I'm drowning in Google Accounts!

Ok, Google is now an integral part of my life! cool.

And am drowning in Google accounts. Let me start my long sad story.

Way back in 2000, or maybe December of 1999, when people were so excited about the coming of the new millenium and when I first used the net at a cyber-cafe running on dial-up and charging Rs. 45 per hour or half-hour, I created my Rediff e-mail id, my first email id: arn_2000 AT rediffmail DOT com.

That stayed as my primary email id for a long time to come, and I used it for my first Google Account.

Much later when I started orkutting, I used my rediff account to sign up for that. I had by then created a Gmail account, arnold.backup AT gmail DOT com, which was meant for, as the name indicates, backup.

Now then Rediff started taking action to improve its web-clients interface, and although it was all for the good, there were months of total irritation, while the interface was still in developments.

Then I decided to switch to gmail: arnstein87 AT gmail DOT com.

Whats the big deal you ask?
Well I orkut, and I use gmail. orkut uses my rediff ID, and gmail uses - well - my gmail id. And as any orkut user, who uses gmail, knows this causes a whole lot of cookie mashups. In effect I can't do the "Rememeber me" thing on both. So my login procedure involves the following:

• open www.gmail.com: it logs me in directly.
• open www.orkut.com: It asks me for arnstein87@gmail's password. I click "Sign in as other user".
• I login with my rediff ID.
• I go to my gmail tab and then click inbox, it logs me out
• Now I login again with my gmail ID

For some reason, the logins now stay. I've been doing this for the past many months, especially since I got my laptop, it usually does not matter, I keep myself always logged in (ahh! how I love suspend to memory!). But recently, I've had lots of crashes (mostly due to Beryl) and I've got to login too often.

Now with my starting blogging, I like to keep myself logged into blogger (Another Google service!) too - and I use my arnstein87 account. Guess what that means? I still haven't figured out the right permutation of logging ins to gmail, orkut and blogger that keep me logged on in all.

Interestingly there don't seem to be any Firefox extention meant for this. There's cookie-swap, but I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted :(

Sometime back, orkut had asked me whether I'd like to associate my account with a Gtalk account. Happily I said YEA!!! and the blood sucking thing said I have to create a new google account. Ha! Welcome arnold.noronha AT gmail DOT com.

My Gaim's overflowing now: I've got my jabber account, one MSN, two yahoo accounts, this new orkut account. I avoid logging on my gmail account - yeah I use the GMail interface for chatting on that.