thought of that and already tried hard line from cable modem to computer (even pulled out an old cablemodem w/o built in router, set it up again and still same problem)

finally got the .conf file to take with a bunch of the addnodes listed and i now have connections again.  shut down the wallet, disabled the use of the .conf file, rebooted and restarted the wallet. whatever was causing my connection problems seems to have fixed itself, since using the addnodes in the .conf.   needless to say i will be keeping that around for if this happens again.

thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.  hopefully the new pool and exchange will be finalized soon. like i said, late to the game and still learning. this being the 1st coin i've been able to mine where i can actually see results and get everything working =)