Blocking someone on Windows Live  Tags: chat.
It's impossible.

Do you remember the good old days when people were trying to scare each other to death about accepting people you don't know on MSN? Like everyone on the internet is hunting little children?
I never got their point, you could block people... right?

Well, not anymore!
I've tried desperately for at least two hours total now to block someone on the Windows Live Messenger client who is not even in my contact list, nor has ever been. If I remember correctly, it used to be a setting whether people could send you messages without being in your list.

MSN  Tags: chat.
I just had 3 active msn conversations running at the same time. This is sometimes confusing, especially when one of them is using the Parallel Conversations Technique, and indeed at some point I slipped. I replied to the conversation normally, only assuming that the person I was talking to was another who knew more about the subject. So I said something technical and he had no idea what I was talking about, but I noticed the slip quickly and corrected :P

What I noticed here though, is that I mistook him for the person with the chat window on the same position.

Greeting sequence on IM  Tags: chat.
Usually an MSN conversation starts like this:
Hi
Hi
How are you?
Fine, you?
Fine too
[subject you actually want to talk about]

The "Hi" I do myself to know if someone is there before typing what I actually want to talk about. But I only ask how someone is doing when I really want to know, and this doesn't have to be on the beginning of a conversation. I find it rather useless to ask it every time. If there was something I wanted to talk about with you, I would probably have done so already.

Parallel conversations on IM - summary  Tags: chat.
This post is a summary to Parallel conversations on IM.

Message subjects are identified by a number and a square closing bracket, like so:
"Message about subject #1"
"2] Message about subject #2"
"3] Message about subject #3"

The first subject-tag, which would be denoted as "1]", is never actually written for ease of use. A parallel conversations can be like this:
A: Message
B: 2] Message about another subject
B: Answer to A's message
A: 2] Answer to B about second subject
A: 3] Message about third subject
Etc.

Moving subjects goes as follows: "2]->1".

Parallel conversations on IM  Tags: chat.
I often find myself talking about two subjects at the same time with the same contact on MSN, which can lead to confusing situations. 'Did the "no" apply to subject #1 or #2?'
Often you want to say something about a new subject without interrupting the current conversation about the current subject. Or, also often enough, you don't know if the other person wants to say more on the first subject while you want to move on.

Together with a good friend of mine (Frédéric) I tried to solve this by adding some sort of label or tag to the start of a secondary conversation.