• In the left column, Click “More” at the bottom.
• Click on “All Mail”.
• Find the message, open it
• Click the “label” icon at the bottom and choose the “Inbox” checkbox to move the message back to the main inbox.
• If you remember something specific about the message, you can search for the message and Gmail will look in archived messages as well.  Once you find the message, follow the same steps to restore the archived email to the inbox.
• If you are on Android, you access the “All Mail” by first clicking “Show all labels”.

An archived email is simply an email with the inbox label removed. You can retrieve the email, back to inbox, by giving it the inbox label again. The same thing can happen to messages that were previously labeled something else.  Repeat the same steps, but choose the correct label to move it back.

Visit http://pixelfundi.com/remove-line-breaks/ to remove line breaks.

• I worked 232 unpaid hours on TreasureEase.
• I still made a reasonable average wage, despite the unpaid hours, but we still had to pull $10,700 from savings.
• The $10k deficit was not only the result of working on TreasureEase,  I had some client work that didn’t pay as is should have, as well as the many unpaid hours spent running the business. The bottom line is that we will not be able to pull that from savings again this year so I will be watching my hours and income very carefully.
• TreasureEase is still pre-revenue because we keep extending the date when users will owe us, but it will make money this year, in some capacity, beginning this spring.
• God provides. We had enough and work always fell into place at all the right times and I will continue to trust his provision.
• I’ve been happier and less stressed working for myself.

The marketing team did a good job pounding the pavement for customer data, while the rest of us split our time working on the app and backend.  Technical issues, early on, meant we didn’t achieve a complete working demo.  We then teamed up to hash out the presentation and pitch deck. We had a good concept, we just didn’t deliver.  We ended up in fourth, tied with the rest of the teams that didn’t  place in the top three.

The Startup Weekend Advice
I would encourage anyone interested in working for or starting a startup to participate in a Startup Weekend.  It is a valuable learning experience because:

• You can use it as an excuse to try new things or technologies.
• You will probably work with a fantastic team and it is always great way to meet talented and like-minded individuals who will inspire and encourage you.
• There is a real energy and excitement as ideas start forming and progress is being made.  The bustle of rushing to finish the feature lock and pitch deck is also a good simulator for the everyday grind of startup life, putting out fires and figuring out where the next dollar will come from.
• Learning how to handle and respond to failure or adversity is also important for startup founders and a fourth place at a Startup Weekend is a good way to figure out how you will cope with failure and how well you can bounce back.
• Don’t join a large team at one of these events, being agile is important.
• The success of a startup, I feel, is also equal parts product and team.  If you are not compatible with the team or even a part of the team, it may prohibit progress and will certainly affect your enjoyment. Spending 54 hours, working hard as a team, should be enough to iron out any doubts with your team.

For me, Startup Weekend Lancaster was another good motivator to buckle down and focus on TreasureEase so I wont be joining the rest of the team if they pursue their idea further.

I launched TreasureEase and committed a full month to TreasureEase in the last 9 months.  In the remaining 8 months, I launched 3 large client websites and several smaller sites. I was also pleased to learn I took 14 days off as well, totaling 8 full days, 4 half days and a couple hours here and there.  The rest of the time was split between office work, volunteer work and side projects.

The overall breakdown was roughly 57% paid work, 13% unpaid startup work, 7% unpaid vacation and 23% unpaid office work. Client work based bootstrapping isn’t easy. We did have to dip into savings a lot in the past 9 months, but if I’d worked paid jobs for that 13%, we would have done okay.  Bootstrapping is also slow, since we could not have afforded a more aggressive unpaid pace. My office work productivity has improved significantly, but I would still like to see that percent improve, though a portion of that time was spent on side projects I expect to perform this year.

The New Year
I’m excited to see what 2013 holds.  The big expectation rests on TreasureEase.  It will be the first time we’ve been launched at the start of a sports season and I’m excited to see how it does, especially if it begins making some money.  I also partnered with a previous employer to become a reseller of their product.  I am almost done building my own eCommerce site that I expect to generate some income as well.  Blog traffic is also increasing so I hope for some ad revenue too. God has definitely provided for us in 2012 and I trust His provision for 2013.

This brief jQuery script will find the height of the #main div and set the height of #sidebar unless the main div is shorter than the sidebar.

jQuery(window).resize(function(){
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if(height >899){
jQuery(‘#sidebar’).height(height);
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jQuery(document).ready(function(){
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});

To find archived Gmail messages on Android do the following:

• Click the “Inbox” menu (or whatever folder you are in from the menu at the top, marked with the arrow).
• Choose “Show all labels”.
• Click on “All Mail”.
• Find the message, open it
• Click the “label” icon at the bottom and choose the “Inbox” checkbox to move the message back to the main inbox.
• If you remember something specific about the message, you can search for the message and Gmail will look in archived messages as well.  Once you find the message, follow the same steps to restore the archived email to the inbox.

It was a moment of panic when I realized that I’d archived the message, but I was able to find the message using these steps, following the sames steps used to recover archived mail from the Gmail website.

Make sure you’re icons snap to the grid and and you might need to make your own depending on screen resolution. I also put this image in the backgrounds folder and rotate the backgrounds as a little motivation during the day.

That said, I am getting back in the snow guard industry for myself.  I am still at a place where I need to balance my cash generating work with the non-paying startup work and rather than try something new, I decided to choose to focus on an industry I know well. I’ve partnered with them as a reseller because I had some ideas for a site that I never had a chance to try.  Some of the ideas I also never felt I could try with any of their business critical sites in case they didn’t work or even back fired.

I was able to buy www.roof-snow-guards.com, a nice key word heavy domain, and have started with a simple site to start building some search engine rank while I finish the short to do list on TreasureEase.  Once the short list is complete, I plan to hammer out my ideas for the shopping cart and to work order management into my ongoing business management hours. I expect this site may be a good way to create some recurring income to help subsidize cash flow while I work on the startup.  If the site ends up doing well, I may even be able to sell it back to them as a sort of “try before you buy” endeavor.  Wish me luck.