does gaim do anything for you?

[Paul E Johnson <pauljohn ukans edu>]

My daughter wants to use AOL Instant messenger. I don't know what it is,
but I signed her up and installed gaim from the helixcode distribution. 
It takes the name/password and starts up, but nothing happens.  We have
friends who say they are online and we try to send them a message. gaim
responds "user is not available."  But we call them at that instant, and
they say they are there.

Possibly a related gaim problem is that, in the Online window, it shows
the names of the lists, but it won't show the names of any of the
buddies within the list.

I've downloaded the aim-beta client from AOL and get basically the same
results, it cannot find any users.  The aol client logs into the OSCAR
server, while with gaim I've tried both OSCAR and TOC.

I'm wondering if I'm behind some kind of proxy server or something. I've
got a cable modem, but I don't know that any firewall exists at the
cable company.
 
-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: pauljohn ukans edu
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700