanted to. This lasted for about 3 months, but by the fourth month I felt I could start doing things like push ups and running again. Prior to the diet change I would run and do push-ups, but I wouldn’t lose any weight. How could I when I was putting so much sugar into my body? It was much easier to burn the “easy” sugar than for my body to take the time and energy to release and use the fat it had stored up.

Don’t have time to exercise? Consider exercising at work.

Goals

My first goal was to lose 1 pound. I know that may sound silly, but my weight was so consistent that even losing 1 pound would tell me that I was doing something differently. Once I lost 1 pound I set a new goal of losing 5 pounds. After 5 pounds I set a goal weight of 240. After hitting 240 I sat my eyes on 220, which is how much I weighed in college (I weighed 180 in high school – by the way, I’m 6′ 5″). I haven’t reached that goal, but like I said before the closest I’ve came is 228.

Setbacks

How are you going to handle setbacks? When you weigh yourself everyday, you’re going to have days where you way more than the day before. This could be because you need to go to the bathroom or because you didn’t drink enough water the day before and are now holding onto it (it could also be from holding water from salt intake). It could also be because you just had a carb-day or because you slipped up or decided to take a break. Whatever the reasons, what matters most is that you keep going and get back on track. Mistakes happen – we’re human – but we don’t have to let our mistakes derail us from our goals of being healthier and looking better for our loved ones.

Tracking Tools

I use a normal, tempered glass, bath scale, but some people who practice quantified self or that just like technology like using the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale because it wirelessly sends the weight recording to a Fitbit One Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Tracker. Fitbit has it’s own tracking software, which also integrates with MyFitnessPal, which I do use. Some people track their weight in Excel, Google Docs, or Evernote. Some people go beyond tracking their weight and also track their body mass index (BMI); their chest, belly, and hip circumference; and their total body fat. There are sports centers and various medical facilities that you can contact about getting these measurements.

Disclaimers

I am not a doctor. Consult a medical professional before making any changes to your body or diet. I am not giving advice, but merely telling you of my experiences with a particular type of diet and exercise routine that has worked for me. Every person is different.

Any links you see to Amazon are affiliate links, which means that if you click on them and buy something I’ll get a small percentage of whatever you buy. This is no increased cost to you and helps you support informative blog posts like this. Thanks for reading.

Update: if you’re looking for a coconut oil that tastes, smells, and feels like Skinny Coconut Oil from Skinny & Co., check out Dignity Coconut Oil (affiliate link). Like Skinny, their coconut oil is raw and they use glass jars instead of plastic, but the best part is their mission to raise women out of poverty.
August 13, 2013