finally just switched to windows xp, running the ics tool. since i am now not the server on our network, now when i connect to irc via my client, it subs my ident with the user part of the email i specify in the irc setup. the bot was unresponsive to both msg and dcc chat attempts. so i went into my shell and manually edited the user file to the now new mask i was on. really just the ident changed. but the bot is still unresponsive. i aint even sure if editing that file woulda helped, but i did it anyways. any help would be appreciated.