Emptying your inbox

There was a time when I never had more than a few messages in my email inbox. Back then dealing with email was a significant part of my job, so keeping a clean inbox was important. Over the last few years my email inboxes have gotten bigger and bigger. Recently my Hotmail inbox had over 800 messages and my server email inbox had almost 700. I also have inboxes on Gmail, Facebook, and a few others, each with a couple dozen messages that were awaiting my attention. Combined, I had over fifteen hundred email messages in my inboxes.

From time to time I would attempt to clean things up. I'd start with the oldest messages, going through the inbox simply deleting those that were trash – either because they were worthless to begin with, or because they were so old that their value had expired. After an hour or two of doing this I would usually have deleted 25% to 30% of the messages. But it wasn't clear that I had really achieved anything. Sure, I had separated the wheat from the chaff, but I still needed to do something with the “wheat.”

I recently read a blurb in Maximum PC magazine suggesting a strategy for cleaning up your inbox. When I read it, I thought it sounded kind of silly; it seemed like a cheat that wouldn't achieve anything. But, I was desperate, so I thought I would enhance the idea a little bit and give it a try. It proved to be very effective; however, it really is just a way to trick oneself into getting the job done.

Without further ado, here it is:

1. Make three folders for "deferred" messages. I called them Pri0, Pri1, and Pri2 (you can use other names if you prefer.)
2. Starting either at the beginning of your inbox (the oldest message,) or the end of the inbox (the newest message,) begin reading your email. The advantage of starting with the oldest emails first (my preferred method) is that if you need to take a break, you know right where to resume and you really see the progress you are making. The advantage of starting with the newest ones is that you are taking care of the your new email as you go. The choice is up to you. For each message that you look at, do one of the following: 
1. If it's trash, either because it was garbage to begin with or because its usefulness is expired (e.g. a Nigerian prince asking you to help him get money out of the country or an invitation to a party that happened a month ago,) then just delete it. 
2. If it's something that can be filed, then file it. For example, a message with the license key for some downloaded software goes in your "licenses" folder; an email from your mom telling you how wonderful and handsome you are gets moved to your "ego" folder (feel free to read it two or three times before filing it away.) 
3. If it's something that can be dealt with quickly, then just do it (apologies to Nike.) Then either file it or delete it as appropriate. 
4. If there's a message in your inbox that's truly urgent, then of course you must deal with it regardless of how much time it might take. For example, if it says "Watch out, Tony Soprano found out where you are and put a hit out on you," you had better deal with it right away regardless of how long it will take (and aren't you glad you're reading your email?!?!) 
5. Lastly, and this is the trick part, if it's something that you either need to handle, or simply want to read but will take some time, then you put it in one of your deferred folders based upon how important it is: Pri0 being very important, Pri1 messages are important, and Pri2 messages you don't really need to deal with but you'd like to if you have time. 
3. You may not skip a message, leaving it in the inbox. You must do one of (a) through (e) before moving to the next email.
4. Do not give in to the temptation to simply copy all of your messages from the inbox to the Pri0 folder!

It's #2e above, moving messages into “deferred” folders, that is really the “special sauce” here. In truth it is a cheat. Moving messages from your inbox to a folder named "Pri0" doesn't actually achieve anything. However, if you follow the rules it has a really important psychological impact.

If you're looking at an inbox with 800 messages and you just go through and delete the garbage, you end up with five or six hundred messages in your inbox. Looking at what you've “accomplished” is actually pretty depressing – you still have five or six hundred freaking messages that need to be handled! Furthermore, when you return to your inbox to deal with those remaining emails, there is no place in particular to start. By contrast, following the proposed strategy you work your way through your mailbox, making it smaller and smaller until finally it gets to zero. It will probably take multiple sessions, but each time you resume the work you can see the progress you made and feel good about doing more.

For me it actually took a couple of weeks. I could've gotten it done much more quickly, but I was interrupted by house guests and the other endless normal events of life. When I was done I had zero messages in my inboxes (Yay!) a total of 62 messages in the two Pri0 folders, 67 in the Pri1 folders, and 236 Pri2 messages. It is true that this is a total of 365, which isn't zero. In fact it is pretty damned far from zero. So it's a total cheat to say that I got to zero messages. However, I did manage to make it from 1500 to 365, a feat which I hadn't been able to achieve before. More importantly, when I go back to my inbox I know where to start. I now need to tackle the most important messages: those 62 unhandled emails in the Pri0 folder. They will be a lot of work, but it isn’t nearly as daunting a prospect as finding and handling the most important messages hiding in a sea of 1500 emails. Furthermore, those 236 “Pri2” messages aren’t really important – I’d just like to follow up on them. So arguably I got the important part of my inbox down to only 129, which is a number I can think about without cringing.

One caveat – if you are someone for whom “out of sight” is “out of mind,” you might need to copy the Pri0’s back into the inbox when you are done. Otherwise, you might be tempted to ignore them.

Good luck!

FoodPool

[Note: FoodPool seemed to be a great idea, developed enthusiasm and momentum, and then stalled. I incorporated FoodPool, Inc as a California corporation and IRS 501(c)(3) charity for the promotion of creating FoodPools all over America. However, we failed in our mission, and as of December 2014 ceased operations. This post remains here for historical interest.]

I've just launched my latest project - FoodPool.org.

For the last couple years I have been growing a serious food garden - I have about 800 square feet under cultivation. I often generate much more produce than I can use. Or, more accurately, the garden produces too much of a given foodstuff at one time. I harvested eighty pounds of onions the other day, and there are still more onions out in the field. With onions, I can dry them and hang them in my root cellar for many months. But still, eighty pounds of onions with more on the way is a lot of onions. The same thing happened with chard. Unlike onions, you can't keep Swiss chard indefinitely, and there is only so much chard I can eat before I get pretty darned tired of it.

I think zucchini is the quintessential over productive garden vegetable. Everyone I know who has ever grown zucchini – even if it was just one plant – tells a similar story. In summer you get that first zucchini fresh from the garden. You slice it up and put it in a green salad without cooking it because you really want to taste pure zucchini. A couple more zucchini are produced, so you chop them up and put them in a stir fry. More zucchini grows, which is great for zucchini bread, zucchini pancakes, and zucchini muffins. The next zucchini as you give to your neighbors. After that you give zucchini to your friends. Later still you give zucchini your enemies. Eventually everyone you know, or have ever met, has all the zucchini they can take. Chances are they have zucchini in their garden too. But your plant isn't done - there is more zucchini on the way.

So what do we do with all this abundance?

Thanks to Michael Pollan, Michelle Obama, Alice Waters, global warming and a poor economy, there is a renewed interest in home gardening. More and more people have gardens full of beautiful food. Often people end up with piles of unwanted zucchini, persimmons rotting on the ground, oranges, apples and lemons hanging endlessly uneated on their trees, and many other extra garden products going to waste. These excess fruits and vegetables actually become a problem, attracting fruit flies, rodents, and other pests.

I see the "problem" of excess garden produce as an opportunity! It is an opportunity to help provide those in need with fresh, ripe, homegrown produce. The only obstacle lies in linking home growers with their hungry neighbors. My answer is "FoodPooling." The goal for FoodPool is to become a "carpool for food." FoodPool.org seeks to enroll people that wish to donate their extra homegrown fruits and vegetables, and connect them with those willing to collect the food and transport it to the food bank.

Initially FoodPool is centered around the Montclair district of Oakland, California. However, I can't imagine anything more wonderful than to see the idea replicated around the country and beyond.

I would be delighted to hear your feedback and suggestions, and welcome support or assistance in any form. If nothing else, please pass this on to anyone you know that might be interested.

Postscript: FoodPool is up and running and doing great!  The original FoodPool Montclair has been delivering fresh produce to people in need for several months now, and FoodPool is expanding with its FoodPool Everywhere campaign. Please join us!

Postscript 2: FoodPool has failed to meet its objectives for encouraging and assisting in the creation of local neighborhood groups for the collection of garden produce. As a result, the board of directors made the difficult decision to suspend operations.  FoodPool as a national organization ceased operating December 2014. There is still a FoodPool operating in West Towson, Maryland.

Repairing an Antique Soda Siphon

aka, How Andrew Likes to Waste an Incredible Amount of Time.

---

DISCLAIMER: The information provided here is for entertainment purposes only.  I do not know if the materials used by Sparklets, or any other early soda siphon makers, meet current standards for safety for drinking water. Furthermore, the gasket forming materials used in this project are not labeled for use in contact with food or beverages. If you should attempt to repair your own soda siphon using the information below, whether successful or not, I guarantee that you and everyone you know will die a horrible death in screaming agony. You have been warned.

---

One of the most dangerous phrases I know is "how hard could it be?" If you ever hear me say that, run away! That was the phrase that started the endless task of repairing an antique soda siphon I bought some years ago.

I found this soda siphon sometime in the 1990's at a thrift shop in Seattle. When I bought it I knew that all the rubber parts were shot, but I assumed that they could be replaced. Way back then the Internet didn't exist - or at least it didn't provide the universal marketplace that we know and love today. When I got my new treasure home, I went to the Yellow Pages to see what I could find [Anyone remember Yellow Pages? Big, heavy, floppy books full of outdated and incomplete information about vendors in a small geographic area, organized by random categories.] I don't recall what heading I thought was appropriate for antique soda siphon repair parts. Regardless, I didn't find what I needed, so it went up on a shelf as an ornament.

Around the middle of last year I went online to see about buying replacement parts for the soda siphon, since now the Internet provided me access to the entire world's bounty. I found a handful of websites that specialize in selling replacement parts for old soda siphons. Unfortunately, none of them sold parts for Sparklets - the company that made my siphon. One went so far as to explicitly state that they didn't carry Sparklets' parts. I can only assume that this is because Sparklets is out of business, and has been so for a long time. Sigh.

Fast forward to a time earlier this year. I was experimenting with making my own custom shoe orthotics. I read about a technique for making a silicone gel that was moldable into any shape and set up in a matter of minutes. The process involved using GE Silicone I mixed with cornstarch (note, supposedly the more commonly available GE silicone II won't work, though I haven't tried it.) Something about the corn starch allowed the silicone to set up in the absence of air - making it moldable. As it turned out, the resultant material was much too stiff to make a comfortable orthotic. But still, it was an interesting substance to work with. I recalled my antique soda siphon and thought "Hmmmmmm. How hard could it be?"

I went to the hardware store to see what interesting bits and pieces might be available for this project. I decided that before trying to make something with the moldable silicon goop, I would carve some rubber corks into the right shapes - possibly augmenting it with my silicone forming material. That was a total waste of time and money. I didn't get close to producing what I needed.

On my second trip to the hardware store I concluded that I would make a plaster cast of what remained of the existing parts, then form entirely new parts from silcone. It would have been a lot easier if I had known anything about plaster casting, but not knowing anything has never stopped me before. So, I bought a box of plaster of Paris and a jar of Vaseline and headed home to figure it out.

Using the bottoms of plastic cottage cheese containers as forms, I covered the dried up old rubber gaskets with Vaseline, mixed up a small batch of plaster of Paris, and formed the molds for the pieces: first I poured a layer of plaster, into which I pressed a gasket piece to its halfway point. After the plaster had dried, I carved some depressions in the base piece to act as registration marks. [I subsequently improved on that by embedding pieces dowel into the plaster.] I covered it with Vaseline then poured a second layer of plaster to cover the original gasket. Returning the next day I was able to knock the plaster molds out of the cottage cheese containers, and then pry apart the two halves with a screwdriver. Removing the old gasket left me with a nicely formed mold. I did have to wipe off all the extra Vaseline, and there was a certain amount of carving and buffing required to smooth out irregularities in the mold, but basically it was good to go. After all, "how hard could it be?"

I made up a batch of my silicone plus cornstarch goop, re-covered the molds with Vaseline, then schmeared the silicone into the molds with tongue depressors. I pressed the mold halves together (which could only go one way thanks to my registration marks,) and let the silicone set up. Of course I was impatient, repeatedly checking the molds over and over again before they were ready. As a result, the first set of gaskets, while the right shape, were riddled with holes and air pockets because I couldn't leave them alone while they were curing. So I cleaned it all up, tried again, and left it overnight.

When I opened the molds next day the parts looked great - though with lots of extra flanges that I had to cut off within X-Acto knife.

I put the soda syphon back together with my new gaskets, filled it with water, charged it with a soda charger, and tried it out. It worked! Except for two problems: first, water was leaking out of the handle. It turns out that I had missed one rubber part. Second, the silicone plus cornstarch gel made gaskets that were just too soft. The gasket that goes around the head of the soda charger deformed and blew out of its seating during the charging. The gasket that sat at the top of the bottle, though it held for that first use, had basically been cut in half when the top was screwed on. Still, it was exciting to see that the concept worked.

To fix the first problem I had to figure out how to disassemble the bottle top mechanism, which looked simple enough, but was thoroughly frozen together by years of assembly. Eventually, with cleansers, oil, and elbow grease I got the thing apart and found the decayed part. This one was a bit tricky, because it consisted of a metal plunger around which a rubber gasket was formed. Thus, I would need to make a mold that would hold the plunger and form a gasket around it. Tricky, but not impossible. The next day I had my new form ready.

Back to the hardware store I went to solve the problem of the soft gaskets. This time I decided to go with gasket forming compound. I bought a tube of Permatex “Blue” RTV silicone gasket maker. I cleaned up my molds, schmeared them with Vaseline, fill them with gasket material, pressed them tight, and left them for the night. The next morning I pried the molds apart only to find that the gasket forming material had not dried at all. I had been under the impression that RTV silicone sets up without air. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work when making an automotive gasket (the real use for this product.) Supposedly you can put it between two engine parts, clamp it down, and a gasket will form. However, I really don't follow why RTV silicone would solidify in such an environment but not get solid inside the tube. The whole point of adding cornstarch to the GE silicone had been to overcome the problem of making silicon cure without air. In any case, the RTV silicone was supposed to set up when clamped between metal parts - perhaps something about my plaster molds or the presence of Vaseline inhibited it curing. In any case, I cleaned the still-liquid gasket forming material out of the molds, schmeared them with fresh Vaseline, then filled them with gasket forming material to which I added cornstarch.

The next day I open the molds again. Voilà! Beautiful bright blue gaskets that were much firmer than the prior GE silicone-based ones. I cut away the excess with my X-Acto knife, installed them in the soda siphon, and had a go. It worked almost perfectly, but again the damned charger gasket blew out during the charging. And, when I later took the top off, I discovered that the top gasket was partially cut - the blue Permatex wasn't strong enough. Fortunately, the lever no longer leaked.

Once again I went to the hardware store. This time I purchased Permatex “Ultra Grey Rigid High-Torque” RTV silicone gasket material. I cleaned up my molds, made a batch of gray silicone with cornstarch, filled the molds, pressed them shut, and waited overnight. The next day I discovered that for some reason the largest gasket hadn't set up. Evidently there's something about the gray high torque silicone gasket material that required either more time, or more cornstarch to make it cure. I'm sure you know what I did next. I cleaned the mold, made a batch of gasket forming material with extra cornstarch, filled the mold, pressed it shut, and waited overnight.

The next day I had a full set of beautiful gray gaskets. No doubt you will be pleased to know that they worked perfectly, and have continued to do so, charge after charge, for the last couple months.

So now I have a working antique soda siphon. Cool. That wasn't so hard, was it?

To see more, check out my update to this blog post: Repairing an Antique Soda Siphon – Redux.