However, your username can also work against you. Include a little too much information and there’s a good chance that you’ll have a real hard time getting dates  I’ve posted a list of some usernames below that I believe will, um, hinder you from successfully finding a mate online (but what do I know, I’m still single).

Usernames guaranteed to keep you from meeting someone on internet dating sites (part 1):

For the guys

BigKnockerLuvr

DoinUrMom

14InchesofPain (that one might work, there’s some weird people out there)

ToeJam

Anything with 696969 following it

UMustBTite

NextStopBald

Last1sDead

ImBrokeRU

LivinWithMom

TaxCheat

ImOnParole

WhatJob

For the girls

BigSweetEater

NitPicker

TheNagger

PtheBed

TheAmazon

NeedaHorse

4thTimesACharm

ExactlyLikeMyMother

SocialLifeKiller

TheyllHateMe

NoUrWrong

OnceADude

PleasePleasePleaseDateMe

Now, that’s a perfectly plausible story. Kids jump off things.  Hell, some even launch themselves in balloons, sort of. I truly hope that this kid is OK and he didn’t damage his noodle too badly… that is, if it really happened.

And that’s the problem with a last minute cancellation of a first date, it’s never believed.  No matter what the situation, no matter how dire, if you call to cancel a first date within 2 hours of the date beginning, you’re a liar. Sad, but true.

So, that being said, I find myself at home which, as a Dodger fan, is a good deal.  I’ve got a cold beer, a big TV, the Dodgers and the Phillies, and I don’t have to make small talk with a fibber.

What’s interesting is that I never used to be that way. I used to enjoy being alone and enjoy being on my own. That’s not to say that I don’t now, but I’ve seen a side of life that I wasn’t too familiar with before and I liked it. Now I find myself missing it.

I’ve also noticed that I’ve become more discerning in dating than I was prior to my relationship. Before, I would go out on numerous dates a week, meeting and enjoying people even if I knew they weren’t a good match for me. Now, I found that I’ve become very choosy and are dismissing people left and right. I don’t know if this is because I’m looking at other people in a more long-term sense then I have in the past or if the characteristics of what I’m seeking in another person has changed over the course of the last year, but I’m definitely scrutinizing the women I meet much more then before.

So, I’ve come out on the other side of this relationship having seemingly ‘grown’, but I don’t know if it’s for the better. I’ve always been a big believer in that there are no bad things in life, just experiences. Some experiences are more pleasurable than others, but you walk away from each one learning something. I’ve learned something about myself and others in the last year, I just don’t know if this will end up being in the pleasurable experience column or not.

Then, you get kicked in the nuts.

There you are, having the best day you’ve had in weeks, when all of a sudden you come around the corner and run smack dab into your ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.  Boy, that’s fun, let me tell you.  The whole day of good shoved into the garbage disposal which is then run with no water.

This sucks.

I have an Apple TV which I use to display slide shows on the big screen in my living room of the photos kept on my Mac.  What I have found is that while this is an extremely useful feature, it can cause some concern when you have a date over and photos of you and your ex are dancing about on the screen.

Of course, the first instinct is to just exclude the photos sets that contain pictures of my ex.  However, that destroys most of the photos that have been taken over the last year.  Using such blunt tactics would literally leave a ‘photo hole’ in my life for nearly a twelve-month period.  I knew there had to be a better way and, after a little tinkering, I found it.

The latest release of iPhoto comes with a feature called ‘Faces‘.  This feature culls through your photo collection, or any new photos you upload, and does its best to recognize and tag the people in the picture.  It works fairly well (after some training), but I won’t get into a review here.   The feature is intended to allow the user to be able to quickly pull up all pictures in your collection that contain specific, or groups of, people.  So, for example, you can create a ‘Smart Album’ of only photos that contain your mom and dad.  iPhoto will look through your collection and pull out any photos that contain a person tagged as your dad and one tagged as your mom.  If it’s just of your mom (0r dad) it won’t show.

Getting back on point, I wondered why I couldn’t do this in reverse.  I wanted to set up an album that contained only photos that didn’t have my ex in them, but still left in pictures of the events and places that we were at.  So, I went into the parameter settings of creating a Smart Album and, lo and behold, there was a setting for ‘Face’ and ‘Is Not’.  I typed in my ex-girlfriend’s name and BAM!  Back were all the weddings we went to, without a shot of her in sight.  Back were the birthday parties we attended, minus the shots of me and her standing next to each other.  Even showing up were the pictures of when she moved into her house, only showing me carrying some boxes!

With this feature, I was able to ’surgically remove’ her from the pictures in my past without losing the memories of being there.  Sure, I’ll remember that she was a part of it, but at least I don’t have to explain to the new girl sitting on the couch next to me who that is that I’m kissing on the beach.

I went out on a date last night.  I had a fantastic time.  The date lasted from 7:30pm until 2am.  On top of that, the girl lives two-hours north and we met in the middle, West Palm Beach, so it was an hour drive for me.  I normally don’t date girls outside of my local area, but I had a feeling about this one.  That feeling was right.

Today, we spent the day text messaging back and forth, even setting up plans for next weekend.  There was a lull in the messaging during the afternoon and around 7:30p, I received a text from her telling me that she just sent me an email on MySpace.  I thought that was a little weird and kind of felt like she was going to tell me that she wasn’t that interested.  So, I got home and fired up my Mac.  Here’s what the email said:

“I know I mentioned my psycho roomate and my black lab but I failed to tell you about my two tropical fish and my son. I thought you knew but you never asked last night so I am guessing that this is news to you. I don’t hide things about myself so I wanted to be up front.”

She wants to be upfront?  Really?  I had always thought that upfront means that you tell people something at the beginning, not after the fact.  Not only that, but I had ASKED her if she had kids in some earlier emails (that I’ve subsequently copied and pasted back to her in my reply) and she joked that she had multiple kids from multiple dads (she’s quite the jokester, hence why I liked her).  However, she never mentioned that she had a son. Not once.

I’m seething right now.  Understand, this is not a judgment on her having a child.  This is a judgment on her not telling me about it until AFTER we went out.  I liked her, I really did.  But, she lied to me.  What else is she hiding? 

The old saying of ‘lucky in life, unlucky in love’ was invented for me.  I love the life I lead, every part of it. I just can’t find anyone to share it with.  And, as it turns out, when I do, they take a dump on my face.

To start, and we’ve all seen the commercials, you need to fill out this exacting questionnaire that takes nearly an hour.  Now, I don’t want to sell this thing short, it does a pretty good job of fleshing out your true personality, but it’s a huge pain in the ass.  Not only is it long, but it’s one of those psycho-babble tests that ask you the same question four times, but phrased differently, to see how you answer.  Plus, everything is that ‘agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree’ -type of question.  However, after getting into the actual system, that part now seems to be the most enjoyable.

Once you’re in, eHarmony sends you your matches.  Supposedly, these are put together by their algorithm and are your ’soul mates’. You have a choice to either start communicating with these ‘matches’ or close them out.  When closing, you’re given a list of reasons to choose from of why you’re doing so.  Most women choose ‘other’ (I would assume that most men do as well).  I however, try and actually choose a reason thinking, just maybe, that the system will use my choice as a way to tweak their algorithm to present me with better matches in the future. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the case.  I’ve chosen ‘no photo in profile’ about 20 times, yet it still presents me with matches who don’t show a picture.  As an aside, I think that they should change the reason from ‘no photo in profile’ to ‘what have you got to hide?’ or ’seriously, how ugly are you?’

This brings me to another point:  who in their right mind is choosing to date someone without a seeing a picture?  I mean, do blind dates really a) happen and b) work?  I understand that looks aren’t everything, but seriously, take a picture and put it up. However, don’t, under any circumstance, put up a picture of yourself with a better looking friend.  That’s an instant buzz kill.  I can’t speak for other guys, but if I see two girls in a picture, I want to date the better-looking one.  

So, once you start communicating, you’re taken through a series of ‘guided communications’.  Like the first step, you’re presented with a list of questions to ’send’ the person and they can either choose a pre-canned answer or write one in.  Obviously, everyone is on their toes (or at least should be), wondering what the questions they send and the answers to those questions say about them (is it better to go bowling, shopping, to a club, or to the opera? Personally, I like to bowl AT the opera).  Anyway, this process goes on and on with ever-increasing freedoms on the communications.  Eventually it leads to what they call ‘open communications’, which is their fancy way to justify charging you $60 a month to send someone an email.

What I do want to point out and, in truth, was the onus behind this post, is a process they call ‘Must Haves / Can’t Stands’.  They give you a list of about 60 items and you have to pick 10 that are deal-breakers, either for or against.  These range from how someone acts around people, to how tight they are with their money, to how important attractiveness is.  So, being the guy that I am, a few of my must haves were about sexual freedoms and attractiveness.  The key to this whole thing is being honest (or so I thought).

In step three, after you’ve started the initial contact and sent some questions back and forth, you send your Must Haves/Can’t Stands (MHCS). With my original set of MHCS, I got to stage three with four different women, but it stopped there.  This made me think that I was focused too much on the physical, so I adjusted them to put less emphasis on looks and sex. What do you know, the second group of women to receive my MHCS proceeded to step four.  However, the question remains: am I cheating myself.

If I went through this list of MHCS originally and the ones that I found to be important were physical, obviously, that matters to me.  So therefore, women who view this list and find it to be a turn-off should, theoretically, not be for me.  That being said, what if the turn-off for these women was not, in fact, that sex and attractiveness was important to me, but that I chose to focus on it?  On the flip side, am I cheating the women who I’m now continuing to communicate with because they don’t know my ‘true’ side?

I’m scheduled to go out on a few dates with the women from the ’second batch’.  I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes.