You can do all of what you described using an on text event, /flash and /window.
For example:
on $*:text:$(/,$me,/iS):#:window -g2 # | flash $nick said your nickname in #
And that simulates the highlight behavior mIRC uses. There are certain other switches you can use with /flash depending on what you want. You can change the regular expression to the one you are using in the matchtext part (to include your exceptions etc.)
