Comp Man

Hey everyone. I'm new to Java, so I thought a cool way to learn would be to write a chat client. I'm happy to report that it's going pretty good, except for one major problem.

When I'm ready for the program to connect, it'll start up a thread for handling socket communications. The thread will start by sending the initial handshake and enter a loop for incoming messages. The problem is that it starts consuming processor avalibility, so that nothing else will work until I exit the program. How do I prevent this from happening?

Thanks!