Thanks this worked! Got a 3 active connections so far.... but I'm 4 weeks behind now, so I guess this hasn't connected in a while (even though it's been up and running the whole time).

Is viral just not smart enough to find/remember new peers on its own? or are there ports or something that need to be opened?
Also, where does one find updated lists of these nodes? (My viral.conf file previously had 159 other nodes, likely from past times of this happening... but the ones you supplied were not in there)