eDissonance

I went to Keith's retirement party last weekend, and at the party, Bill (and a couple others) mentioned -- in response to my general dissatisfaction with online dating services -- that I should check out eHarmony. I was skeptical, but I do try to keep an open mind about these things.

I created an account during some slack time, and began filling out their monstrous questionnaire -- many pages, somewhere on the order of 300 questions. Most were of the "rate this trait on a scale of 1-5" variety.

After an hour and a half of clicking on little dots, my profile was sufficiently complete that I was now allowed to conduct a search. The site spent a full minute doing an extensive search of all available single women that (it calculates) are a good match for my personality. And it came up with... five women.

Five.

In the whole bay area.

Since I was not a subscriber, I was not allowed to see photos of any of my potential mates. According to Adam, even if you do subscribe, you're not allowed to see photos until fairly late in the "guided matching process" (eHarmony starts you on a structured question/answer session, and after four phases you graduate to open communication). So I started perusing the information it did give me.

Of my five matches, three were older than me -- not exactly ideal. Of the remaining two, one lived in Half Moon Bay, and the other in San Francisco. Several hours after joining, the one in Half Moon Bay "closed" me (ended communication) with a "too far away" message.

And then there was one.

So, apparently, I'm in the same group as Mark, in that eHarmony thinks we're both a lost cause. Since Mark has subsequently gotten engaged (congratulations, Mark!), I'm thinking that's a failure on their part.