sure! sorry about that. i didn't see any replies, so i didn't think anyone would want to know.
when i first got Alacarte working, i had to change the libgnome-menu.so.2 file. an update changed the link to that file back to how it was originally, so i had to download an older version of the file for it to work with the menu again.
also, i found the original solution to the Alacarte problem on this site -
http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/2...u-editing-fix/