i just got a beta of trillian pro 3 and this thing rox! it can yse your windows login icon for your budy icon, it shows peoples icons by their names in the budy list (kinda like game, but they look nicer) and it puts the brb on top of their icon if theyr awat/idle. but the coolest thing is that if you leave logging enabled it can sort your previous chats by date, allow you to search em, and it still shows a bit of the last conversation in the box greyed out.

I highly reccomend it.
http://www.trillian.cc/

wow - i have a journal! check that out!
this is kinda like a blog aint it?