Whenever I need nodes, this is where I look:
http://hbn.cryptocoinexplorer.com/peerinfo.
And the Jan. 17 fork must have been the smoothest crypto fork ever! Great work Tranz.
I added a bunch of peers, but why, when I initially open the client, am I only connect to 4 peers. I've had the client open for about 5 mins and it's still only 4 peers. If the peers I added are currently active/alive (which they should be since I just grabbed them from the list of peers on the site) why won't my client connect to them right away?
If you are behind blocks, the client will first worry about grabbing the missing blocks before connecting to many peers. Also the client uses the peers.dat file to look for new connections. It does it randomly, not necessarily using your addnodes right away. Usually after you are caught up with blocks, you will get a strong 16 connections in 30 to 60 mins.
Also remember the client by default onl allows for 16 connections. So the nodes you added may be full and not accepting any connections right away.