Say what you wish about a Houzz member already having registered my user name. I don't buy it in my case or many other cases, but that's the reason they gave me. But answer me this, why is MY e-mail address not usable? Houzz claims it is already being used. Well, they are wrong. It's my e-mail address and has been used on GW since 1998 when it was THS. Plus, it is the one that I have been communicating with Houzz to remedy my user name and my requests for them to unlock my e-mail address for my usage.. It is my opinion the notification plan was poorly done. and the migration plan was even worse. DA

caflowerluver: I did not take offence. I merely wanted to mention that most of us today contain a large mix of genes. As far as "fooling around", I have a few in my closet in a joking manner. I have ancestors of whom I can not find a trace of a marriage record, mention in a journal, or any other indication. This doesn't prove they were not married; It only says there are no records to be found. Some of my ancestors were "on the frontier" and official accommodations were scarce. I probably have some common law ancestors as well. Some of my 200 yr old records are not readable and others have been lost in court house disasters. A number of court house records were lost during the Civil War. If a minister of the gospel performs a marriage ceremony, the couple is not "officially" married in the eyes of the law until the marriage papers have been filed at the court house. During pioneer days, the Minister might not get to the court house for 2 weeks to a month after the marriage. I have 2 mariage dates for my grandparents: one is the day of the wedding and the other is the filing date at the court house. if something happened to the Minister before he filed, the record could be lost. Relationships can get messy. I have a great grand uncle who lost his first wife and 2 children. He married again and they had several children and then she died while the last child was very young. Her sister stepped in, married the man, and they had children. In the same community, another man and wife had 4 children of their own and took in 12 orphans at various times. He adopted all the orphans so they took on his surname. That's got to be a mess in the gene pool to straighten out. Another mess: My gggrand father, after his wife died, married the sister of a brother who married his daughter. Oh my!

dreaming, I think your story just tapped into a collective "rage" about the loss of a formerly very comfortable, friendly, helpful forum, populated by people interested in decorating. Some pros, lots of non-pros with experience and passion, who tried to help posters with their (our) decorating problems. We were formerly Garden Web and many of us are clinging to our identity as members of that formerly wonderful forum, that has now been morphed into a houzz/GW hybrid. Now we find our forum taken over by some very pushy pros trying to push their businesses, sell their goods or sometimes just be rude and snarky. To be fair, there are a few who don't do that and have added a lot to the forum. There are now so many posts asking for help, and so many responding, that there is no way to retain the kind of community feeling that used to draw many of us back here. So, reading about a poster being treated so rudely, or anyone even caring about a user name in our formerly little semi-hidden forum, maybe just was kind of the last straw for some of us. Anyway, glad you're not upset about it!

I used to be just "gazania" because I love the plant and it is a 'fun' word to say. Then when Houszz got involved, for some reason I had to reup to the forum. I chose lgmd for the disease that was responsible for the disability I have and added gaz so maybe I would still be recognized by some. However soon after doing that, my disease was reidentified by new available DNA testing. I haven't changed the lgmd part because it seems it would be too much hassle. To be correct I should now be sma3_gaz.