Attached in a bzr bundle which I hope works. I'm still new to bzr so
I'm not sure what I'm doing here...

The patch adds a handler for CTCP PING which replies correctly to the
sender. This was previously unhandled for some reason. (Why?)
It also adds a special "CTCP command" which makes it possible to
properly PING other users as well.

-- 
Deniz Dogan