Woohoo!  I did it!  It was sorta bizarre... I didn't need to change much of
anything that I had already, all I needed to do was create a file
"ifconfig.ae0" with some settings that someone else helped me with (Thank you,
Andrew!)

And then I had no problems connecting to the network.  But... I still couldn't
connect to "trex.org" with telnet... so with some more help from Andrew and a
few others I found out all I needed to do was create another file "resolv.conf"
with my name servers in it!  Woohoo!

Anyways, to answer your semi-questions, I had no problem with you connecting to
my computer, be my guest!  hehe... and there shouldn't be anyone else attached
to that IP, including a domain name, and yes, I'm using my work's computer to
learn this, and it's attached to EEE.org, which is an educational ISP.

I'd probably need a lot less help if I had something bigger than a 40 meg hard
drive to learn on!  hehe... (so I could at least have the man pages!)

You'd be amazed at how much I've printed in the last two weeks!
  -Ron  (Thanks for all the help, guys!)

p.s. my next project to tackle is printing! woohoo!  hehe