The best life insurance...

...is the kind that keeps you alive.

Today as I read my friends list here I read of a close call with gas and carbon monoxide. My sister and her housemate once also had a close call. Her housemate wasn't feeling well, had a nasty headache, felt tired while in the basement. A fellow ham radio op (KA9SRO), years ago, had a similar incident. Each of these cases were extremely lucky in recognizing they were affected and someone having enough sense left do something about it. These are actually exceptions. Had the problem started late in the evening, the only news might have been from others when the afflicted didn't show up someplace because they never woke up.

Smoke detectors are common. Chances are most people wouldn't think of living in a place without one. Carbon monoxide detectors are available. They are also inexpensive. If you don't have one, go get one. Not whenever, but the very next chance you get. Spend the money, it isn't much. That other thing can wait.

Regular life insurance only pays off if you die. Why not get some that keeps you alive?

Here it is, FadeAway.mrc

A lot more learning, a bit of testing and refinement, more testing and refinement (thanks yakko!) and here what might just be the (first) final version of FadeAway.

What it does: Gives mIRC the ability to indicate away and idleness of nicks.

What it looks like: I've defaulted things to look good on a black background (what I use) but have pointed out in the comments what to change for a white background. (Search for "/InitFadeAwayVariables" sans quotes and you'll find the needed bits at the second occurrence.) FadeAway does not tamper with your background color or default choice of nick color.

The default colors: An active, non-away nick will look just like it would without FadeAway. A nick idle for 10-30 minutes will be repainted blue-green. A nick idle for 30-60 minutes will be repainted light grey. A nick idle for more than 60 minutes will be painted dark grey. An away nick (whether idle or not) will be painted dark grey. If you are away, your nick is painted bright blue.

The check is done every two minutes or so. Also, whenever a nick changes it gets checked.

How to use it: Copy FadeAway into the remote section. Or copy into remote.ini and be sure remote.ini is loaded. FadeAway will take effect on the next connect.

What can break: FadeAway changes how /who and /whois act - suppressing their responses. The aliases /w for /whois and /wh for /who are provided as replacements. The "/whois $$1" in popups should be changed to "/w $$1" and the "/w /whois $$1" in aliases should be commented out (put a ; in front of it).

You sure are wordy: Overdocumentation is better than underdocumentation. The script commenting may seem verbose. If that bugs you, you can strip the comments out. Good luck if you have to debug it then, though!

( FadeAway.mrc )

And now IRC server admins can start hating me, I suppose...