First Admit You Have a Problem

Yes, yes, I am an ICQ junkie. And boy oh boy am I going into withdrawl.

Before I paint a picture of a man squandering away his days sending inane messages to various and sundry people, which is only 90% true, let me explain. I don't actually use it that much, especially during the day when I'm supposed to be working. But when I want to use it, or when I want to be reachable, that's when I start getting this weird itching in the fingers (and no, it's not the fungus. That problem was solved a while ago.)

Because the draconian firewall here in the office is set to filter out such useful productivity tools as ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger, I can't get my fix. It's hell. Hell I tell you. Such is life working for "the man". I look forward to the day when I am self-employed and I can be as unproductive as I want to be. Either that, or I want to be the firewall administrator like I was in Bermuda. Now that was a good gig.

Anyway, I tried this dodgy little hack of a program to get around the great corporate firewall. It sort of works and sort of doesn't, which might be worse. Seems it likes to eat incoming messages periodically. If I seem to be more rude than usual on ICQ during the day, it's really not me, I swear. To make matters worse, the hack just went from somewhat dodgy to almost useless. I gave up on it this morning.

Like any good addict, I have a plan! Tonight I go home, roll up my sleeves, and jury rig my own hack, involving some proxy software, some bailing wire and duct tape. With any luck, I'll be back on ICQ tomorrow, in a reliable way. Then I'll no longer be able to blame my lack of incoming messages on buggy software. I can't wait!
posted 10:52 AM | link |