Java Programmers Help!

Hi everyone, this is my problem, im trying to write a handshake for a chat server. I'm nearly there its just one thing im stuck with, it a programming problem because I know what to send in order to login, if you guys could help me with this it would be great, okay I'll explain:

The first thing i have to do is send my nick i want to login with, if only it was that easy…

This is what a successful handshake looks like:

// Connected

Client: aNICK#sessionID
Server: ~z
Client: ~a
Server: ~a#56#12#34#78#67#

At this point, the last string the server sends back is sent into the handshake argument, before the handshake is sent doHandshake(server_response), the last string read must be ~a#34#56#21#33#44#, (the numbers dont haveto be to that exact, they change each time) thats as best i can explain it, then when a successful handshake is done, the server sends back "a" (without quotes).

So I'm trying to do this in java, but its hard cos I have to use while loops. Basically I have to keep reading from the server and sending something until I get back what I want, This is what I've tried so far:

if any of you have better ways of reading from a server, please tell me what im doing wrong!

      util.send("a" + nick + "#" + sID);
      reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(util.in));


//ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ - Start Handshake

	try { res = reader.readLine(); } catch(IOException IOE) {}

        util.send("~a");

	   while(!res.contains("#"))
	   {
	     util.prt("loop 1 " + res);
	   }
	       doHandshake(res);


//ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ - End Handshake

	         // Logged in

if any of you guys can help it would be great, thank you.

not sure if this is what you want, but this is the order you loginto IRC with:

telnet irc.host.net 6667
'get what they send'
'chekc for ping and repl to it if there is one'
USER username username username username ; this isnt totally true just the easiest way eahc place is for anothter thing
*ping check/rply*
NICK nick nick nick ; again same as above
*ping check/reply*
JOIN #channel
PRIVMSG #channel : message
QUIT ;exit

#but you probably jknow that