I've done some experimenting. I'm almost there. Just won't come up automatically!
1. I got rid of eth2 and just changed the mac addr for eth0 in iftab - see below.
2. When I log in, the little icon at the top right next to the time, says, no network connection. If I right click it, there's a check mark next to enable networking.
3. If I left click it, theres now a radio button on wired network that is not set. If I select this, it will now bring up the network properly.
So.... why won't it bring this up automatically?

!!! one strange thing !!!

Each time I check/uncheck my wired connection from the gui, it modifies network/interfaces and moves the line "auto eth0" from before the iface eth0 line and puts it at the end of the file. Either way does not work however.
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From /var/log/dmesg:
[ 25.130393] eth0: RealTek RTL-8029 found at 0xd000, IRQ 11, 00:50:BA:F3:C2: D5.
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$ cat iftab
# This file assigns persistent names to network interfaces.
# See iftab(5) for syntax.
#eth0 mac 00:02:e3:10:dd:e3 arp 1
eth0 mac 00:50:ba:f3:c2:d5 arp 1
--------------------------------------------
$ cat interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp