MSN Messenger

Internet chat is something of an oddity. It’s one of those things where either you can’t live without it or you couldn’t care less. I guess the Internet is the same way, but I fell into the “can’t live without it” group so long ago that it’s hard to remember.
I think yesterday marked the beginning of the transition to “can’t live without it” for Internet chat for me. Tammy has used chat a lot since the time she moved to Fort St. James for work. I guess there wasn’t much of a night life there… She keeps in touch with students she has had, and with friends she never sees.
Personally, I don’t have that many friends, but I do have co-workers scattered about. At INFORM, we are scattered around Canada. That makes for a lot of long-distance phone calls. It seems that some of our more enterprising employees have noticed that we can use MSN Messenger from work, so everybody is installing it and signing each other up. The benefits to this are pretty obvious. No more leaving voice messages like “I don’t know if you’re in today, but if you get this, give me a call at…”
So I’ve also installed MSN on my Powerbook at home, as has Tammy. With any luck, I won’t feel quite so isolated in the smallest INFORM office.
Now far be it from me to endorse a Micro$oft product, so call it a fit of insanity. Either that, or it’s one M$ product that actually does what it should.