It's been a while since ive used linux, but I'm attempting to get a sample tcp client from a book to work on my machine. All I do is pass in 127.0.0.1, and it connects to port 13 at that ip, and displays the date and time. I keep getting a 'connection refused' error. I can ping 127.0.0.1 and get packets back, so any idea of whats setup incorrectly?

Well, I would guess that there's no server running on port 13 of your computer. Most stock linux distros have daytime turned off by default.