#$%&#* AIM

It's official. I really hate AOL.

So in continuing our Blue 2.0 tasks I was trying to re-establish/set up an AIM account. Now, I'm pretty sure that several years in the past I had an AIM ID set up so I started out by requesting password information to my old hotmail email account. I didn't get an error message saying that they didn't find my email, I didn't get a warning that it might take a week for the password to get sent, I only got a message saying my password was sent and asking me to log in again. So I check my email and I have no AOL messages awaiting me. It being currently about an hour since I first tried and I still have yet to receive any message from them.

No big deal, maybe I'm remembering incorrectly and I never really set up an account with them or maybe their notification system is really slow. I'll just set up a new account. 15 variations later on my favorite username, Satans_Parakeet, and I still haven't found an available username. This is made increasingly frustrating by the fact that Windows Live Mail is taking about five minutes to load every screen I go to. That's one more reason that I don't use my hotmail account much. So I finally find a crappy l33tspeak version of Satans_Parakeet that works, satansparak33t. BTW, this is after several failed humanity verification checks where I'm supposed to psychically know that spaces are not necessary (Maybe I should know that since they usually don't, but c'mon, they only warn you of that once you've already failed. Why not warn me beforehand?) and that the o shaped character is a zero, not an oh (Never, EVER, use os or 0s in character verification software. That's a major rookie mistake). So finally I have an ID set up and working and 15 seconds later I get an email telling me that. Woohoo! . . . but that makes me even more annoyed that I still haven't seen an initial password reminder email.

Oh well, I suppose it could've been worse, but it could have been a heck of a lot better. Luckily I already had my Meebo account set up so it was easy as pie to add my new AIM name to it. Yay! Bonus points rule!