apophenia: i broke iChat/AIM and lost my Buddylist

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March 2, 2004

i broke iChat/AIM and lost my Buddylist

As many know, i have an amazing talent at breaking all technology. This week, i broke AIM.

I got this bright idea to start adding new pictures on top of people's pictures that bothered me via iChat. This required me adding them to my Addressbook. Something went wrong. When i fired up AIM on my Sidekick, they multipled. Some people in the Addressbook were in every 'group' including 'Blocked Buddies.' When i first sent a message to someone that was in both a group and the Blocked Buddies list, things went haywire. AIM on my Sidekick crashed.

I went to my computer. By this point, iChat was royally pissed. They weren't in doubles there, but they started deleting themselves. I'd go to write a message to someone and i would get an error message (not a pretty one...) and the window would close and the buddy would disappear from my list of buddies. Hrmfpt.

So, i went to Fire. They were really really gone. ::grumble:: I tried to add the person back. That was a bad idea. Apparently, there's a cap on number of friends in AIM. I believe that it is 150. Since a lot of my buddies were inserted many many times, everything got mixed up. I think my buddylist overwrote itself. Basically, my AIM is FUBAR.

And i'm once again reminded as to why technology hates me and why i hate anyone who abuses the number 150.

I decided that it's time to start over. With a new screenname. Unfortunately, i no longer have everyone's screen names. And i feel guilty once again spamming everyone (having lost my phone only a few months ago) so i figure i'll post it here and hope that those who were in my AIM list will see it and remind me.

Category:

Posted by zephoria at March 2, 2004 9:53 PM | TrackBack

Comments (15)

Joel Young:

I've had problems from time to time with iChat -- it seems that when you make changes to someone's address card, it adds them back to your buddy list, but in all of your groups. Before you create a new screenname, I'd suggest just wiping out your buddy list and adding them back in some other client -- or you can try to navigate iChat's group management, which isn't *too* tough. The other problem here seems to be Sidekick's use of a buddy list group to keep track of blocked people. Sounds like there are are 3 bugs here that are all getting together to cause your problems -- iChat's handling of groups, Sidekick's handling of blocking, and AOL's buddy list limit. In the future, if you keep using iChat, it's a good idea to go through the different groups (it uses them as filters instead of heirarchical displays) and delete the duplicates, one at a time, whenever you see them. If it asks you to confirm deletion, that means it's about to delete the last copy of that screenname from your buddy list, which you probably don't want.

It's all a big pain in the ass, unfortunately. I hope this helps!

Posted by Joel Young | March 3, 2004 7:28 AM

Posted on March 3, 2004 07:28

Joi Ito:

That's what you get you know... trying to be clever like that.

*duck*

Posted by Joi Ito | March 3, 2004 4:41 PM

Posted on March 3, 2004 16:41

zephoria:

Thanks Joel. The thing is that i've broken it so many times at this point that there just comes a time when starting over feels refreshing.

Posted by zephoria | March 5, 2004 10:07 PM

Posted on March 5, 2004 22:07

Crysta:

Well,My computer doesnt do anything wrong but I just wanna know if there is more buddylist i could buy from 2004 cause mines is 2001..........................so thats all i wanted if you find one send me an email so i can buy 1 or somertin.........THANX

Posted by Crysta | March 21, 2004 7:57 AM

Posted on March 21, 2004 07:57

Jodie:

I need to find my buddy list

Posted by Jodie | April 8, 2004 1:48 PM

Posted on April 8, 2004 13:48

kristin:

any hot guys email me!!!!!!!!!!!!
*kristin*

Posted by kristin | April 18, 2004 2:14 PM

Posted on April 18, 2004 14:14

Rebecca:

i cant find my buddy list help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!