I spend an inordinate amount of time on IRC. In particular, I spend hours every day providing Apache tech support on #apache on irc.freenode.net. I’ve often wondered if there’s a way to bill for some of this time. 😉

Well, today in the mail I received a Gerber multi-tool, which I had put on my Amazon.com wish list. There was a short note saying thanks from all the folks I’d helped on #apache. The individual who sent it, who I won’t mention by name, as I did not ask his permission to do so, is a true gentleman. I certainly don’t expect anyone to compensate me for my contributions – it’s part of what I give to the Apache documentation project – but it is enormously gratifying to be appreciated. 🙂

On a related note, I ran some simple stats on the #apache log files, and apparently I say 3.4 times as much as the next most prolific person, and more than the next 5 people combined. And one of those 5 is a ‘bot, so hardly counts. Obviously I spend *too much* time on IRC.