You ever notice how many users in the IRC channel seem to always be online, yet when you speak to them, you may or may not get an answer? They do this by leaving a client connected all the time, whether or not they are sitting at the keyboard. This means that they can pick up the conversation when they return, and that other people can leave them messages.

New to IRC? Here are some commands to get you started:

• /help Display help.
• /clear Clear the chat output in this channel.
• /nick [nick] Change your nickname.
• /msg [nick] [msg] Send a private message.
• /whois [nick] Find out all manner of things about someone.
• /me [text] Action
• /away [msg] Set your status to away.
• /back Set your status to back.

Information on configuring and using some of the more popular IRC clients:

My simple howto:

Welcome to #wsulug, our little spot of the great indoors.

Our channel is hosted by Freenode and this interface is powered by qwebirc. Feel free to join any conversations that are taking place. Just don't be an asshat.

New to IRC? Help is available in the menu to the left.

If you are here because you're pissed that your account was purged and you didn't want it to be, I humbly apologize. The system used apparently had a flaw in its purging algorithm. It made the assumption that everyone who reached the 1 year limit had been warned -- at that time. This means that anyone who'd reached 13 months (1 year + 1 month grace period) was first warned that they had one month left, and then summarily deleted. Fast month, eh?