I was just talking to someone on skype and i want to see if they are where they say they are. I was wondering if i can trace the location of the conversation that occurred earlier today. Is there something logged on the machine as to where it came from, Is there some residual data that could reveal the source of the messages recieved?

Not typically. In a typical Skype convo, both you and the other user are connected to Skype's servers (rather than directly to each other).

In most IM clients, you only directly connect to someone during a file transfer. As you're transferring the file, you can check the connections to your PC and find the IP address the other person is using. I'm assuming that Skype works the same way, with file transfers going directly from one user's machine to another.

so it uses tcp since this seems to be a service that should guarantee full and flawless file transfer, but what protocol does it use to transfer the files? ftp, http, or other?

Actually, Skype uses UDP for the conversation since a missing packet is less of a problem than holding up the whole stream waiting for a timeout and retransmission. File transfers do use TCP, but the connection is encrypted, so discussion of the protocol used is rendered moot.

i should at least look for a tcp transfer in the wireshark session, I don't care about the file itself since i know what it is because I'm either sending or receiving it. All I am interested in is seeing where the file is coming from If in fact it is truly a direct connection between me and the person on the other side. A little social engineering should do just fine to get them to send me something or let me send them something see where it goes or comes from and I might see who I am talking to is who I think it is. Thanks for your help.

I suggest you google a bit more. I've seen a couple of news stories which suggest that Skype is, indeed, peer-to-peer and you can recover the IP address of somebody you are having a conversation with. I also came across a site which gave instructions of how to do it, basically along the lines of run netstat, answer call, run netstat, compare results.
I'll not fill in any more or post a link because this sounds a little like it's moving towards "hackking".
If you want to know where somebody is when you talk to them then ask them -- if you don't trust them then don't trust anything they say. You can use exactly the same reasoning when working out whether to trust a Skype caller as you would a normal phone caller.

alright then this thread should now be locked