The Blue Angels happened to be doing the airshow in Rochester, NY where I went to college over one summer. They were doing there fly bys over the campus since it was near the airport conveniently enough!
IRC is still definitely a thing and is used in a couple of the newer technologies out there but has a new GUI, layout, and different kind of user experience. Most of the large IRC networks like freenode, efnet, QuakeNet, Rizon, and a few others are still around and kicking.
I'll definitely checkout the steemit.chat (hoping it's IRC like) if not there is always Discord which I know has an IRC like aspect to the chat channels. I do use Discord as well for clan activities for the games I play.
Excellent! Sounds like you will be off to a good start.
If you want to find some of the Steem discord channels, head to my blog and check out the People are People post from Wednesday evening, I have a link in there to a pretty good list of Steem related Discord Servers.
See you in the chat rooms!