Thank you, Thank you, TigerOC. Commenting that one line fixed everything. I'm now replying using my own Debian box, instead of using my parents' decript win98 one. Thanks everyone else also.
Well, I'm off to apt-get. KDE 2.2 sucks...

I am pleased that worked for you. Why don't you upgrade kde to 3.1.5 its really nice - here's how:

add to your /etc/apt/sources.list;

deb http://download.kde.org/stable/3.1.5/Debian stable main

do apt-get update

then do apt-get install arts kdelibs kdebase kdegraphics kdeadmin

when those are installed

do apt-get install kdemultimedia kdepim kdenetwork (and anything else app wise you need)

Once installed logout and back into kde and you have a new kde.

It sounds like the system is trying to use your NIC card to try to dial out through a router. This ain't gonna work. I had the same problem. I use Mepis and what
I had to do was go to network settings to stop eth0 from loading at startup.
Then make sure /etc/resolv.conf is putting in your correct DNS numbers. Also you can try the ipconfig eth0 down command (not sure of syntax on this). Another problem I had was I could not connect to sites if my /etc/ppp/options
file had "auth" enabled. Had to "#" it out and worked like a charm. Don't know
why but I found it posted somewhere and it worked. Good luck!
P.S. Love debian but I think you are better off using a debian-based distro
like Mepis, Libranet, Knoppix, etc......at least until you get your feet wet.