Okay, I tried the netcardconfig thing again, these are the results:

using DHCP:

$ netcardconfig
Sending DHCP broadcast from device eth0Operation failed.
Failed.
Hit return to exit.

Without DHCP:

$ netcardconfig
ifconfig eth0 X.X.X.X netmask 255.255.255.192 broadcast X.X.X.255 up
route add default gw X.X.X.1
Setting Nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf to Y.Y.Y.Y
Adding Nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf: Z.Z.Z.Z
Done.
$ ping X.X.X.1
PING X.X.X.1
From X.X.X.X icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable

As far as /etc/network/interfaces, how should it look if I am using eth0 rather than wireless? Currently it looks like:

$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet static
[what follows is all the ethernet info for this machine]

Thanks again for any advice.