Chatting on the Net Chatting on the Net Chatting on the Net
Your information source for IRC, Webchat, and Instant Messenger Chat




A Brief History of New2Chat and NewIRCusers

The Webmaster

Mike Hoff
The Webmistress (and Tyler)

Judy Hoff
Mike and Judy live in Houston, Texas with their 9 cats, Punkin, Belle, Salem, Tailer, Opie, Tucker, Bevin, Rupert, and Matilda. Mike is 57 and has worked as an R&D chemist for 35 years at Baroid Drilling Fluids which was bought out by Halliburton. Judy is the bookkeeper for Furniture Technicians of Houston and is 57 years "old", 2 weeks older than Mike (and I never let her forget it either!).

This "history" is dedicated to all our wonderful IRC friends (Maggot who moved with us from EFnet, Shrew, Jane, dnstairs, and Zoomer who were all "born" on Dalnet. They’ve shared the good times as well as the bad with us, and remained supportive and loyal through it all. A special thanks to dnstairs who put the "bug in my ear" about registering the domain. I’m still not convinced he didn’t do it on purpose just so I’d get Mike motivated! {{HUGS}} to all of you who helped make it happen.

Most people look at these pictures and think, "Hmph! They’re just an ordinary looking couple." Of course, our friends know differently because they have the advantage of knowing our rather extraordinary history. If you’re curious about how people like us ended up with our own domain on the WWW, here’s a little bit of information about who we are and how we got here.

The adorable, mischievous looking guy on the left is Mike (aka pipur on IRC), who happens to be married (sorry girls!!) to the shy, innocent looking gal on the right, Judy (aka Alleghany on IRC). All our IRC friends are choking and ROTFL at those descriptions, which are quite different from our online personalities that they know so well. Actually, the descriptions more accurately reflect what we’re like in real life. On IRC, it’s a totally different story, which I’ll begin now.

When Mike and I met on the #ircnewbies channel on Efnet in September 1995, I had no idea what IRC was, other than it enabled me to talk to people all over the world. Most of the ops on the channel were helpful, but it was one particular op, Mike, who took me under his wing and became my IRC mentor. He taught me almost everything I know about IRC (I did manage to teach him a few tricks now and then, however). We developed a close friendship and spent many hours talking and getting to "know" each other. Mike’s patience was tested far beyond its limits with my outrageous behavior, but we shared many good times on #ircnewbies, and we made some terrific friends.

In November of '95, #ircnewbies started experiencing a lot of problems with channel administration and "politics" among the ops. Mike was always more interested in the "techno" help aspect rather than the "chat", so we moved to the then new and small IRC network Dalnet, and set up "housekeeping" on our own newbies help channel, #New*IRC*Users (affectionately known as #NIU). Mike was the knowledgeable, techno guy, and I was the "social director". In other words, he told them how to do things, and I provided the "entertainment". Several friends from Efnet also moved to Dalnet and shared our abode. With their recruiting help, our channel became one of the most popular help channels and we were rarely without visitors.

Mike and I complemented each other and worked so well together that we decided we could make our relationship work in real life. I was going through a very bad personal situation at the time, and Mike decided I needed to be "rescued". In March 1996, he drove all the way from Texas to Virginia to pick me up and move me (along with Huey, my cat) back to Texas to live with him. (NOTE: for all you romantics out there, when he came to Virginia to get me, we had never met in person…only spent lengthy phone conversations together and exchanged pictures! He said I was costing him too much in phone calls, and he was losing too much sleep from spending time on IRC with me, so it would be cheaper and easier to move me to Texas with him!) I spent our first six months becoming oriented to my new life, and since I wasn’t working, I spent a lot of time during the day attending the channel. We were still online together in the evenings and on weekends. On January 9, 1997 we tied the knot.

Many newbies we helped became channel regulars, and a "family" group developed. We thought of them as our "children" since we helped launch many of them into the world of IRC. Along with the channel operation, Mike developed a #newircusers homepage to offer IRC help information to a broader range of people. As always seems to happen with new, small networks, Dalnet grew in popularity, and #NIU was arguably instrumental in Dalnet's extraodinary growth. Along with Dalnet's growth came the hassles of larger network politics, administration problems, etc. As a result, a satellite #NIU channel was opened on AnotherNet. Mike and I were beginning to spend less and less time on IRC, and "real life" was making more demands on our time. (Translation: I got a job and couldn’t spend all day attending to channel operations.) There were also some internal problems with channel operation (which I will not go into), and we finally relinquished control of our channel to dnstairs (one of our ops) in December, 1996. The #NIU channel continued on Dalnet for a while, but the network disturbances became too much and everyone eventually moved permanently to #NIU on AnotherNet, run by another of our "children", Shrew . By this time, Mike and I rarely spent any time online any more. We’d stop in to visit now and then, just to keep in touch with the "children" and see how they were doing. Mike still maintained the #newircusers homepage which continued to grow in popularity and recognition.

Dnstairs had started a #NIU channel homepage (now defunct), where he maintained info on all the ops and regulars, and pertinent channel business. Eventually, the channel moved to Starchat.net after Anothernet closed its doors. During one of my infrequent visits to #NIU on Starchat, dnstairs happened to ask me if Mike had thought of registering NewIRCusers as a domain, and if we weren’t interested in doing it, would we mind if he did. At the time, I told him there was no copyright on the name and he said he’d look into it. Well, that got me to thinking. (I know, an extremely dangerous circumstance!) I emailed dnstairs and explained to him that even though we weren’t involved in online activities that much any more, that we still had sentimental ties to the name "NewIRCusers", and that it just wouldn’t be right for anyone else to register the name. For once, I was very nice about explaining my feelings to dnstairs and he understood. When I told Mike about dnstairs' request, it got his wheels turning and he started looking into the possibility of establishing a domain. Anyway, to make this meanderingly, long story shorter, Mike ended up registering the domain and moving the homepage info to www.newircusers.com. #NIU returned to Dalnet, and stayed around for a while, run by our "eldest daughter", Shrewbie. (I know that reference to "eldest" will have her blowing Pepsi out her nose!) As with all good things #newircusers closed it's doors a few months later and is no longer in existance. Only the web presence remains.

On February 6, 2005, newircusers.com was changed to new2chat.com. Why? Because some fool wanted to pay us an outrageous sum of money to buy the domain newircusers.com. We may be somewhat sentimental, but we're also not THAT attached to a name when it comes to a substantial sum of money. Money does talk!

That’s how two seemingly ordinary people, living 1200 miles apart, met on IRC, founded a channel, fell in love, got together, got married, and ended up with their own domain! Ain’t modern technology and the Internet just the ultimate best?!!
Judy (aka Alleghany)