< Trillian user
First off, I suggest that you switch to XChat (
www.xchat.org) It's free and open source.... has a very nice and clean interface for just what you need.
However, if you don't want to change, in Trillian in your account manager for arena.webchat.org (the server tigerbolt's on), go to the perform buffer under server management or something, and make sure you have it do these things on connect:
/nick username; /nickserv identify yourpassword
That way, it identifies you while connecting so that you can enter channels correctly. You could also add ;/join #firstrobotics so that it automatically joins that channel.