Just a humble introduction.

[Hodgins Family]

Good morning, Ron!

Jumbling around with your post here a bit!
First:

> Are 'dumb-as-dirt' questions tolerated on this list ? Or should I just
> move along ?

Yes, sort of! Do try to hit up Google and some of the mailing list archives 
first. The ubuntuguide.org site is great as well. Hardware issues will 
require that you tell us something about your machine, etc. Also, read 
anything you can about Linux (on the web, books, etc). After a while, terms 
will get familiar, concepts will clear up, posture will improve, breath will 
freshen, etc.(kidding about the last two...didn't help me a bit!).
One day when you are really bored, mosey into /bin and /sbin and other 
directories. Check out the commands in there and then start to run "man XXX" 
from your terminal (XXX is the name of the command you are interested in 
like man ls or man cp)....a happy Ubuntorian is one who knows the command 
line.

> As I stand right now, I have Ubuntu successfully installed on a
> dedicated machine and all seems normal and functional. Updates are
> simple enough and the only additional thing that I have managed is
> in setting up KMail 1.8 and all seems well there too.

There! See? Lots of folks didn't even get that far. Not so dumb-as-dirt 
after all, eh?

Welcome to the community.

Rob