Shelfari Sucks

See below for the text of an email I sent out to all of my contacts in my gmail account. (If you are reading this, you probably got this email...). I joined Shelfari and thought I was inviting a few friends to the site. It has a feature similar to Linkedin that allows you to see all of the contacts you have already in the site. Except, when you invite those friends, you will also invite ALL of the contacts in your email box unless you catch it.

I am incredibly frustrated and also embarrassed I fell for it AND it sent to all of my email contacts. All of them. Business, friends, frenimies, Amazon.com customer service...AGHHH. How very frustrating.

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Good morning,

I apologize for the emails you may have received inviting you to join "Shelfari" from me. I received an invitation earlier this week and joined with the intent to invite a few of my friends with whom I discuss books. Instead, Shelfari invited all of my email contacts.

Shelfari offers a "friend friend" service which imports your email address book to a) determine who else of your email contacts is on Shelfari and b) help you invite those who aren't. This is similar to other networking sites, so I took them up on this. It found a couple of my friends who were signed up and I clicked on the "invite friends" button before realizing it had imported my entire gmail address book and it was sending to ANY and ALL of my email contacts.

At the time I was embarrassed and horrified. I do not appreciate random forwards or invites, I don't believe anyone does. I consoled myself thinking "No terrible harm done, one email is generally forgettable and perhaps I'll reconnect with some people."

Then yesterday, it came to my attention that a "friendly reminder" was sent on my behalf for anyone who had not signed up for the service. Shelfari began to spam on my behalf. I am personally mortified. I had no idea they would begin to spam ALL of the contacts in my email.

Therefore, I write this email as an apology and a warning. I apologize for the emails from Shelfari. It was not my intent to spam, and hopefully this will be the last email on the subject. If you do sign up for Shelfari, do not choose the "find friend" option without "deselecting all." This was a sneaky trick on Shelfari's part and I fell for it. Please google "Shelfari spam" for more information if you are interested.

Again, my apologies.

Regards,

Kimberly

FYI: To protect yourself and prevent any future Shelfari invitations, go to http://www.shelfari.com/actions/emailoptout.aspx.

We'll make great pets

Many of you are familiar with my two beloved dogs Tycho and Ella. I have posted a couple times about my freakish and lovely goldfish. I have recently added 18 pets to my condo. 17 of them are fish and one of them is a vacuum cleaner.

The 17 fish are community tropical fish- some betas, a pleco, a flying fox and some tetras. They are very cool and I love them. I picked them up last week and have been watching them every night which very quickly puts me to sleep. They are a lively bunch but peaceful, and I don't believe anyone is eating anyone else, which is very important.

The vacuum cleaner is Roomba. I love Roomba. If I ever become a professional athlete, I would court Roomba's sponsorship. If you want a pet but don't want the mess of a dog or cat, get a Roomba! I got Roomba thanks to my friend Emily- who was extolling the virtues of her Roomba which she bought off of woot.com. She emailed me a couple weeks ago saying Roomba was on Woot...so I emailed John to confer about buying one. We bought one. And now, I don't have to vacuum anymore. Instead, I turn on Roomba and he* does it for me. So, right now, Roomba is cleaning my dining room. Yea! I love robots!

As for me & life...this week was stressful but ended well. My job is awesome. I am so glad to be out of G and into consulting again. Seriously. I couldn't be happier working for a client, having the satisfaction that I'm doing good work for them and then getting feedback that I am delivering what they want from me. Yea to consulting.!

The LSAT prep is going well. I should be studying right now, but I spilled water all over my lesson 1 and 2 books. So- I'm letting it dry a bit and then back to logic. The class is really breaking my brain and how I tend to think- so I find myself doing this:

If you are Ella, you hate Roomba.
If you are Roomba, you hate dirt.
Therefore, if you are Ella, you hate dirt.

This doesn't actually work because Ella loves dirt and rolling in it...but according to the LSAT logic...I think this is correct...at least I hope.

John is in CO- things are going well for him...more on that front later. I should go check on Roomba - it is beeping at me. And I should go check on Ella. She hates Roomba so she is sequestered in the back bedroom. Otherwise she chases and bites Roomba...funny to watch, not so efficient for cleaning my floors.

-kksw

*This is very important. Emily is of the firm belief that Roombas have genders, and hers is male. After watching mine a couple times...I have to agree.