Mailing Lists
The bulk of my time on the net these days (aside from IRC) is spent in email, dealing with all the email people send me from this site, and on the few mailing lists to which I still belong. There's one professional mailing list, Chefs and Cooks on the Internet, which is great; plus motss-food, a food-lovers list, and a private social and music-related list (hey, 'Taters!) with a bunch of friends of mine.There are some other lists I'm on but I've set myself inactive or signed off 'cause I simply don't have the time to keep up with them -- others, which shall remain nameless, I quit because they degenerated into a morass of idiocy, unfortunately. Maybe one day I'll sign up for some of them again; some of them were great lists, and I kind of miss them:
- GAELIC-L: The Gaelic Languages List
- IRTRAD-L: The Irish Traditional Music List
- Chile Heads: The list for lovers of spicy cuisine
- FOLKDJ-L: Folk/Roots/Bluegrass Music DJs' list
- The New Orleans Mailing List
- Passenger Side: The alternative/roots/insurgent country music list
- Poi-Pounders: The Poi Dog Pondering List
- Postcard: The Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt list
Usenet
I'm back to lurking a lot these days, as I don't have nearly as much time to post as I'd like ... sigh. Here's where I (mostly) lurk and/or (occasionally) post:
- alt.music.world
- la.eats: a food-oriented group local to the Los Angeles area)
- rec.music.celtic
- rec.music.country.old-time
- rec.music.folk
- rec.food.cooking.misc and most of the rest of the rec.food.* hierarchy
- soc.motss
IRC
In October of 1994, one net.person with whom I became good friends urged me to try IRC (dammit, Gilly!), God help me ... I had now found IRC. Another good chunk of my day down the drain, or more specifically, several hours less sleep than I'm used to. It's very much worth it, though, because I've made some marvelous, life-long friends from there. I'm happy to say, though, that I've managed to learn to moderate my time chatting on there.My IRC nick is almost always "Chuq", or "Chuqie" if that vile Australian guy is already using it. I used to be "ChefChuck", even though I won't be a real chef for a while yet. It had a nice ring to it, but I got kinda tired of it. Change is good.
But I'm there at some point most days; do a /whois Chuq and you'll find me. If you instead find some guy from *.au, try /whois Chuqie. That'll do it.
Incidentally, all this helps compound the problem of how to get enough sleep, and why I don't always respond to email in a timely manner.
Now, if you're not bored enough, pop back up to my bio page and root through some of the other crap I've got in there. It's fascinating. Really.