VIRB

Says the girl writing a blog. I am doing this to vent some DEEP frustrations regarding my experience just now trying to create my own personal login for a chat program called Adium. Because going back and reading what I have written makes me feel like I've accomplished something, created something useful with things that I love, words. And I need to feel like I've accomplished something after having the last HOUR of my life sucked away by this stupid program that has no instructions.

It's a good idea, Adium. Compatible with all kinds of chat programs: AIM, Yahoo, MSN... My husband's on iChat, my sister's on Yahoo, my friend in Seattle is on MSN. A seeming chat paradise, right? Until you actually try to install it. This thing had, count em, ONE instruction. Two if you count the part on their website that says "Click to Install Adium". I did that. I clicked. It began installation. Then a window came up (instruction #2) that showed a green duck ("Adium") with a hand over it, a blur, and the icon of the Applications folder. There were also two other little images that showed folders with .txt after them. Having experienced computers since the eighth grade (a few years before widespread internet) and owned a Mac since 2001, I have enough knowledge here to know I don't need those folders. But I'm not a programmer or anything, so I DON'T know that the hand and blur represent ME moving the Adium icon over to the Applications folder. Thank God I was already on iChat with my husband, or I wouldn't have gotten that far.

Then I had to make sure something called Growl was updating automatically. I probably should've said this at the beginning: I am not the kind of person who thinks that instructions are ignorable. I was the kid who wouldn't start anything until the teacher told us how. I didn't make macaroni and cheese myself until I was at least 14 because I didn't want to get boiling water wrong. Learning to experiment is exactly that, a learning process. So when a computer gives me options regarding things I know nothing about, I am stonewalled. I don't know how to proceed. I could GUESS, but I don't want to do that unless it's absolutely necessary. Again, iChat with Joshua Blankenship saves the day.

But to install myself as a user on this thing. That's what made me cry. There was a series of quasi-random guesses involving the File menu, Preferences, and a + sign. I got that much right. Joshua had to remind me I already had an AIM login and password. So there, I'm in. A user. moblankenship. But damn Adium to hell for not putting me on the freaking chat window when I actually want to chat!! It showed Joshua's picture and name as Available! I quit Adium. I restarted it. I deleted Joshua from it altogether. I deleted another username he had. I logged out of and quit iChat so I could restart and re-login to Adium. Nothing. No change. I'm the only user who EXISTS on Adium, and it still shows Joshua. Computers are STUPPPIIIIIDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!

I cried for a good ten minutes. And my husband said he'd see what was wrong when he comes home. The end.