I grew up (went to school) in Alaska (Anchorage). After school I worked for BP . After that I went to school at UCI . Part way through that I went back to Alaska to setup the technical end of an ISP . Not to long after I got back from that I started work (while still doing the school thing) for ICS support . In the end I got my degree from ICS and went off to work for Sun . Somewhere along the way (at UCI) I ran irc.uci.edu. I don't do that anymore, so no, I can't help you get your channel back. Now I use Gale instead. After about two years I got tired of working at Sun, and came back to UCI!. I'm still at UCI, I've got my MS, and I'm working on my PhD.
I'm always looking for the "right" job. If you think you have it, take a look at my resume (that's my "UNIX system programmer / Systems administrator" resume, I should really make a different "Programmer / Researcher" version of it, but, you know, I'm always busy and stuff). Full time, part time, contract, etc.
I like to hack up lots of odds and ends. I'll try to document a few of them here.
I have been making a time-lapse, panoramic movie of the building going up outside my office window. Take a look. You will need the divix codec.
Here is the latest leftmost (of 4) frame from the camera:
I maintain the UCI Knowledge Discovery in Databases Archive . "An online repository of large data sets which encompasses a wide variety of data types, analysis tasks, and application areas." Etc.