Matt Langford

Email Changes

Over the years, I’ve changed my email setup countless times. Off the top of my head, I’ve used everything from Gmail to ProtonMail to iCloud Mail to Fastmail (and more). Every time, I’ve taken the steps to transfer email between old and new services. For the last few years, I’ve been using iCloud Mail with custom domains. For the most part, I was content with the setup.

However, as things in my life have changed over the last couple of years, I need more integrations/automations connected to my email. I recently made the decision to switch back to Gmail. I know, I know, privacy and security and all that. At the end of the day, I made the decision (after a lot of research) that the trade-offs weren’t as severe as some people claim. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But it’s acceptable in my case.

My work email is powered by Google Workspace, so it’s not like I was completely out of the ecosystem.

The transition went smoothly enough, although transferring email from iCloud into Gmail isn’t exactly seamless. Ultimately, the best way I found to do it was to fully load both accounts in the Apple Mail (Mac) app and manually drag-and-drop email between the accounts. It took forever (multiple days) thanks to rate limiting, but in the end it got done.

I wanted to clean things up a bit after the transfer, so I signed up for Sanebox. I’ve used it to clean up old email conversations. I’m still in the trial period and am debating if I’ll keep the service long term. Right now, I’m leaning to not keeping it. It’s really nice for what it does, but proper Gmail rules and determination can get you 90% of the way there for free.

One of the biggest benefits of using Gmail over iCloud Mail is being able to use Mimestream. It really is as good as people say. I can’t wait to try their iOS app whenever it’s released.

Once I had Gmail setup (including importing old email and cleaning it), I needed to setup proper forwards and send-as settings. The forwarding was easy. For sending mail as iCloud, it’s doable once you know the right settings; however, Gmail auto populates the wrong settings by default. Once I realized that, configuring everything was easy.

I disabled all the fluff: Google Meet, Chat, Priority Inbox, and Important Markers. I then created a filter that labels emails sent to the old email address. As I get them, I’m making a point of changing the email address associated with that service/account to the new Gmail account. I’m getting close to being completely done with the process.

Anniversary Date

Annivesary dates are a little different when you have young children. It was a couple days after our anniversary, but we were able to drop the kids off at their grandparents’ house for the evening and enjoy some easy time together to celebrate 12 years of marriage. And I think we realized we’re officially getting old.

Our activities of choice including Costco at our own pace, multiple thrift/antique stores, and an early dinner.

At the thrift stores, we were shopping for a summer school project. Kids will be disassembling old tech. We picked up a massive fax machine, printers, calculators, and keyboards for them to experiment with.

Next, we went to a local well-known restaurant that was recently visited by Josh and Jace. We went with the oyster sampler as well (no idea why the picture is blurry):

It was a nice, relaxing time for both of us. It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years already.

Photo of the Week

Before the food arrives.