The last post — the video — got me thinking to some of my own endeavors with SMS / TXT messages over the years. I’ve spent hours on multitudes of people waiting for responses, hanging in limbo, hitting highs and lows over anagrams, or perhaps misinterpreting things that are being said or not getting the entire context of the story or getting to talking about anything of substance..

Enough of that shit.

Seriously, one or two messages from people who I normally converse with and share the context of their lives with is fine. Because txt is simply a surrogate while they can’t be in touch with me or I can’t be in touch with them via email, IM or on the phone.

But in certain cases, txt replaces chatting and it’s unhealthy. It leaves you out of the loop in general on people’s lives and you find yourself disconnected from them.

I may be hearing impaired but most people know how to get in touch with me if they want talk. But to keep doing it solely by txt? Sorry, not happening any more.

July 26th, 2008 Edit: I humored someone with this, the same person that sort of highlighted the lack-of-context aspects of txt/sms. Part of me wanted to keep the connection open… And decided to cater to the lazy aspect of said person.

…but that lack-of-context helped kill a long time friendship in the end. Lack-of-context led to lack of information, lack of information turned to lack of honesty and frankness, lack of this turned to disrespect and everything went

kaaaaaabloooooie!

.

In limited use, sms/txt are a great tool. To keep in touch in general, you gotta be fucking kidding me.

More than a year ago I learned about Trillian 4 — AKA Trillian Astra. I won’t even go into the bells and whistles that are supposed to be part of Trillian Astra but I will give readers the only thing that matters in a testimonial: I’ve been a paying customer for the Trillain Pro IM client since Version 1.5. I love how it integrates IM clients (AOL IM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and all Jabber IM clients including Google Talk) and it’s interface more than any of the IM applications on there own.

That being said, I’m tired of waiting for Trillian Astra to go to Beta or the official release. Tired of reading the development blog that updates too slowly and only talks about the technobable in developing Astra which goes beyond the average user (which I am)… And of course, I’m tired of Trillian 3 Pro. I’m ready for an upgrade.

This was originally due last year and at this rate will not be out until next year… Please, get it done. Get it done, gentlemen.