I was thinking, it might be a nice idea to organise a chatroom or something for real-time dialogue as a supplement to this forum.

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 01, 2005

Answers

Happy New Year Olly. May God bless you.

-- - (David@excite.com), January 01, 2005.

Thankyou David. God bless you and your family for a wonderful New Year too! 8-)

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 01, 2005.

Yahoogroups offers chat rooms for free when you form a group. So perhaps we could form a Yahoo! group and schedule times for chatting?

I think it's a wonderful idea, Oliver!

One problem with this might be that people may have to form a Yahoo! ID account, but I think this can be done even through using another email service.

Any other ideas?

-- Emily ("jesusfollower7@yahoo.com"), January 01, 2005.

Bravenet. we can use a Bravenet account...There free...

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), January 01, 2005.

Yahoo accounts and email addresses are free and easy to get. I think it is a really cool idea too !

Thanks and glory be to God !

-- Suzanne (james-betsy@sbcglobal.net), January 01, 2005.

Personally, I like the IRC chat system, whereby we could easily make our own chatroom and have OPs chosen for the channel to keep it moderated. Mirc is a great IRC client available at www.mirc.com

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 02, 2005.

Ok everyone, I've made a channel on the IRC network DALNET. The channel is called #Greenspun_catholic. If I'm online, you'll see me as Royal_Son. I hope we can get quite a lot of people on there.

To download the chat client, simply goto www.mirc.com/get.html

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 04, 2005.

i'll download the client when i return to campus this weekend, until then i'm on a parent's computer

perhaps in the meantime, olly, you could post us some detailed directions on how to use IRC so that those of us who are IRC non- literate will know how to find the room you created

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), January 04, 2005.

As kindly requested, here is an overview of the MIRC chat client. Although it is by no means exhaustive, it should cover the necessary basics for us.

IRC itself is not a network but rather a standard used by its respective network servers and connecting clients.

Once you have downloaded and installed MIRC on your machine, you may open it and start configuring your settings. If the settings window does not come up automatically, you can access it by clicking on the second button in your toolbar which looks like a folder icon. When you hover your mouse pointer over it, it should say "Options". Click there.

Now you will have a window pop up which contains nearly all the settings you'll be dealing with in MIRC.

On the left hand side of the window, you shall see a list of option categories : Connect, IRC, Sounds, Mouse, DCC, Display, Other.

Double click on Connect

In the right hand side of your window, fill out the appropriate details.

Full Name
Email Address
Nick Name
Alternative

For the nick name entry, please choose a name that is appropriate and not using symbols or alternating upper and lower case characters LiKe ThIs.

Click on "Servers" in the menu list on the left hand side of your window under "Connect" which you previously selected.

There are two list boxes, under the headings IRC Network and IRC Server respectively.

Click on the first box, and select "Dalnet".

Click on the second box and select a server. The one that seems to work for me the best is Mesra, but it could be different for you. As long as it connects to the server, that's fine.

Click on the "Connect to Server" button at the bottom of your window.

Wait for Mirc to connect. If you have problems, go back into the options window (Clicking the second icon on the toolbar again), And choose a different server to connect to (Only select from the second box, not the first because you still want Dalnet).

Once you are connected, type the following:

/join #greenspun_catholic

Hopefully there should be others in the room too.

If you have any difficulties, post them here, I'll try to help.

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 04, 2005.

Oliver, perhaps we could set up a time to meet in this chat room? I don't have time to go there all the time but arranging a time would work better I think. Thanks for setting this up & God bless!

-- Emily ("jesusfollower7@yahoo.com"), January 04, 2005.

Umm, that might be a bit difficult if everyone lives in different time zones. I was thinking of just leaving it on for people to come in whenever they like.

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 04, 2005.

Hmm, for now I don't think this chat is going anywhere, so if anyone wishes to contact me, i'm on MSN messenger (spicenut@hotmail.com) , AOL Messenger (vladisar1976), and ICQ (22278227).

I hope to chat to some of you.

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 08, 2005.

What would you like to talk about? I'm curious, is anyone in this forum from NY. I am, upstate.

-- Jason (Enchantedfire5@yahoo.com), January 09, 2005.

Just to get to know you all better. And it's a good chance for direct fellowship which can be difficult at times on threads when things can go off on tangents etc.

-- Oliver Fischer (spicenut@excite.com), January 10, 2005.