primus, this reply is for you, and for all the monks who will read this thread in the future. I write this to document some of the "common knowledge" which will/might fade from the Monastary in time.

I suggest that you listen very carefully to theorbtwo when he talks about IM. He wrote the AIM to CB gateway. He spends much time online IMing. He found a girlfriend online, via IM. (On a different continent, 6 hours away.) His homenode currently lists 4 IM protocols by which he can be reached (not including Chat :).

There may be Monks who have more IM-fu than theorbtwo, but I don't know of them or their *-fu.

And regarding Instant Messaging, you might want to check out the various CB clients available here. Lots of cool ways to chat.

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Perl programming and scheduling in the corporate world, as explained by dragonchild:

"Uhh ... that'll take me three weeks, broken down as follows: 1 day for coding, the rest for meetings to explain why I only need 1 day for coding."