IMs - Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them

Odds are if you're technically astute enough to be reading this blog in the first place, you likely also have an IM, or Instant Messenger.
Odds are even greater if you do have an IM that you carry with it a similar love/hate relationship that I do.

Hits: You can stay in constant contact with friends and family wherever you have internet access. You can share files and programs, you can send smilies and audio, and you can talk to a billion people at once. (That is of course if you're a skilled multitasker.)

Misses: You can stay in constant contact with friends and family wherever you have internet access - that means not a moments peace if you're trying to work, or you just feel anti-social. Sure you could set your status to 'away' or 'out to lunch', or even 'busy'. Do your contacts respect those settings? I know a lot of mine don't.

You'd think it would be obvious. I'm busy, therefore I don't want to have a "hey", "hey", conversation.

A desperate man might just turn the irritation off, so that no one can bother you. Oops... but that has a downside too. Now your significant other can't serenade you with textual pleasantness, your best friend can't arrange to come over, and you now have to check for email manually instead of getting that lovely message.

I was that desperate man... I shut off MSN, I shut off Yahoo, and I pulled Xfire clear off my auto-start list. So here I am, a man cut off of the world of IMing. I forgot all about them, and now people think that I blocked them. Well, long story short, I did. But hey, it wasn't personal - it was business.

Please respect the 'busy' setting, and let me get on with my online life. I'll be sure to do the same with you.

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Your non-word is "irrination" (ear-ih-nation). A country that just likes to tick off the rest of the world, or stick it to world powers saying things like "We will now be continuing our nuclear weapons program, so what cha gonna do about it?" North Korea and Iran come to mind...