i never cease to be amazed by the absolutely random crap people put in their away messages. There is a reason it is called an “away message”… it’s to let people know you’re away! This is precisely why I firmly stand by the statement that “the worst thing about working IT is having to work with people that don’t work in IT.” It is exactly this perversion of technology that has caused the Internet to be come the f*cked up place you see before you. So of course I don’t expect 8 year old Susy to really understand that “unsubscribing” to the wonderful newsletters that fill her inbox is only going to keep them coming and ultimately help to keep spammers in business so they can fill MY inbox too! But use a little common sense people! Every instant messenger I know of allows you to make a profile of some sort… USE IT! and then use your away message for what it was designed for - let people know you’re away; perhaps even where you’ve gone and when you might be expected back… maybe an alternate way to get in touch with you while you’re out.

I can’t wait until I can finally trash these pitiful, monolithic excuses for instant messaging services and use a good one. I just need to find a good web-based jabber client… perhaps I’m going to have to write my own, I don’t know.

understand that I’m not really that upset about away messages - okay, maybe I am - but rather abuses of technologies in general, and away messages just happened to be my target of the day. if you use your away message in some ridiculous fashion as described above, you are more than entitled to do so… just as I am entitled to say how retarded i think it is :-).

Have you written a response to this? Let me know the URL: