Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
I used to use IRC religiously but have in the last few years strayed away from it...? Out of curiosity and Shiraz (The wine, not the city ) what IRC program/channel do you use?
freenode, ircnet, kreynet, efnet, undernet and Bitlbee (for instant messaging <-> irc) are the networks i tend to be very often connected to (untill recently, i was always connected.. nowadays, i'm always offline/afk)
I very rarely use Chat & IM stuff, I did use XChat for and Chatzilla for very specific purposes (i.e. business-related). Personally, I don't like the medium at all.
chat..... ugh! No chat here. Too many bad memories of AOHell IM of yesteryear. Couldn't do anything without my system crashing from windows popping up faster than I could close them. Of course, that WAS yesteryear.
For tech support purposes I run the big 4 messenger programs (ICQ, MSN, AIM, Y!IM) 24/7 and I can be found on GameSurge IRC, but the IRC is only for my online game.
I did experiment with Ventrilo for text/voice communication a short while ago and it was a really good solution so that, too might be added to the mix. Oi! =P