The Reason Why
That's right, you read it correctly. AresFan and Ped had the brillant idea of re-instating the weekly #ares chat. They did this before coming up with the OctoberCons idea.

Helpful IRC Stuff
Never before used IRC?  Cool.

The best place that will help you with Starchat info and helpful IRC stuff, is the PSPUG Connections page.

Ped also runs this page, so she knows what's there to help.

Click on either the mIRC or pIRCh links to get instructions on how to connect to the starchat servers using those two pieces of software.