Many of us like to chat with our fellow September Moms around the world. To do this we use Internet Rely Chat. For those of you already familiar with IRC we meet each Wednesday night at 6 p.m. pacific / 7 p.m. mountain / 8 p.m. central / 9 p.m. eastern on Undernet in the #septmoms channel. Folks also talk at other times of the week and sometimes use our channel on Dalnet, #septmoms.

You can find people to chat with two ways. The first is to send a message to the list saying that you would like to chat and tell people where you will be (Undernet or Dalnet). The next way to find folks is to check and see if they are on AOL Internet Messenger or ICQ. Many non-AOL users in our group use this to let folks know they are online. For a list of current nicknames and ICQ numbers click here.

IRC for Newbies:
For the IRC newbies out there, you can join chat too! First, you will need IRC software. The two main Windows based programs are mIRC and pIRCh.

The best site to download mIRC from is Tucows at http://download.tucows.com/partners/mirc/.
Follow the link and you will be prompted for your location. Follow the rest of the prompts, and you will have the software installed and running before you know it! To get into chat once you have installed your software, go into mIRC. You will then see the opening screen with the product creator. Close this window and you will be prompted to make a connection. In the upper pull-down menu box, select either "Random US Dalnet Server" or "Random US Undernet Server" depending on whether you want to go to Dalnet or Undernet. Once you have connected you will be prompted to join a channel. Type in our channel name, #septmoms and you will be there!

For pIRCh you can go to http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~frappa/pirch.html to download the software.