I originally registered under the username "-hamster-" (my usual hamster was already taken). Using this name I was never able to connect to in-client chat. After trying to connect manually using an external IRC client, I finally realized that IRC forbids '-' as a first character in the nick string. Perhaps the fold.it registration should be updated to conform to IRC nickname rules to avoid this problem in the future. As the user base grows, people are going to be coming up with more and more unusual usernames to find something that works, so I anticipate this to be a growing problem.