Some good advice in life (and I could be mis-quoting here) is to never try to teach someone you are dating anything complicated (e.g. driving a car, skiing) and never do business with your friends.

I've broken both rules on occasion and mostly regretted it. Both I and our marriage survived my attempt to teach my wife to drive a stick shift but it was close and will never be repeated. I refuse to teach her how to use a computer better, even though she asks sometimes,
because I know that it will all end in tears.

So far the one big risk I have taken with the friends thing is my current job, which was offered to me by a friend from years gone by. I'm enjoying the job but I think our friendship is suffering from the strains of running a business. I nearly offered another friend of mine a job here too. Fortunately, despite his being capable, our VCs decided we didn't need another IT person and so the offer got squashed. In retrospect this was a good thing as I doubt he would have got on well with the rest of the company. Since he was about my best friend from age 10 I'd rather retain the current friendship than take the risk on a new relationship.

The advantage of the internet with its connectiity and its anonymity is that you can make friends with perfect strangers. So you (we) can bitch about our jobs, spouses etc. without worrying that our comments get back to them. Even better, we have no idea what most of our on-line buddies look like or whether we could actually stand a sustained evening of conversation with them and we have absolutely no idea if we are also doing or have done business with them or not. Indeed there are a few people that I have enjoyable online interactions with that I'm pretty sure I would dislike instantly if we were to ever meet.

On the whole I think that is a good thing so consider this a virtual toast to online friendships. Long may they continue.

DD