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October 26, 2006

Dropping the addiction that is irc

So for about 8-10 years now, I've been on irc. I don't think I can count a full month where I've not been on irc. As of last night at 2 am I am attempting to drop my addiction. I've done this a few times privately with poor results at best, so I think if I blog about it some it may help me to keep with it.

So first, some background. I first started irc'ing back in the day, and latched onto #windows95 on dalnet at some point. I went by db-25 for about 2 months and idled a lot. My personality clashed with a lot of other people's personalities, and I eventually changed my nick to The_Tick. I've held that moniker for my stint on irc.

Eventually I switched to linux and started delving into linux channels. The most important thing I learned from a linux channel is that if someone doesn't know what they are talking about, they'll act like they do anyhow, and when asked for information they'll tell you to go find it. It seems to serve some people well.

About 4 years ago (5 maybe) I switched to OS X. I got an iBook and needed more information about OS X. Some people would have googled, I went straight to the source, people on irc.

In other words, every time I got a new system, irc had been an important part of my life when learning that system. There are countless people wasting their time on irc right now for all sorts of topics, and if you ask the question the right way you'll get the right answer.

I've used irc while at work, on the phone with customers. My theory is/was that everyone needs a distraction in order to get their job done in the help desk/IT area. When a user is trying to blame the vpn software you support when it's actually his stealing wireless from his neighbor, you kind of reach for anything you can to not yell at the guy and thus lose your job.

And that's not all. I had let irc enter my life, weave into my very soul for a very long time. It's scary when I wouldn't even realize I was using it, or that I'd say I'd go to sleep and 2 hours later there I was, still on irc.

About 1/10 of the time was actually useful. For instance, Growl would basically not exist without having had irc. We used irc for almost everything. I feel bad for people on the mailing list, they were so out of the loop.

But spending 3 days to argue about a check box (that's 3 days straight, no interruption. 72 hours of argument) can really just point out to you how bad it can be.

I've used an ungodly amount of irc clients. Every single one has it's own problems, it's own quirks, and it's own vehement userbase who thinks nothing else could be better.

IRC clients on the whole tend to suck. With the exception of about 2-3 per platform they all tend to really suck. On the mac it's even worse, there isn't a really good GUI client at all. They deliver 3/4 of the package, and none of them really get it completely. The closest you'll get is settling or going with a client like irssi.

Bearing all of this in mind, I still used irc happily until a day ago. A Growl user, Macskeeball, emailed me. Here's what he said:

Note: I know that we're supposed to post feature ideas, etc. on CocoaForge, but for the past four years (slightly over a fifth of my life) I had extremely strong addictions to forums (especially the MacAddict Forums), instant messaging, and video games. These three addictions had occupied an overwhelming majority of my waking and sleeping thoughts. To say that they *were* my life and my idols during those for years would not be much of an exaggeration. A couple of months ago I made the decision to drop video games cold turkey and succeeded with little trouble, and a few weeks ago I decided that it was time to do the same for the other two (much stronger) addictions. During the time when I was actively posting on CocoaForge, I really felt that it could become another MacAddict Forums (by far the strongest of all of these addicitons) for me if I let it, and as such I must stay away from it as well. I have nothing whatsoever against the community; quite the contrary, my love for it was exactly the problem. I don't plan on submitting Growl suggestions very often at all, but I have one now that I think I should share.

He subsequently made a decently good feature request. All of this got me thinking, and the result is that I've realized that I need to drop some addictions as well. No, the alcohol won't be going (I drink it sparingly), but some other things will be. IRC was just the low hanging fruit.

We'll see how this goes, I'll report back when I feel I should. I quit cigs cold turkey at 2 packs a day, I should be able to drop irc right?