#nightowls on DALnet - Meet the Regulars

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#nightowls

on DALnet
The friendliest channel on IRC for people who are up when they shouldn't be
*** MEET #2: MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND IN COLUMBUS, OHIO! DETAILS SOON! ***
Who's Who · Channel Rules · How to Get On · Hoot the Bot · Chicago Meet · Meet #2 · Owl Talk

Hi! I'm Pestle, one of the ops on #nightowls. We're a chat channel on the DALnet IRC network for people who are awake at night: shift workers, students, new parents, insomniacs, a couple of DJs and at least one baker. The channel gets going every night around 11 Eastern (8 out here on the West Coast) and doesn't really quiet down until the East Coast people start leaving for work. If you can't sleep, come say hi. Somebody will be up.

I made this page in October so new people could put faces to the nicks (well, not faces, we don't have a scanner between us, but you know what I mean). Everybody on the who's-who said it was okay to be on it.

WHO'S WHO
The regulars, in no special order. Age and state as of when they told me!

Nick	The one-liner
Moonpie 31, Ohio	Founder. Registered `#nightowls` in 1995. A 911 dispatcher on nights, so if Moonpie goes quiet in the middle of a sentence, somebody is having a worse night than you.
Spike 26, Illinois	Op. Runs Hoot the bot. Hosted the Chicago meet. Owns a camera. Does not own a calendar, apparently. (See below.)
Pestle 23, California	Me! Pharmacy technician on the overnight shift in San Diego. On every night I'm off, and for an hour before my shift when I'm not.
Insomniac_Al 44, Pennsylvania	Hasn't slept a full night since 1987, he says. Knows more about old movies than anyone alive.
GraveyardGirl 20, Texas	Works the night desk at a motel and tells the best stories about the guests. No names, of course.
NightHawk 38, Florida	A baker. Logs on at midnight, logs off at two to go start the ovens. Has promised everyone on the channel a cinnamon roll.
Bean 19, Minnesota	College freshman. Says she's studying. Is not studying.
Tumbleweed 52, Arizona	Retired Air Force. Our oldest regular and our best storyteller. Types with two fingers and still beats most of us.
ZZZ 29, New York	New dad. Up with the baby every two hours. Types one-handed, so be patient.
Luna_ 24, Washington	Plays bass in a band in Seattle. Comes on after gigs, ears still ringing. The underscore is because somebody else has "Luna."
Crash 22, Georgia	Says one very funny thing a night and then disappears.
OwlEyes 35, Michigan	Second shift at an auto plant. On at midnight when he gets home, with a sandwich.
Kettle 41, New Jersey	Op. Insomnia, tea, and the patience of a saint with newbies. If you have a question, ask Kettle.
Starboard 27, Virginia	Navy. Here when he's not at sea, and when he comes back he wants to know everything he missed.
Gizmo 18, Wisconsin	Fixes everybody's computer problems. Has never once fixed his own.
Velvet 33, Louisiana	Overnight DJ at a rock station. Plays requests from the channel when she can get away with it.
Pixel 25, Colorado	Runs the night shift in a university computer lab. Has the fastest connection of any of us and never lets us forget it.
Domino 30, Missouri	Night security at an office building. Does his rounds every hour on the hour and says "brb rounds" every time.
Sparrow 21, North Carolina	Night auditor at a hotel. Balances the books at 3 a.m. and asks us to check her math.
Rerun 36, California	Watches the late-late shows and gives us live reports on the infomercials. The other Californian, up north.

That's twenty of us. There are plenty more who drop in once a week or once a month. If you're a regular and you're not on here, e-mail me your nick, age, state and a line about yourself!

CHANNEL RULES

Be nice. No flaming. If you have a fight to pick, take it to /msg.
Say hi first. Don't open with "a/s/l?" We'll tell you about ourselves. Talk to us first.
No flooding. No scripts that paste twenty lines of colors, no repeating yourself, no sounds.
No CAPS LOCK. It's yelling, and it's 2 a.m.
Keep it friendly. This is a hangout, not that kind of channel. If you're looking for that kind of channel, DALnet has plenty, and you can go find one.
Don't ask for ops. Moonpie gives ops to regulars who've been around a while. Asking is the surest way not to get them.
No advertising other channels or web pages without asking an op.
Lurkers welcome. Say good night when you go so we don't worry.

Break a rule and an op will warn you. Break it again and you get kicked. Third time, Hoot bans you for 24 hours. We almost never have to get past the warning.

HOW TO GET ON

Get an IRC program. On Windows, use mIRC. It's shareware and it's on every big shareware site and probably on a disk at your friend's house. Get the 32-bit version if you have Windows 95. Mac people, try Ircle.
Pick a server. In mIRC's setup window, choose a DALnet server from the list, or just type in irc.dal.net with port 6667 and it'll find you one.
Pick a nick and register it so nobody else can take it: type /msg NickServ REGISTER yourpassword. Write your password down!
Connect, then type /join #nightowls
Say hi! Hoot will say hi back, and then a human will.

HOOT THE BOT

Hoot is our bot. Hoot is not a person, so don't flirt with Hoot. (Bean.) Hoot is an Eggdrop that runs on a computer at Spike's work, with permission, Spike swears. Hoot's jobs:

Sits in the channel 24 hours a day so it never closes. #nightowls is registered with ChanServ, so nobody can steal it, but somebody has to be in it to hold the topic, and in the daytime that's Hoot.
Gives ops to the ops when they come in, and says hi to everybody it knows.
Remembers who's been around. Type !seen nick and Hoot will tell you when that person was last here.
Kicks flooders before an op even sees them. Hoot doesn't sleep. Hoot is the ultimate night owl.

THE CHICAGO MEET
Labor Day weekend, 1996

Eleven of us met in Chicago over Labor Day weekend: Spike (host), Moonpie, Kettle, OwlEyes, Bean, Insomniac_Al, Crash, Sparrow, Domino, Pixel and me. I flew in from San Diego on Friday night with my heart in my throat, because what if everybody was weird? Everybody was weird. It was perfect.

Saturday we went to Navy Pier and rode the Ferris wheel, and Domino turned out to be scared of heights, which he had never once mentioned in all his time on the channel. Saturday night was deep-dish pizza and then all eleven of us on Spike's roof until the sun came up over the lake, because of course we were. Sunday we slept until two in the afternoon and then went down to the lakefront. Monday was goodbyes at the airport and a lot of hugging from people who had only ever been words on a screen.

Weird things we learned: Moonpie is six foot three. Kettle sounds exactly like she types. Bean is even funnier out loud. Nobody looked anything like I pictured, except Insomniac_Al, who looked exactly like I pictured.

Pictures when Spike's film comes back!
(Update, January 12: SPIKE. Take it to the drugstore. It has been four months.)

MEET #2: COLUMBUS!
Memorial Day weekend, 1997

Moonpie is hosting Meet #2 in Columbus, Ohio, over Memorial Day weekend! Details soon! Columbus is a lot closer for most of you East Coast people than Chicago was, so no excuses this time. I'm saving my vacation days now.

Said they're coming so far: Moonpie, Kettle, OwlEyes, Insomniac_Al, Sparrow, Starboard (if he's not at sea), ZZZ (if the baby lets him), and me. Tell Moonpie on the channel if you're in!

Hotel, plans and directions coming soon!

OWL TALK
Things we say that nobody else understands

dawn patrol: Whoever's still on when the sun comes up on the East Coast. Usually Insomniac_Al, Kettle and whoever is sad that night.
hoot: How we say hi. Type /me hoots when you come in and everybody hoots back.
brb rounds: Back in five minutes. From Domino. Now everybody says it, even me when I'm just getting a soda.
the 4 o'clock wall: When even the night owls start making typos. Nobody's at their best after the wall.
going to roost: Logging off to sleep. Say it so we don't worry.

Owls who've found this page:

since October 1996

Questions? Want on the who's-who? [email protected]
Last updated Sunday, March 16, 1997

See you on the channel! /me hoots