[ChanceNC]

I've been aggravated for about a week and a half now since the AIM application on my Pearl stopped working properly. Most of you probably know the issue: I can send messages to my heart's content with the recipient getting them just fine. Messages coming in, as well as updates of buddy status, are not so good in their frequency. Manually refreshing the list is all that would work.

So I've uninstalled AIM, and installed it, and uninstalled it...still no joy. Tried some free alternatives...they mostly suck. Don't want to spend anything on an IM client, not even a coupon-helped $15 for the well-regarded BeeJive/Jivetalk. (Which, by the way, is very slick...but I'm cheap and don't wanna pay for it)

Tonight I had the notion to disable the firewall, the enabling of which I had done purely to squelch the somewhat annoying permission requests generated by some of the other apps on the phone.

To my delight, disabling the firewall unshackled AIM and it began to function properly! I had a nice chat with myself sitting here on the couch with a couple of my AOL screen names. As it happens, I'm a right decent conversationalist.

I post this because the last I heard about these AIM problems--around the 13th--some people posted that it was magically working again, though I have seen a post or two on other forums indicating ongoing problems.

So do y'all think I really fixed it by disabling the firewall, or was it mere coincidence?