found out where my network disappeared to......
 

for some reason, after doing a "slackpkg upgrade all", my network had to be brought up manually after loggin into KDE. i reinstalled my rc.inet1 script, to no avail. i finally noticed the wicd icon in the corner of my screen, and that it said "wired network not connected"...... so i found the /etc/wicd/wired-settings.conf and edited it..... now it works