You need to work with events here, and you won't be needing timers at all, unless the reason you want to use them is not specifically to avoid a flood disconnection.
I need to know what your "trace-alias" does, in order to know which event to wait for before "tracing" the following nickname. I just hope it doesn't involve some sort of port scan on the user. If it involves knowing which channels a user is on by running a WHOIS on each one of them, then you could even save running the WHO command, unless you need to fill your IAL right after joining.
