Troubles getting on IRC now

[Praedor Atrebates]

I had been connecting to the irc.freenode.org server but recently, while 
running tor I am no longer allowed to connect even though I am not trying to 
connect anonymously with tor.  I know there are a couple hidden service 
versions for freenode but neither of them work for me either.  I enter their 
*.onion address and my client (Kopete) SEES them but it never actually 
succeeds in connecting.  I get:

[08:57] [Info] Looking for server mejokbp2brhw4omd.onion:6667...
[08:57] [Info] Server found, connecting...
[09:00] [Error] Connection to Server mejokbp2brhw4omd.onion lost: operation is 
not supported.
[09:00] [Info] Trying to reconnect to mejokbp2brhw4omd.onion in 20 seconds.
[09:01] [Info] Looking for server mejokbp2brhw4omd.onion:6667...
[09:01] [Info] Server found, connecting...

over and over and over.  The other freenode hidden service is authenticated by 
pgp key but I cannot connect to that because I would first have to connect to 
the regular server, or the non-authenticated hidden service above to generate 
a hash, etc.  

What is it about running tor, even as a relay, that prevents me from 
connecting at all to freenode?  I can connect to undernet but it doesn't have 
the chat rooms I seek/need.

praedor
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