Whenever I go into it, put in my nickname, and click log in, it says connecting to geekshed... then the login window just pops up again :/ I've tried doing this with and without a password, still does the same thing.
There's IRC clients like Mibbit, mIRC, and Pidgin that you can use to access the IRC. Some of them require downloading, though I believe Mibbit you can use via your browser.