An evening filled with success!

[gumnos (Tim Chase)]

> out my network may not be functioning.  I tried pinging google, my
> router and a few other places all without success.

Well, it could be a couple different things, depending on what sort of
response you got back.  If an attempt to ping told you that the host
name couldn't be found, your networking might be working, but the DNS
information isn't properly translating the human-readable addresses
(like "www.google.com" to the dotted-quad "216.239.39.104" when I just
did it).  So, you might try pinging the IP address instead.

However, if this is how you tested pinging your router by IP address
rather than DNS name, then it's likely your networking has some setup
problems.

I assume your router dynamically allocates internal addresses via DHCP.
Your machine might be configured to use a static rather than a dynamic
IP address.  You can also check to see what the output of "ifconfig"
returns for your primary network interface.  Things to check are that
you have a valid IP address (such as 192.168.x.y, which I understand is
the range which most commercial routers map to) and that the status is
set to "UP" rather than "DOWN".

-tim