Half of this world’s problems… errr… Half of the problems that I face in this world are solved during one of those quick chat sessions with my online friends out of Instant Messenger contact lists.
You see, experimentation is not the first thing to do when you’re stuck.
Search for a solution. Someone might have already had the same problem as you are facing and maybe someone already found a way out of trouble. Now, how you search matters.
The first thing I do when I am stuck is (not panicking, actually.. but) to ask some of my online chat buddies who I think might have the solution to the problem. I ask my programmer friends when I am tweaking wordpress plugins and themes to my advantage, the seniors from college when I need to fix something up with the Training and Placement Cell, classmates if I am in a rut with the homework and they happen to be online. And then there was this very recent case when one I needed to talk to one of my ex-girlfriends who is leaving for Delhi in a few days time for higher studies and I couldn’t think of the best words to talk to her. One of the girls in my yahoo contacts helped me with that.
Google is just a click away, but I prefer IM chats as the primary option because:
- Anyone who has a first hand experience can guide you out better than a static tutorial. In case the issue is technical, the platform on which the tutorial is based might be different, or it might be that the solution provided for your problem on your platform is outdated. Or even, that the tutorial is not comprehensive, or not complete, or whatever. If someone can dynamically help you out its well and good. If not, Google is anyone’s buddy
🙂 - Sometimes, I may not get time to talk to my online chat buddies if I am caught up with my work. Whether you’re going to chat about your problems and solutions – you get a chance to say a quick hello and most of the times, it has a positive impact and assists in healthy social networking.
Now, what if I need to go retrieve my chats for reference at a later point of time? Searching for a page on the internet, and bookmarking it (if useful) is pretty easy (CTRL + D). You can chose to archive (save) your chats in almost any Instant Messenger you might be using- Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, etc. The method of archiving might be different. For me, because I discuss so many issues which are important to me (regarding my blog, programming, college, friends, life, etc.) archiving chats becomes as important as backing up my databases! I might need to use these saved chats for reference any time.
TUTORIAL :
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