>You guys (and gals) can probably cut through the chaff and get to the heart of it fairly quickly; what are the best online resource for someone trying to get immersed as quickly as possible in VB.NET?

A damn good site: http://www.emoreau.com/Default.aspx

I was just kidding. Some of my preferred:
http://searchvb.techtarget.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
http://www.syncfusion.com/faq/windowsforms/default.aspx
http://www.dotnet2themax.com/
http://radio.weblogs.com/0110109/samples/
http://www.vb-helper.com/
http://www.freevbcode.com/