What I would love to see (and use!) is an instant messaging app with an interface modeled after Adobe palettes. In a standard, consolidated view, you'd have just two windows. One would be the buddy list, and the second would be a general chatting window. Within the latter window, each buddy that you're currently talking to would have a tab. A new message would be indicated by flashing in the taskbar, plus flashing in the tab of its specific sender.

The kicker in this, though, is how modular it would be. Dragging the tab of a buddy outside its present window would make it its own window. Dragging tabs from one window to another is also possible. This way, you could maintain, for example, a window where you're bouncing ideas around with a project group, a window for inane but funny messages that you're sending around with your roommates, and a window for the old friend you haven't talked to in two months and desperately need to catch up with.

And, since it's so modular, you could also super-consolidate everything into one window, which would be cool if you were simultaneously signed on to multiple screen names, or multiple networks such as ICQ, MSN, and AIMamp;in which case you could maintain one window for each identity. Implementing this as a transparent add-on to AIM's software wouldn't be so very complicated, I think—after all, you're only manipulating the local interface and keeping your fingers completely out of the networking pie. I wonder if, and hope that, somebody has already done so; if they have, I further hope that I get my hands on their URL.

A thought game more interesting than counting sheep is freezing your current thought, and trying to backtrack its ancestry. In this case, I was reading kottke.org, where he made a brief mention of Adium versus Jaguar's iChat... which led me to go to Adium's site to look for screenshots... which let me to re-investigate Trillian... which (mental hyperlink only) led me to think about this new interface for IMing that I just described... which I thought would be a cool project for CS247a, a class I've been wanting to take since last spring but is only offered winter quarter... which led me to the time schedule online... which led to the renaissance of so much excitement and possibility that every new quarter brings.

I think my mythical engraved asteroid in the kitchen sink has arrived, reinforced, in no particular order, by (1) memories of how excited I was about HCI after Admit Weekend; (2) the realization that a majority of designers out there only know JavaScript, which I can take to another level with SymSys and Stanford's amazing CS department; (3) work this summer; (4) a book about complexity theory that someone sent me; (5) talking to my housemate Sean, who's right at the front line of Silicon Valley, in his less tanning-salon-and-Playmates moments; and (6) my loathing for Statics. SymSys it is, and full speed ahead, with only the cool product design courses sprinkled in for good measure.

Huh. In writing the last two paragraphs, I've gotten myself thoroughly convinced. Weird. And also really psyched for Fall Quarter. In a way, I'm done with summer—done with random absurd conversations and putting myself into bizarre situations, ready to move in to Synergy and start classes and SOOP trips and ultimate practice. In another sense, it has been those very experiences this summer propelling me to this point, so perhaps I'd better not be an ingrate.