First key to using Putty is having Putty. If you have it, good for you.

The list of files you'll need are putty.exe and puttygen.exe.

And potentially you'll want pageant.exe, provided you wish to log in repeatedly without having to provide a passphrase every time. This is recommended for the lazy technically inclined. Well, actually, we recommend installing Cygwin or some POSIX operating system, but I doubt I like you well enough to walk you through that.

The easiest thing to do is to download and run the installer, which I ain't helpin' you with: putty-0.58-installer.exe

Or you can download and decompress the provided zip package: putty.zip

You'll want to execute Puttygen

Make sure SSH-2 RSA is chosen, and then mash Generate. With your mouse, STUPID!

Move your mouse around inside the window a bit. Pretend you're Michael J. Fox.

Make a comment if you feel like it, and use a passphrase. Passphrases are expected to be larger than passwords, memorized, and not stored. Comments are expected to involve lots of swearing and general unpleasantness brought on as a result of having to interact with us.

Save the private key someplace where nobody else can access it. It will be needed forever ever until the end of time. Or until you inevitably screw up and somebody else finds it.

Copy the "public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file" section by highlighting it and hitting ctrl-c. In case you're wondering, we need to paste it into an OpenSSH authorized_keys file.

We suggest pasting it somewhere. Maybe in a chat session. Maybe in an email client. Something you can get to us someday.

Saving it to a file might be a good idea.

Along with sending us this, you'll also need to give us your name. Usually we use real names abbreviated to eight characters. If you really want to stick it to the man and name yourself "buttface" or whatever, though, go right ahead.

Next, we'll need to actually use Putty. Isn't that exciting?

You'll probably want to actually send us that stuff we need at some point, but feel free to go on anyway. This here is Putty.

Going down the menu to Auth, you'll get to specify your private key.

Go ahead and dig it out from wherever you put it.

Then go back up to "host name" and specify your name @neuroblastoma.omgwallhack.org, and save the session to something.

Having saved it, you can load it at any time and use it by double clicking on it.

Having double clicked on it, you'll wind up with a fancy black screen. Unless you screwed something up. Enter the passphrase to your private key.

If you entered it right, you'll probably have this prompt. If you don't, it's probably because you didn't send us your username and that thing we needed because you're a dufus.

This gets a little more tedious, here. Type in 'res' and hit enter. You'll probably want to do this every time you log in.

You'll get a little grey alert at the bottom of the screen. You don't have to wait for it to go away to start up on the next part.

Now type in 'chat.rb' and hit enter. This is the glory of Jules' coding. It might even execute properly!

With any luck, your screen will look something like this.

Type in '/join omg' and hit enter.

You'll probably see a lot of words. You should really know better than to expect them to be interesting.

Assuming you also feel like contributing words to the pile, prefix them with "omg "

Isn't this exciting? You're communicating with OTHER PEOPLE on the INTERNET!

Yeah, that's it. If this doesn't work, contact us and we'll swear at you a bit.