As a newly-minted resident, I wanted to participate in the celebration by entering their photography contest. The category for “Irvine Outdoors” is my first attempt at capturing the Ferris Wheel at the Irvine Spectrum outdoor mall, where the I-405 and I-5 freeways meet.

In fact, the Irvine Spectrum mall was one of the primary reasons why my wife and I choose to relocate to this section of town. It has a Pinkberry AND a Coffee Bean! Enjoy!

Ferris Wheel at the Irvine Spectrum

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From my informal polling of friends and personal contacts, Gmail is the email service that almost everyone uses and for every type of correspondence. From mail, chat, and now voice features, Google has a majority of our needs met with their service.

Since Gmail is easy to use and it’s free, what is so wrong with that using it?

Why Not Gmail

Though widely used, Google’s service has ran into a number of issues. Here are the top 2 concerns:

Privacy
Major University Dumps Gmail Over Security Concerns
Google to be reviewed following Buzz privacy concerns
Gmail Adverts Become Even More Targeted Using Your Priority Inbox

Support
Judge Shuts Down Innocent User’s Gmail Account Over a Bank’s Screw-up!

If you do not have privacy concerns, like your inbox being scanned to serve targeted advertisement, then Gmail is good enough. If you are not bothered with the prospect of waking up one morning and seeing that you’ve lost years of emails because access to your Gmail account has been revoked, then Gmail should be fine.

However, if you have plans to supplement your income using the web or if you want comfort in knowing that emails between you and your doctor are kept private, then continue reading for an approach that leverages jurisdictional limits for handling and protecting your correspondence.

An Easy Simple 1-2 Approach

1. For financial emails, consider registering for an offshore email service such as NeoMailbox (Swiss hosted) or HushMail (Canada Hosted) .
2. For general correspondence, consider registering for a service that focuses soley on providing a stable environment like FastMail (U.S. Hosted)

With the above method, you are segregating your correspondence based on a sensitivity or exposure basis. You may want to ensure that emails related to bank and investment accounts secure and private. However, the secure service providers focus on privacy and not so much on ease of use.

For general correspondence between friends or service notifications like Facebook Birthday alerts, chose a user-friendly interface like FastMail.fm. You have the option of having FastMail import your Gmail emails and create redundency in the event one service is down.

An Advanced 1-2-3-4 Approach

If you really want to get fancy, then consider adding a non-US Top Level Domain (TLD) to your approach.

For example, I have a .CO TLD pointed to my Swiss hosted email account. Currently the .CO TLD is managed by a US registrar. Upon expiration, I plan to transfer the .CO domain to a Cananda hosted registrar.

Today, emails sent to my .CO (a Columbian extenion) which is held by a US Registrar is directed to a Swiss hosted email provider. In the future, the .CO (Columbian extension) will be held by a Canadian registrar and directed to a Swiss hosted email provider.

If the next banker mistakenly sends confidential emails to my account, then this approach will provide 3 jurisdictional hurdles before my business is affected.

For example, consider a situation where financial documents intended for a recipient at the engineering company www.hau.com was accidentally sent to my account at www.hau.co, where I plan to sell photographs.

If my email accounts were hosted on the Gmail servers, then one court order effectively cuts access to my emails and shuts down my business. With the multiple jurisdiction approach, however, the absent-minded banker would need to first appeal to the court system in Canada where the TLD is registered and then to the courts in Switzerland. The extra burden of appealing in multiple jurisdictions may dissuade such actions.

The complexity is in setting this up the first time. After it’s up and running, the process is transparent. You only need to visit your new service provider instead of Gmail.

Here’s my current setup:

1. .CO (Columbian exension, US Registrar)
2. Swiss Hosted Email Provider
3. .COM (US extension, Canadian Registrar)
4. US Hosted Email Provider for general correspondence

Options 1 & 2 are for financial and investment related emails while options 3 & 4 are for general correspondence. I’ve tested several email service providers and strategies over the years and I’ve found that this is best balance between strong privacy and accessibility for everday usage.

The above 1-2-3-4 approach handles my first 700+ email accounts with ease.

I still use Gmail on a regular basis so I am not advocating shutting down a useful service. I would, however, insist that you build a level of redundancy and security into your correspondence in light of the aforementioned issues.

I also have a few one-off email accounts for travel purposes, but that’s a post for another time.

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Background

With the recent recession during the previous two years, my wife was releasedf from her position as a IT/Business Analyst along with a number of our friends who worked in different sectors of the Las Vegas economy. The general mood could be described as “troubled” as more of our friends faced unemployment while those who were able to retain their job faced increased workloads and uncertain working environments.

So how does this affect the rest of us who have jobs and are working harder than ever?

For the folks like myself who were able to avoid the impact of cost-cutting measures, it’s was a common occurrence to see our workload doubled. Being a workaholic, I am embarrassed to admit that relish these situations. I look forward to solving problems that others face and I see such situations as challenges (to the detriment of quality time with the family).

Considering that the recession may have a long tail, however, this may be a situation where improving a bad process just isn’t a good idea.

Solution

In bullet form, the Psychology Today article lists the action-items for identifying, addressing, and avoiding burnout. The simplest and most immediate items addresses those who may already be experiencing an overload of work or in the processes of burning out:

1. Identify the situations that is causing the most stress
2. Create one remedy that will alleviate or reduce the stress
3. Say “no” to new commitments

I highly recommend reading the rest of the article for additional insight in avoiding and preventing burnout, such as socializing outside of your network and finding a support group to share frustrations and reduce stress.

Reading through the article, I’ve made a list of the situations that are contributing a large amount of stress in my life. Similar to the principle in David Allen’s Getting Things Done method, the act of writing things down and getting them out of your head has immediately reduced the amount of anxiety that I’ve felt this morning.

As a side benefit, I now have a list of action-items that I can work on. There seems to be a sense of irony in this process, but I do admittedly feel better.

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Today, I want to show you how to receive and access your physical (USPS, FedEx, USP, etc.) mail from anywhere in the U.S.. (You can extend this approach even if you live in Antarctica or other parts of the world.)

The Problem

I’ve been dealing with this issue for a few years and it has only increased with my travel schedule. Here is where I stand today:

• I am a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada and my primary residence is a nice 1,700 sq. ft. 3-bedroom home.
• I work in Minneapolis, Minnesota where I have a 900 sq. ft. condo for part-time residence
• For a current project, I lease a small apartment in Irvine, CA.
• My travel schedule also requires me to fly Cincinnati, Ohio where stay at a friendly hotel.

Depending on the week, I may need to be in any of the above 4 cities. My physical mail, however, can arrive in either Las Vegas, Minneapolis, or Irvine but it almost always never arrive where I happen to be.

For example, I may be working in Minneapolis for 3 weeks when mail related to my Nevada business arrives at my Las Vegas home. Or, I can be working from home in Las Vegas when an invoice from my Minnesota dentist arrives at my Minneapolis condo.

Online Bill-Pay solves a number of the issues related to having multiple residences, but there are times where you need to accept physical mail. Also, changing your address and communicating the update with all of your vendors on a weekly basis is problematic. It also causes stress, if you can image.

The Solution

Then, a posting on the member’s forum at Sovereign Man Confidential caught my eye. A member, looking for a registered agent to accept company mail, was directed to a few websites that offered that service. One service in particular stood out and that was Earth Class Mail.

The prices at Earth Class Mail were reasonable when compared to the brick and mortar stores like The UPS Store or Mail Boxes Etc.. They also offered to forward your mail to a designated address, so nothing new there. Then, there was the email alerts on new mail and a web interface that displays scanned images of the front and back of each piece of mail. Bingo!

At this point, I should mention that Earth Class Mail has a ‘Test Drive’ feature where you can access a sample inbox. From there, you can open and scan the contents, discard the mail piece, or schedule it to be batched and delivered. All good stuff.

So I took the plunge and opened an account and picked an address that sounded nice. In doing so, I had to submit a photo I.D. and a utility bill as required by U.S. Postal Service Form 1583 to authorize Earth Class Mail to accept your packages on your behalf.

I was quickly contacted via email by Laura that I didn’t include a photo I.D. for my wife, who was also authorized to receive mail at that address. I scanned her photo I.D. and sent in another utility bill for good measure. Laura quickly replied that my account was completely authorized. This happened in the span of 1 day. Talk about quick customer service.

I should also note that I purchased a premium street address to ensure the fast delivery. Most merchants and financial institutions will only deliver to a street address, so that factored into my decision.

To test the service, I mail 2 pages from Alice in Wonderland to the new address. I mailed it on Saturday and on Monday, I received a scanned imaged of the front and the back of my letter. So far, so good. Here’s the scanned image:

The next week, I received my new bank cards and business correspondence in my Earth Class Mail inbox. No more flying to Minneapolis or Las Vegas to pick up mail for me!

So far, the service is working out nicely. I receive a few pieces of mail a week and I get an email alert with the scanned images. I plan on issuing a bulk shipment (to save on shipping costs) when I return to Irvine, CA next week. I can’t remember being this excited over mail, but I have to admit that this service is slick.

P.S. If you’re interested in signing up for this service, then consider using this referral link. I copied it from my email, so leave me a comment if it doesn’t work. You get a free month when you sign up and I get $15. Win-Win!

Update on 3/18/2011: On the same day that I had mailed this letter to Earth Class Mail, I had also mailed a second letter to my international address in Singapore (via http://www.pomaildrop.com/, which was also recommended by a member of Sovereign Man Confidential).

Approximately two weeks later, I received an email from their company that I had a mail piece with the sender’s name. That’s about it. No slick web interface with this service. I asked them to scan the first 2 pages (for free) and I received an email later that after with a PDF attachment. Here’s the Scanned_Letter_from_POMailDrop.com if you’re interested in the quality.

FYI, they charge $28 USD a year for their low volume service with a $2 USD handling fee per mail. Scanning the first 2 pages is included in the handling fee,  so it’s hard to complain.

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Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

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This capture was taken earlier this week with my iPhone4. Enjoy!

Original on Flickr

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

Someday I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can’t I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can’t I?

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I’ve been using Yahoo Mail since 1996 and I signed up for the premium service known as Yahoo Mail Plus in 2004.  The feature that won me over was their disposable email addresses that allows you to organize incoming email and fight spam.

Having a set of disposable email addresses in my pocket was like wearing an invisibility cloak online and the geek in me fell love!

7 years and 25,000 emails later, I quit.

Over the years, Yahoo introduced a few nuisances that annoyed me to no end. Here’s a short list of the pain-points:

• All-new mail, without all of the old functionality (such as adding disposable addresses)
• Yahoo Mail Classic, whose interface kept changing.
• Disposable addresses had to be setup before hand (not on-the-fly)

When Yahoo announced the all-new mail, I quickly jumped at the chance to check out the new features.  However, I was quickly disappointed to find that certain key features (such as disposable addresses) required that I switch back into Yahoo Mail Classic and traverse a series of pages. It was annoying enough to keep me away from the all-new version for several years.

Recently, Yahoo announced that Yahoo Mail Classic will be phased out at the end of 2011.  (Ruh-Roh)  Time to get reacquainted with the all-new version and see if the key features work.  (Note: I’ve confirmed that Disposable Email Addresses are now supported in the new version. Good times!)

So what is this key, broken  feature that finally pushed me over the edge and having me scrambling to find an alternative email provider? In one word: search.

Filing for my 2010 taxes, I need to quickly pull some receipts from Amazon. I regularly order from Amazon for both personal and business purposes, so placing a global filter was not an option (otherwise, the emails would have flowed nicely into my Business Expense folders).

Using the search feature for the keyword “amazon” returned zero (nada, zilch, etc.) results for 2010. All manners of spelling, including the custom email address for orders from Amazon resulted in an equally unnerving conclusion. Yahoo cannot find my mail.

I have placed at least 10 orders with Amazon from the past year and this was a big, red flag. Turns out, I wasn’t alone as Larry Dignan from ZDNet can attest in his August 2010 article “The Yahoo Mail search bug: One year later“.

Leaving Yahoo Mail Plus is a bittersweet experience as I recently started using the service on my iPad and I love the new interface. The UI and their new email notification icons were a welcomed sight. The idea of manually looking through 25,000 emails for one receipt, not so much.

At this point, I am moving emails  from my folders into the main inbox (since mail in other folders do not get POP’ed) and downloading it into my laptop with Thunderbird. I can only move 200 emails at a time, so that definitely adds to the fun.

Seeking an alternative, I’ve signed up for an account with neomailbox.net, as they have had positive reviews from privacy-concerned individuals. The servers are Swiss hosted, so that adds a judicial layer of protection in the event that is ever needed. They also have on-the-fly disposable emails, custom domain email hosting,  and hopefully and functioning search feature.  I’m eager to test it out once I migrate my existing email accounts.

Speaking of which, I have close to 500 disposable email addresses with Yahoo Mail Plus and about 3-weeks to migrate my accounts. Aren’t I a lucky son-of-a-gun?

Update 8/22/11: Most of my mail is now handled by http://www.fastmail.fm/?STKI=5811993 . I absolutely love this service, so expect a review soon!

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We had an hour to spare, so we decided to pay our first visit to the Griffith Observatory (after having seen it on Flickr under Most Interesting in Los Angeles).

It was too hazy and cloudy to capture a decent sunset, so we waited a little longer for the sky to darken and the city to light up.

Above is the one dome of the Griffith Observatory overlooking downtown L.A.

More Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffith_Observatory

General Info: http://www.griffithobservatory.org/general.html

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“I need a report that shows my on-hand stock quantity.”
“I need to see all returns for a given batch at a specific plant.”

The known requirements are easy enough as they allow a developer to locate the source table and fields and extrapolate the required development needed to build custom data models and reports.

Unclear or unidentified requirements are another beast altogether. Fuzzy requirements and undefined expectations will double (if not triple) your timeline.

“Properly defining business requirements is among the most important contributors to successful IT programs and projects“, Michael Krigsman of IT Project Failures

Related posts:

1. How To Group Records in a Data Package (DTP) in SAP Netweaver BW (BI)
2. Success! SAP Netweaver BI Administration Cockpit
3. “My setup job isn’t doing anything.”

“It’s your birthday, so what do you want to do?”

Honestly, I’ve wanted to capture a sunset since starting my new job in Southern California. A friend suggested Huntington Beach since it’s close to our apartment.

This is my first visit and capture at Huntington Beach. Hopefully, there will be more chances to visit the beach this summer.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Beach,_California

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellohau/5341844844/

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