The froshpeople seem to have gotten the hang of things already, but you old fogies who still use CubMail directly are in for a rude awakening. Over the last few weeks, CUIT has been shuffling your shit in preparation for the move to Columbia’s new Google-powered platform, LionMail, on July 31st. That’s tomorrow. To avoid adding one more headache to your weekday hangover, here’s what you need to know come morning:

• As many of you who have already evolved beyond the troglodytic CubMail likely already noticed, Gmail users can no longer use their UNI as an alternate e-mail address.
• In a similar vein, those of you sneaky enough to have created a UNI@columbia.edu personal Google account will have encountered the conflicting account alert some time in the last few weeks.
• Any e-mails larger than 25MB were not transferred to LionMail. To move any such monolithic messages to LionMail, sort your CubMail inbox by message size and forward them to yourself tomorrow!
• If you want to set up LionMail access on your mobile device or an external client, you’ll need a special device password (distinct from your UNI password). CUIT has prepared step-by-step instructions for configuring most popular mobile and e-mail client platforms.
• Though LionMail will give you access to a university wide directory of UNIs, CubMail address book entries with multiple contacts will not be copied to your LionMail address book. To re-create them, copy the e-mail addresses into a text file and then paste them into a new contact group in LionMail.
• LionMail comes with the incredibly powerful Google Calendar; check out CUIT’s introduction to the system, including how to import your New CourseWorks schedule (!!!)
• Obviously undergraduates without prior access won’t be able to log-in until tomorrow, but the link for your bookmarks is the ever-straightforward lionmail.columbia.edu and sign-in is with your UNI and UNI password. If you really want the user manual for first-time login, check out CUIT’s guide.

Anonymous email sent in last night which recounts a critical moment in the Columbian life-cycle:

At approximately 5pm EST, a shot was fired.

“Housing?!” posted one eager student in the Columbia – Class of 2016 Facebook grouper, sending over 1,000 students into a rush to get to LionMail first. No doubt, this would create traffic; a traffic that caused the servers to crash. Those who made it through the cracks of the virtual wreck posted statuses in the good – giving rise to jealousy from other students.

Overenthusiastic freshmen began chanting the legendary “Carman Forever” song.

Others, confused and clearly oblivious to the power of synced Lionmail, posted statuses wondering how they, too, check their housing assignment.

For a moment or few, it was quiet. Peaceful, almost. First-years were delightful exchanging building names and room numbers in one (long) polite post. Surely, friend requests were being sent and approved. For seven minutes, all was quiet on the home front. It was cute.

Until the Housing Portal magically opened up. Then, it was a bloody clusterfuck.

Students pledged their pride to certain buildings – posting room assignments not once, not twice, but up to three times up and down the Facebook page in different posts.

If that wasn’t enough, they started forming groups within the Facebook school group.

At least 13 were made in allegiance to a particular floor or suite, including one designed for potential freshpeople who are already dissatisfied and want their housing payments refunded.

And, in some quintessential-Columbian way, documents were being posted for better organization. Five listings popped up within the last hour of the Housing Craze of Freshpeople 2012, each one dedicated to a respective building and every one classifying the names of residents by floor and room.

About four hours after the initial shock, the flames died down and students crawled to the listings and groups for comfort. Others who missed everything excitedly posted statuses, obviously overlooking the damage before them.

In all, does it really matter where you end up? Don’t you learn to love all of your floor/suite/room-mates anyway?

Haha, yeah right.

And then there was this…