did you upgrade to an iMac?

i believe pidgin hides most server messages from the user. irc.umich.edu uses an anti-drone patch that asks non-ident users to enter the text from something like: _ _ | |_ ___ ___| |_ | __/ _ \/ __| __| | || __/\__ \ |_ \__\___||___/\__| you can either configure a working ident, use a different irc ...

"software caused connection abort" is usually caused by something between your computer and the server closing the connection. it could be a firewall on your desktop, or (less likely) a bad switch or router with your ISP, or anything in between.

technically you can just telnet to irc.servercentral.net on port 8080 and issue raw irc commands, but if you plan on chatting in more than one channel, it gets pretty complex. and isn't the best solution even for just one channel. have you tried using a webchat such as http://chat.efnet.org or mibbit?

irc.servercentral.net listens on port 8080

most servers have a port list in /motd

unfortunately many new opers don't put enough due diligence into researching flood networks, and mistake the anticheat channel for drones or flood bots. if you voice or op the users in the channel, it will prevent flood notices from being sent to opers (voice/op removes channel flood limits). it may...

K:lines set for joining juped channels are local server bans, not network wide. You should be able to get on another server. Check the server list at http://www.efnet.org/?module=servers

"Couldn't look up your hostname" is normal if your IP address does not have a working reverse dns.

have you tried joining channels other than #fw?

There are currently over 250 SSL users on servercentral alone, I'm pretty sure it's working. Check your client configuration and manual.

it seems to be a non-official standard that ssl ports are 9999, and possibly more. check /motd of the server in question to see if they give a full list

the first time you connect it will tell you the ban reason. after that the server will cache the ban so it doesn't have to look it up again, and you will only get a "Banned (cache)" message. if you give the hostname, it should be possible to search for the ban

can't find a ban without knowing the host. on most servers you'll get a disconnect reason when you try to connect. it will usually tell you why you were banned. if it's on all server, it would be a G:line, which generally expires in 48 hours anyways

when asking PHP questions, providing source code generally gives more information than saying "it doesn't work"

glines generally expire in 24-48 hours, depending on server configuration

depending who you are comparing to, 114 can be pretty low.