We could always create an IRC channel for use during the week when the vBChat is down. For those of you who aren't familiar with IRC, you can check out http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/irctutorial.html. It's sort of "old-school" internet these days since AIM/Yahoo IM/ICQ/etc., but I still like IRC best for "chatroom" type internet chat (as opposed to 1 on 1 conversation).