We are having the dreaded "wintry mix," as you Americans like to call it.

Rain, here. Rain rain rain rain rain. Which makes it... one of the seasons in England.

Health~ma for ita's mother and Burrell's MiL.

Oh dear. They just installed Microsoft Office Communicator on our computers. Now we're just going to sit here and IM each other all day.

I worked in a job where this was one of the primary modes of communication. It was awesome! Not only did I use it for work purposes, but a co-worker and I founded a whole religion (in jest) over IM. It's a fantastic work tool and a huge time waster. I loved it.

Then I worked for another company that had no internal IM. It was a devestating loss.

My boss just squeed over the ability to share her desktop, which can be used for training and whatnot. I mean, my boss is five yards from me, but still. We were listening to each other type IMs before we sent them.

My current job has no internal IM, a few of us have on related to a service we maintain, but it is only 2-3 of us on that. I hate not having IM. My last job it was required to be open on your desktop and some of us were required to have Skype open (for overseas co-workers) and some generic open source IM GAIM, I think (for in-house stuff). lurved it.

We all use Yahoo IM. Is great since we have people all around the world and people who work from home. As someone who hates the phone, I love the IM!

You should see his bit about the depression-era art around 30 Rock portending Obama and, well, you just have to. It's literally the most insane thing I've ever seen on the TV machine.

I saw that! I thought it was a joke at first - even Beck couldn't be that craxy. But lo. He could, and he is.

Interoffice IM is great for gossiping about co-workers you don't want to talk about out loud. Er, I mean collaborating on projects.

We have IM here, but I keep forgetting to log in. I'm not adjusted to it yet, partially because only IT uses it. I'd rather get up and walk over to whoever's desk, or email.

The ability to share our desktop was so great. I was on a global project with team members in 80 different countries and for the most part this was a really effective tool.

The job with no IM I fought for months to get something and failed. It simply wasn't part of their culture and no argument for it's usefulness worked.

Interoffice IM is great for gossiping about co-workers you don't want to talk about out loud. Er, I mean collaborating on projects.

I consider it a valuable steam valve for just this reason.