Work was frantic today. Everyone and his brother decided to come to the library for some reason. The benefit, of course, is that the day flew by super fast! So before I knew it, it was time to go home and relax for the rest of the weekend.

Jonas spend most of the day studying for a certification exam he's signed up to take on Monday. When I got ome he hopped in the shower and got dressed, then we headed to Noodles & Co. for dinner. As usual, the food was delicious, but next to us was a table with a group of about 10 teenagers who were exceedingly loud and annoying. We couldn't have held a conversation between the two of us if we'd tried, so we pretty much just finished our respective meals in relative silence. The guy who'd brought our food also left us two coupons for free dessert, so on our way out we picked out some giant cookies to take home. Yummy.

In the last few days I've been bumping into an unlikely number of ancient acquaintances, people I knew 8-10 years ago on old talkers like Castle and Lakeside whom I haven't encountered or been in touch with for ages. It's been great catching up and reminiscing about "the good ol' days" when the the phenomenon of Telnet was a most magical thing. Does anyone but us old-timers even use Telnet anymore? Or know what it is?

Nowadays most Internet chat rooms are web-based, with little personality. People who are new to or first becoming interested in the Internet generally encounter a web browser first. As a result, if they're interested in chatting with others they will most likely do it through that interface. Unfortunately, this negatively affects the user base of Telnet-based chat which, with the exception of a few brave souls "crossing over" to Telnet perhaps via the invitation of a friend, is steadily shrinking. Heck, I didn't even have a graphical web browser the first year I had my PC. Then I had to buy more memory so that I could actually even run Netscape (and even then it crashed half the time).

Just about everyone has a basic Telnet program on their PC, and very few probably know what it is. It's yours, it's free to use, why not try it out? Check out one of these communities:

The Resort: By far the largest talker around, and with that comes the good and the bad. Let's take the bad first: with a larger general population comes a larger potential for annoying gits whose first question will probably be, "Do you have a boy/girlfriend?" Easy to ignore them. The benefit of having a large player base is the likelihood of encountering others with similar interests or otherwise interested in genuine conversation. Resort has been around at least as long as 1994 (when I first found it).

Surfers: Smaller than Resort with a large UK-population. Alive and kicking since at least 1994.

Foothills: Used to be the largest talker around, but the program has been largely stagnant for many years, i.e. no new features added to entice newcomers. As with the others, FH has been around since at least 1994.

With few exceptions, the base code for each of these talkers is similar, so if you've learned the commands at one, you've learned for all. Log in, customize your profile, make friends, decorate your room, and invite others in to chat. Become a spod.

And then there are MUDs. But that's a tale for another day ...