irc via telnet, how to auto-pong?

Hello.

I'm using irc via telnet to learn more about the raw protocol. Everything runs smoothly except one thing that I find annoying. I need to reply to ping with pong <message from ping> every time the server requests it, otherwise it will disconnect me (ping timeout). Because of this I can't idle out and need to pay attention to ping requests. I'm trying to find some way to still use telnet normally only to make those pong replies more automatic so I can do something else. I tried googling and asking around on irc channels, but to no success so far. Any ideas? I'm connecting from a *nix server.

LOL I'm pretty sure >>33 will point out how my reply isn't linked to his post and how I added an additional vertical line to every quote. That's gonna his main tactic for the next post.

What's gonna happen? What attacks is he going to use this time? Is it going to be a short "fuck you", a tl;dr post or no reply at all? No one knows.