About a month ago I decided it was time to retire my old Gmail account. The one I obtained during the invite only phase of Gmail Beta. Back then, I felt that jmetts would be a perfect email address to have, and I was able to get it before any other J Metts could claim it. Over the past year or two, a problem has developed. Gmail has become a default for most people to use, say, and write down when it comes to email addresses. Sadly, this means that many people don’t know the actual email addresses of their friends, significant others, and sometimes their own. Because of this, I started receiving emails for Jeremy, Janice, Julie, and every other J Metts in existence. So, long story short, it had to go.

A few years back, I picked up the domain metts.me while it was available, but have never really used it. I signed the domain up for Google Apps for Your Domain at the time when it was free for personal use, and it was still attached to Google Apps going unused. Perfect opportunity to change up my email to a nice personal email address, while still maintaining access to Google Apps such as Google Drive, Google Chat, etc. It was during this process I discovered how big of a pain it is to change and email address after 10 years of using the same one. Here is what I learned.

• You may think you are signed up for a lot of sites and email lists, but you are truly underestimating the actual number. A month into the change and I am still discovering ones that still need to be changed.
• Sending out a blast email to all of the people you care to have the updated email address doesn’t mean they will actually start using it. This will be a lengthy process of having my old account forward to the new, but only respond with the new until it catches on.
• The Google services you use are NOT easily transferred to a new account, and some can’t be at all.

To name a few.

• Google Drive, not too hard. Set up new desktop client, copy all old items into new folder.
• Gmail, not too hard. Set up new account to check old account as a POP account to transfer everything over.
• YouTube, a real pain! The only way this can be done is to associate the account to a Google+ Page, add your new account as a manager, wait 2 weeks, then transfer ownership of the page to the new account (still waiting the 2 weeks).
• Google+ has a transfer process, but it failed for me and shut me out of Google+ and Google Contacts for over a week.
• Google Wallet, forget about it!

It has been a process for sure, but it also made me think about giving my website another go. I’ll outline a few of the items in later posts, but for a quick look, I have divided the site into 3 primary sections.

• metts.words - The section you’re in right now, a place for my words
• metts.photos - My own personal photo curating site
• metts.videos - My Vimeo videos will post here, in a blog format

Original Article

now i know why i don’t like these people. they’re too liberal, the kind of liberal that only comes from growing up too conservative. they’re raging atheists, the kind that stems from being beaten & harassed in the name of the lord. & now i see why these people remind evan of me - they are small-town people trying to live a big-city life.

I love this! This one paragraph describes my feelings for so many situations I find myself in, here in DC.

Original Article

After the iPad was announced, I got two types of emails from readers. The first group saying they were disappointed, because they had been hoping I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing.

The second group wrote to tell me how excited they were because I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing.

Count me in with the second group. Apple hasn’t thought of everything with iPad, but what they’ve thought about, they’ve thought about very deeply. I got mine Saturday morning, and I’ve been using it since — or at least as often as I could get it away from my son. Here are my thoughts.

Easily, the best iPad review I have come across. Although Gruber is a big backer on all things Apple, this is an honest look at many of the pros and cons, including issues with iWork and the limitations of having just 256MB RAM.

Video Link

A web series about dressing like a grownup

Don’t think this is about dressing like a fifty plus year old in a three piece suit, it’s not.

Original Article

You’re welcome.

Almost a month old article, but now that I have been using Facebook Lite for the past month, I can say that I never plan on switching back to the cluttered mess that is the current state of Facebook.

Original Article

I usually get to work between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Of the 16 people at the company, eight of us live here in Chicago. Employees come to the office if and when they feel like it, or else they work from home. I don’t believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work — I just know they get the work done.

Jason Fried is one of the founders of 37signals, a business I would easily label as a minimalist company. The ideas and way of business that would make anyone over the age of fifty cringe, but anyone under the age of forty strive to be a part of. Those forty to fifty typically side either with the belief alongside the fifty plus mentality or lack clear direction on the subject for various reasons.

The 40 hour workweek is a dated method that no longer applies to today’s ability to do business, but one in which most of us are still forced to follow. Looking at the absolute least amount of time most eight hour a day workers would have centered around a work schedule.

• 6:30 - Alarm sounds
• 7:00 - Out of bed
• 7:30 - Leave for work
• 8:00 - Arrive at work
• 5:00 - Leave for home
• 5:30 - Arrive at home
• 6:30 - Clothes changed, relaxed

In this scenario, allow one hour for lunch. Adding up the number of hours shows that the day consists of twelve hours dedicated or revolved around work, not eight. If the minimum of five to six hours meant for sleep actually happens, then only six to seven hours can be considered personal time.

Unfortunately, this is the bare minimum schedule for a typical eight hour day. It is more common for people to spend more time getting ready in the morning, more time in their commute and easily over eight hours dedicated to work itself dwindling personal time down to a measly three to five hours.

Factoring in two weekend days that are completely personal time, the personal time throughout the week, and taking out time spent around work and sleep, only forty percent of the average person’s life in a bare minimum work week truly belongs to them.

Although many start ups are taking similar paths as 37signals, it is time for bigger, existing companies to adopt the same.

As I sit here listening to Sunlounger’s “Sunny Tales”, I can’t help but think how music takes me back to memories or events in my life. Being one of the more recent ones, whenever I hear Sunlounger, my thoughts automatically go back to last year, sitting on the Metro and heading into DC almost on a weekly basis to catch shows at Ibiza for Armin, Guetta, Kaskade, and many others. I would just chill to the music for the 30 minutes I was on the Metro.

But Sunlounger is simply one of the more recent music memories. My life seems to be defined by the music I listen to and what stage of my life I am in at the time. Finley Quaye’s “Dice” reminds me of nights back at home, Fragma’s “Toca’s Miracle” takes me back to 2002 and when I first started working at Saks, whereas Eve 6’s “Inside Out” takes me to when I worked a part time job at a furniture store in 1998.

I was reminded again last week how music can bring up memories you thought were lost when I heard Dr Alban’s “It’s My Life” on the radio, and upon getting home and grabbing a couple Dr Alban songs, hearing a 3 second clip from a Scatman John song. These took me back to when I lived in the 1990’s techno heavy Dominican Republic.

I have found that I can place the years, and even months, of events in my life based off the music of the time, whether it is an artist, a single song, or an entire genre.

Nada Surf, Butthole Surfers, Silverchair, and Superdrag take me to one period. Bone Thugs-in-Harmony, Domino, Dr Dre, and Snoop take me to another; while Metallica, Guns-n-Roses, and Pearl Jam take me to a whole other time and place.

Although work or school may be the places where memory retention is most important, most of that knowledge is easily forgotten, but it is always amazing to see how a song that you may have not heard in 10+ years brings back instant memories of the past (both good and bad).