Hi stief, thanks for the help - the junk things not an issue. I added the connections tab (didn't know how to do that, thanks a bunch on that one!).

How many connections should I be looking at? Seems like the paltry six that I've had going the last couple of days isn't right. They're all UPs, but still. Seems a little weird to me. I got rid of all the hostile lists for now and once again deleted my preferences file and went through set up all over again and it still only has oh, now it's four connections. That just seems wrong, eh? Oh, and I did my check on how many connections I had at six in the morning, lunch time, dinner time, about 11 at night and 2 in the morning. So it doesn't seem to be a time of day issue.