Mine was in July 2000 back in the days of BuffyUK. I was absolutely terrified and didn't know what the heck i was doing (which i suppose is nothing new ) and it was VelvetGlove who put me at my ease and talked me through it all. Never really looked back since

Chat has come in really handy at really stressful times of my life.. when i was pregnant with Hannah and i had the bad result for Downs Syndrome, when she came along so soon, people in there were just fantastic. Everytime i popped in for a chat, they'd ask about Hannah, how she was doing etc. Really helped me through some dark times. Now she keeps me so busy i find i hardly have time to pop in these days, which i must rectify soon

I first popped into chat back in the BuffyUK days as well. I first went in after the posting board had gone down around December 1999 before I knew there was a posting board. I went in as Fork Guy and there was only one person in there and I even tried to strike up a conversation about Buffy!! *shock, horror!* How little did I know.

I didn't go back in for a while after that. I registered as Whistler on the boards in January 2000 and I guess the next time I popped into chat would have been at some point in the Spring of 2000 when the likes of Cherry, Wiggy, VG, Wo, Stoo and Sange were the regs in there.

Ahh, that takes me back.

Thing is, I've always been more of a poster than a chatter which is why I don't often go in there these days (although I used to be in the BUK chatroom almost every night in it's heyday).

But I still pop into chat every now and then.

First tried IRC when I went to college and encountered the internet and irc for the first time, they had one rather old 386-16 with a shiney new 14.4k modem that was hidden up one corner of the library.

With a copy of NCSA mosaic and a little while later a copy of Netscape v1 I first browsed the net and encountered IRC, I downloaded a very basic chat client (mirc didn't even exist lol) and found an open public irc server and had a mooch about.

A little while later the college disconnected the internet because the phone bills were too high (over £900 a week I seem to remember - you had to dial up a London number as there wasn't a local point of presence). Before too long the popularity of the little system grew enough for the college to buy in a 64k leased line and hang 4 new machines off it, specifically for browsing the net and using chat.

I found the Undernet irc network and made a few friends in the #Amiga channel, after a little while myself and a couple of others set up a sister channel - #Modules for sharing amiga soundtracker/octamed modules It was all good, but eventually I finished college and went to being Internetless for a couple of years until I went to University.

I had my own pc etc and dialed up with force9 on a special low rate sheffield number, mooched about and found a channel on one of the irc networks called #BuffyUK (not the same one) had fun in there for a while, meeting new people and just chatting the idle hours away.

A little while later all hell broke loose and #BuffyUK vanished from the server it was on, but I found it again on another network, but it wasn't the same channel some of the old people appeared on it, but most of the others didn't.

I made friends with cherry_LL who introduced me to tam_ara and a few others, and the rest is history
So I've been IRC-ing for about umm 8-9 years

Edit: found some old logs from March 2000, I used to have some going back to mid 1999, but they've been lost thanks to various computer related calamities over the years Oh well

(Edited by Stoo 27/05/2003 13:28)

i remember having a lot of trouble trying to get into the chatroom my first time lol this was not too long after N2k my first con and also my first introduction to a yukker it was also the only site i wanted to check out when i got home (there were many advertised by fellow con goers) and this too was back in the era that was buffyuk i remember getting slayerslut into it too. like whistler after my initial first few times being a bit scarey you couldn't get me outta that place except when a certain site owner back then used to freak me out. but there is where i met Tam and Mon and all the regulars too. (to long a go now to name everyone but most are named in the above entries.)
i miss those days and i think i've only been into chat twice now in the last 2 years since moving.

Uhmm thats a very long time ago....

Let's see 7 or 8 years ago.... Had one of the first P90's but still had a 14k4 modem. I chatted a lot online on DALNET with a mate of mine who was sitting next to me in some of my classes.

Started out in #Helpdesk as my mate was an Op there. Under math classes we used to write IRC scripts and even communicated IRC style only using pen and paper with a piece of A4 in between us (well you had to be quite )

At home we only had like 10 hours of internet in the month but I hijacked an unlimited account from a collegue of mine as he had unlimited hours and wanted me to reinstall the comp I just copied the login and password.... I think the password was rhuk3v8 if I'm not mistaken but it's a long long time ago

So this resulted in a very high phonebill

Worked my way up in #helpdesk to voice and than eventually to an Op basically answering most IRC related problems.

After a few years that got a bit boring and I ran into this url to buffyuk on the bbc website and ended up in chat with StuStuStu helping out in the days that buffyuk still had an unregistered forum with only 1 moderator login..... I think that I made op in #buffyuk on the 6th or 9th of december and was kicked up to sOP instead of Electrotec how caused some trouble.....

I think the rest is give or take known to most people here

Ooh the good old days......

i really can't remember my first time in chat. wow, i must have a bad memory.

I do remember classic times though in the early days, like auctioning off my mum - i think i ended up with a chocolate bar and a dirty magazine found in a bus shelter.

And then i think it was Christmas 2000 when Wiggy and I went into competition and tried to sell monks and nuns in the chat room. Wow, those were the days