yeah. i realize it sounds kind of strange. the deal is i'm trying to put together a bullet-proof system for my father who lives two states away. one of the goals is to be able to easily do vnc sessions with him to help administer his system. in the past it has literally taken 45 minutes to get his ip address from him on his windows system. this way i can get it emailed to me every time he boots (assuming i can get the ip address in the email somehow).

anyway. your suggestion worked! thanks for the quick response.

part of the problem was i wasn't seeing the hidden files/directories (like .kde).