I still can’t wait for the warm weather to start – I am done with the snow and cold. I can’t wait to see how Lana reacts to being able to play outdoors! Feeding ducks and whatnot should be a blast.

All I can do right now is think warm thoughts!

We had a lovely Valentine’s Day, going out to dinner with the family. Lana was awesome, sitting through a two-hour dinner at a decent restaurant with incredible good cheer. I ordered her a “meal” of her own (mac and cheese) which I fed her while eating my own meal, and she seemed to enjoy it.

First I heard that we were supposed to get a blizzard on Sunday or so, then I heard we were in the clear until Monday, so I’ll be interested to check the weather later this evening. The forecast is constantly in flux. I’m ready for spring.

We’re heading to a wedding this weekend, so I hope for good weather!

Also amusing: I had called Comcast to do the self-help “resend the signal” routine since some of Mom’s cable channels were out and some were blocky (and some just fine, weird), just to see if it would help. I couldn’t get to that option, however – Comcast was refusing service related calls. (We’re lucky we have power much less cable, mind, so I wasn’t calling to complain or even speak to anyone, but it seems a bit of a poor customer service move to completely refuse to take service calls, eh?)

Lana standing in the bay window watching the guys plow the road was extremely cute.

Several of my office-mates use IM, just for quick comments/questions to one another during work or to help decide where to head for lunch: Specifically AOL accounts. So after being here for three months I decided to download AIM and resurrect my long-dusted account.

Now I’m well aware that AOL historically has a reputation for difficult software, but damn. With all the options and functionality available out there, you’d think they’d finally create a piece of software that played nice. I mean, it’s been some silly huge number of years since I was looking at chat programs, it’s got to be better now, right?

I installed it, told it not to open on start-up, and not to set AOL as my homepage. I added my work colleagues to my decrepit buddy list, tested it, and had it open in the background while I worked.

At one point, in the middle of doing nothing with it, it randomly sent my web browser to the AOL site. Annoying.  I didn’t think too much of it at the time though (hey, I was, you know, WORKING, and thus distracted from the grander problems this might entail).

So, I start back to work this morning, and turn on my computer, and start to login to Groupwise. The AOL chat client opens up (did I somehow accidentally not toggle that box I was so careful to toggle during install that told it not to do this?) redirecting my typing to it, and simultaneously opening my browser to the AOL site. (Did I miss unchecking the checkbox that said “Randomly and capriciously send browser to AOL.com”?)

Of course, this was death as far as this program on my machine goes. I started to look for a replacement (the names Gaim and Trillian surfaced in my brain from the depths of my long ago chat client meanderings) though one of my coworkers recommended Pidgin (which I will talk about more in another post).

I went to shut down AIM so I could uninstall it, and the program refused to close. It stalwartly remained on my Windows 7 start bar, only pretending to hear me when I told it repeatedly to close. I wound up bringing up the task manager to close its sorry self before exiling it from my machine forever.

I would have used the basic AOL AIM chat program. It was the obvious, easiest path. But I need my chat client to fade into the background until requested, and the AOL AIM program always needed to be the center of attention.

It looks like Pidgin is getting my rose.

It’s been a very very long time since I’ve spun until I was dizzy, perhaps I should try it some time – though probably outdoors.