The Wang Whisperer

I recently switched over to a Mac laptop as my main computer at home, and I'm still experimenting with all the software options available to me on the new platform. I found a pretty serviceable chat program in Adium almost immediately and have been most pleased with it.

Last night, while digging through the applications folder for Shit I Haven't Tried Out Yet (TM), I found that the computer came with chat software already installed. Huh. Reasoning that anything so blessed by Apple must be very nicely integrated with the system, I decided to try it out.

It works well, but I wasn't able to get it to connect to everything I wanted all at the same time. I generally stay logged into AIM, ICQ, and GoogleTalk because there's people I chat with frequently on all three. It looks like I can do that with iChat, but I haven't figured out how yet. Still getting used to the way Mac does things.

Like most of the software I've fiddled with on OSX, it's very pretty, and adds nice little touches that make using it more intuitive and pleasant.

It decorates the chats so that what you and your chat partner type come up in word balloons (a la comic strips) in the chat window, making it look for all the world like your icons are talking to each other. You can turn this off, but I got a kick out of it and left it on.

Then Coyote logged on and I pounced on the not-nearly-often-enough opportunity to talk to him. And all hell broke loose.

You see, Coyote's icon is always a golden wang.

And last night, the golden wang talked to me, man.

It was... surreal.