So many to cover let me number them.

1. Trillian has been my IM client of choice since their beta. I’ve used Gaim and any number of programs who do multiple IMs from one client but found them lacking. Trillian was even the first software for which I was willing to pay my own money. (Otherwise its been work who has paid the price. 😀 ).Lately, we have been coordinating through AIM chat rooms. Trillian was working fine for a while but in the past couple weeks has demonstrated issues with these chat rooms. It doesn’t send or receive invites for the rooms. I have an account with Meebo, so when Trillian didn’t work and Meebo did, I knew it was me. So, Pidgin (formerly Gaim) is installed to see if it works and rule out a firewall or something similar. Too much work…
2. Much of my work involves using Unix-style shells to connect to a machine and type things at the command line. This is the way things are done. When I first started this kind of work, I was using a Sun Ultra 5. It worked really well. Trying to work similarly on Windows 95 in TerraTerm was not the same at all. Ugh. Things in Windows have gotten better… Sorta. Its still not the same.I finally have gotten so fed up with the ssh software from ssh.com I’ve started looking at alternatives.

Or… Maybe the stress of work is getting to me? I’m taking it out on my software? Wow… what psychobabble!

UPDATE (3007-AUG-13: Naturally, PuTTY is at the top of my ssh.com replacement list. I’ve used it before. However, over the weekend I used PenguiNet. It did pretty well. I’ll probably be playing with a bunch of different software over the few months.

Also, a reader pointed out that if I really want to get back to the feel of the Ultra 5, I ought to go Linux. Its an excellent point. I’ve been thinking since 1996 it would be good to go play with it, but I never seem to actually do. One day… One day…