Well, I got my strange gAIM font problem solved, but it requires some screwing around each time I log on (not cool). Basically, to make the gAIM font not so damn tiny in KDE, I start Nautilus, get to the gnome desktop settings, change the font to Sans 12, get out of Nautilus and open kdesktop. This gets me where I want to be, but is there away for gnome to automatically load these settings when I run KDE?

btw: I have the font settings (Sans 12) saved in the desktop settings but gnome doesn't automatically read these until I actually click the icon. Meaning that all I have to do is click on it, not change the settings each time...

also, I ran "ps" in a terminal and the new gnome threads revealed something: gconfd-2 (which is gnome configuration daemon 2, I'm guessing)...so another answer would be, how would I start this. Other gnome threads running: bonobo-activati(on) and gnome-settings-(?) <-- parentheses are used where I couldm't see the rest...