unixodbc on ubuntu

[Me - Atlantic]

i've installed unixodbc, as well as the mysql drivers, and setup
odbc.ini and odbcinst.ini through ODBCConfig

i've checked that the iptables on the server accepts mysql on the
default port for both inbound and outbound

i've checked that firestarter on the local ubuntu desktop accepts
connections from the remote server

i've checked the localhost variables on the server with mysqladmin -h
localhost variables to make sure that the port is the same

i've checked that mysql is NOT started on the remote server with
--skip-networking

i've verified that web sites can and do access the database on the
server

i've set the client environment vars ODBCINI and ODBCSYSINI to the
location of odbc.ini and the directory where it belongs

i've checked that the user i connect to the server with has permissions
for both localhost and the server.

isql myDSN user password -w 
immediately says "Cannot connect to mySQL server.
The trace log shows this - 

[ODBC][2473][__handles.c][444]
                Exit:[SQL_SUCCESS]
                        Environment = 0x804fb58
[ODBC][2473][SQLAllocHandle.c][345]
                Entry:
                        Handle Type = 2
                        Input Handle = 0x804fb58
[ODBC][2473][SQLAllocHandle.c][463]
                Exit:[SQL_SUCCESS]
                        Output Handle = 0x8050130
[ODBC][2473][SQLConnect.c][3549]
                Entry:
                        Connection = 0x8050130
                        Server Name = [MGJ-mySQL-fce][length = 13
(SQL_NTS)]
                        User Name = [root][length = 4 (SQL_NTS)]
                        Authentication = [***********][length = 11
(SQL_NTS)]
                UNICODE Using encoding ASCII 'ISO8859-1' and UNICODE
'UCS-2LE'

                DIAG [S1T00] [MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver]Can't connect to
MySQL server on '209.208.124.98' (111)

[ODBC][2473][SQLConnect.c][3917]
                Exit:[SQL_ERROR]
[ODBC][2473][SQLFreeHandle.c][268]
                Entry:
                        Handle Type = 2
                        Input Handle = 0x8050130
[ODBC][2473][SQLFreeHandle.c][317]
                Exit:[SQL_SUCCESS]
[ODBC][2473][SQLFreeHandle.c][203]
                Entry:
                        Handle Type = 1
                        Input Handle = 0x804fb58
[ODBC][1878][SQLFreeHandle.c][268]
                Entry:
                        Handle Type = 2
                        Input Handle = 0x8519530
[ODBC][1878][SQLFreeHandle.c][317]
                Exit:[SQL_SUCCESS]

Can anyone shed some light on this?  No one on the irc channel seems to
know anything about odbc on linux (at least that's what I gather since
I've never gotten a response from anyone there), nor have I had any
response to the messages posted on Ubuntu forums.

I would really appreciate some input to this... I've done this before on
other Linux / Unix platforms, and have had no problems with it...