From an article aboutwebbeed bliss and the engaged couples who are putting up increasingly-fancy websites showcasing their relationships:

Etiquette writer Peggy Post, the great-granddaughter-in-law of Emily Post, says that, for better or for worse, revealing personal information on Web pages is now part of our culture. But when it comes to wedding sites, she draws the line at long-winded descriptions of dates leading up to the proposal: "It is similar to sending an e-blast on the process of giving birth," she says. "Show me the child, not the process."

I can get the term from context, but its's new to me.

I hadn't heard of it, but what else is new? There are nearly 300,000 Google hits for the term.

I do think that many couples go overboard with their wedding Web sites...and their weddings, for that matter. I hear that in our area the average cost of a wedding is about $100,000. I'd rather elope and use that money for a down payment on a house, but then I am boring!

A down payment? Damn, I've bought four houses that didn't cost that much total!

Utterly disillusioned Asa

quote:

Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
A down payment? Damn, I've bought four houses that didn't cost that much total!

Utterly disillusioned Asa

And you live in CaliFORNia?

;-) Right. And those houses were cardboard boxes, weren't they?

Or....those were the good old days. Our first two homes came in well under 100K combined, but then we moved to the Philadelphia region and there were no more Upstate New York economies to be found. I hear the high prices have hit up there now, too.

As for "e-blast," we use the word in our Alumni Office when we send out email newsletters to all alumni for whom we have email addresses.

It's just a polite term for "spam" or e-junkmail, actually.

Wordmatic

Actually Asa lives in Portland, but their housing prices are getting higher now, too, or so I hear.

I agree about an e-blast being a polite term for "spam." A friend of mine sends me (and a whole slew of people), on a daily basis, all these cutesy women sayings (like why men are so awful), any news articles about women health problems, and ways to avoid being raped or accosted or whatever. I merely delete them without reading them, but I have hesitated asking her to take me off her list because she's sweet and elderly. Well, I happened to run into her the other day, and she said, "Why don't you answer my emails?" I do answer her personal emails, but she meant that I should answer her daily spam to me! She sends them to at least 50 people, it looks like; does she want a response from everyone, everyday?

When she has nothing else to do, Kalleh, yeah, she wants a response to all fifty!

I have two sisters-in-law and a couple of friends who do the same thing, and what I do is delete most without reading them, but occasionally I answer. Sometimes I play the grinch by pointing out that whatever the words of wisdom or the scandal they have asked me to pass along to "everyone I know" is a hoax, by sending them the link from snopes.com that proves it!

Wordmatic

I think everyone has to have at least one friend like this. It's the law or something. A couple of times a week I get "jokes" passed on from a friend at my writing group. I have told him that because they are a common way of passing some virus I delete them unopened but it doesn't stop him sending them.

Last time I was up in PDX (hi, Asa and s'flower!) I noticed that houses were only one-half to one-third the price of the SF Bay Area in Calee Forn Eye Yay.

Like Wordmatic, I've referred the senders of several urban legend-type messages to Snopes. I've made sure I used "Reply to all" for my message, so that as many people as possible realise how the original sender was taken in. Usually that's stopped them sending any more (at least, to me).

My mother-in-law used to send me stuff like that. I never answered . . . and eventually her spamming slowed to a very slow trickle, and I usually find what she sends now to be rather amusing. I don't, however, like it when she sends those long, huge files of pictures of cute pets, etc. BLAH!

I used to just delete all of her emails, but now she actually slips in personal notes and updates on family news, so I have to read them! Horror!

Ya gotta remember San Francisco prices are EXTREMELY high, but not long ago, prior to all the moving in, prices here were affordable for a blue-collar type such as I. Not any more. What the so-called "working poor" are going to do I do not know - except live on the streets.

Prices in Sunflower's native Indiana are 2/3 what they are here - sometimes less, but that's because all the former industry's now in China. NOT a good strategic or economic move, IMHO.

Yeah, yeah, this isn't a political/economic board, so I'll shut up!

Here's hopin ya hung onto one of them, Asa. There's your retirement, right there, if you did.

RE: upstate NY (where I grew up; Dad, when alive, was a RE developer): RE up there is a game of who can hold on long enough. We had to sell my dad's 'back 40', 55 acres w/ a view to die for of a huge valley in Finger Lakes god's country, for 96k-- all of us w/families & hardly in position to pay taxes & maintenance... Oh, I just look at the pix & daydream, wish it were still ours.

quote:

I've made sure I used "Reply to all" for my message, so that as many people as possible realise how the original sender was taken in.

That's hilarious, Arnie!

"Reply all" can be another catastrophe, can't it? Professionally sometimes people will send emails to huge groups of people throughout the U.S. While 99% of us aren't so stupid to "reply all," the 1% inevitably do. Then you get these random emails from somebody you don't know. That's another annoying instance!

On the other hand, when I first began emailing, my oldest daughter was in high school and had this long list of friends she sent emails to about things. I was quite lucky, as a mother, to be included. One day she sent out this email asking for different ways cultures celebrated the holidays (or something similar...it was awhile ago). I, thinking I was just replying to her, wrote this schmaltzy email about how we used to celebrate Hannukah when the kids were little and then hit "reply all." Quite bruskly, I was deleted from her group email!

Then there's the email mistake of putting someone's name in, and all those starting with that letter pop up. A few times (like today) I clicked on the wrong person! Today I invited somebody to be a guest on my conference call...though it was the wrong person! There were several others who were invited, and they all realized my stupid mistake, I am sure.

Yes, email has caused a whole host of different problems, that's for sure.

BTW, good to see you, Zmj!