It's the end of an era, ending a chapter of my life, or something equally dramatic.
After many years of operation, I finally pulled the plug on #bitz_n_peeces. I wasn't sure if I'd feel emo about it, or if it would be just another thing. I'm feeling a little from column A, a little from column B. I'm a little sad that it's come to an end, but ending it was not a bad thing.
So what is #bitz_n_peeces, the uninitiated may ask? It was an irc channel. I think I started it up when I was in first year uni, so would be 1999. It was triggered by a new member to one of the Perth channels I used to hang out on, who immediately became a bully target. As far as I could tell no one knew her therefore she couldn't have done anything that warranted the attacks, so more in exasperation than anything else I made a new channel. Needing to call it something, it ended up being #bitz_n_peeces (fondly referred to as "bitz" by the regulars) as earlier in that day (or week, or month...) I had mentioned loving something to "teeny tiny itti bitti liddle bitz 'n' peeces" (approximation of how I pronounced those words).
Immediately there were 5-6 regulars; myself (of course), my ex, my friends Nick and Kat (whom I'm happily still friends with, though we miss Kat who buggered off to the UK) and three guys Ive since lost contact with. In 2001 (or was it 2002?) we were joined by Shanna, who had randomly joined one of the other channels I was on and we'd gotten to talking, Brendan who was on one of the other Perth channels I think, and Jared, whom I'd met at uni.
Somewhere around there (2002? 2003?) OzOrg fell to DoS attacks. Stupid lame script kiddies with no life and no imagination. I transferred #bitz to AustNet, and gained Matt, Belinda, and Terry. Josh and Sprat were frequent visitors, Josh usually after I got tired of relaying messages between him and Matt and/or Terry.
#bitz continued on with many conversations happening, and a couple of occasions when I was on Christmas Island and forgot to sign in and my nick (and thus the channel) got deregistered and there was a bit of naffing around to get it back up and running.
Then all of a sudden we all eventually graduated from uni and had to do boring grown up things like get full time jobs, and Josh decided we needed to buy a house. #bitz went idle with the occasional burst of intense conversation. The last such burst was last year in the leadup to the Australian Federal Election where we discussed in depth politics and who had good, bad or wordiferous and otherwise useless policies and which parties seemed like they were interested in running the actual country over just getting elected.
Then back to idling. It's not like we weren't catching up by other means. There was the Facebook void with its status updates. I talk to Josh while he was at work over Skype, Matt and Jared also had Skype accounts. I made Sprat get one too so I could ditch MSN (where most of our conversations took place as she was initially too lazy to fire up mIRC, and then something went wrong with her mIRC and she couldn't actually connect). Sometimes we'd even *gasp* text or call each other. When we manage it, we even go see each other. A lot less frequently than we'd like these days, but such is the case until we can break from wage slavery.
#bitz saw little-no action aside from sporadic conversation and connection messages.
Then, a few days ago, it was "automatically de-registered".
My nick was fine, I'd been signing in with it, it hadn't been de-registered. So I stabbed in the dark and guessed it might have de-registered due to lack of activity. Faced with the choice of registering it again or not, I decided to let it go. It wasn't seeing as much use as it had, it's been idle for a while, I guess its time was past. It's been a bloody long time. I was the first in, I wanted to be last out, and Brendan (only one hanging out in there as Matt hasn't been in for a while, Belinda was travelling, Jared was reinstalling his computer and Terry was dropping in and out as he usually does) sweetly obliged. I actually said goodbye to the empty channel because I am lame like that.
And that was it. End of an era. Next chapter. Etc. Been through good times and bad, more good than bad, and had some great conversations in there.
It's a little bit sad I guess, but it's not a bad thing. After all, I still have the #bitz crew :)