Sometimes it works

I was all set to be triumphant about how awesome modern technology is, that I had an IM chat in realtime with someone in Burundi this morning, I heard about the Quakers she's visiting there, successfully made plans for when she gets back, and the future's here today, etc etc.

But then I was unable to chat with chezmax, at the phone/networking company across the parking-lot from here. Oh, the irony.

Rather, his phone's chat client has changed in an incompatible way with my chat client; so everything he says comes across as (null) unless he puts it in quotes.

We had a long conversation before we figured out he was sending more content than I was receiving- where I was responding to the (null) in playful ways, and he was getting more and more confused, but he was able to tell me "things in quotes" which felt very meta, and I felt more and more like we were part of a surrealist work.

But what is life, otherwise?