September 10th, 2017:

	I did something I haven't done in ages last night:  I went on IRC.  
I can't remember the last time I was on IRC, maybe 15-20 years ago?  
Things were pretty quiet on Freenode, didn't seem like anyone was talking, 
a far cry from how I remember things.  Of course, I do tend to idealize my 
memories, look at them through rose-coloured terminals...

I had a Hell of a time tracking down a decent IRC client that'd still run 
on this ancient XP laptop (an old Hexchat wouldn't install).  The only one 
I could find that was still actively maintained (and would run on XP) was 
mIRC, so I did the unthinkable and paid the $20 to register it.

Yeah, I know.  There's more and better for free and I'm a fool for blowing 
good money on the abhorrent mIRC, but after trying a few others, mIRC was 
the only one that'd run that I could tolerate.  That, and I *really* 
wanted to be on IRC right then and there.  So fuck off.

Speaking of blowing money, I also paid to reinstate my VPN access here at 
SDF, hopefully I get my keys soon.

I'm really missing my Linux laptop right now.  It's gonna be a while 
before I can replace it and, with my lab out of commission for the next 
few weeks, I'm stuck using XP.

Not that it's a death sentence, mind you.  I can get by quite happily, 
app-wise.  I spent several (!) hours going through my group lists on 
Eternal September, Albasani, Gmane, and Gwene, subscribing and 
unsubscribing as personal taste dictates, after which I spent four hours 
catching up on things.

What did I learn after spending half a day, all told, on the Usenet?  I 
need to work on my killfile, and to score any articles with the words 
Trump, Obama, Bush, Nazi, Democrat, Liberal, etc, really really low (if 
not delete them outright)...  I hate partisan politics at the best of 
time (especially American politics), and don't see how it's relevant in a 
newsgroup dedicated to, say, gardening or cycling.

Anyhow, back at it.