>onother thing i noticed (and it might have just been i glitch in the transfer over the net or so). the 2 messages you have send me never appeared in the 'tree' list (upper portion of the web-page) on a refresh. i only noticed that my "Get all replies to your messages" count went up.

You need to subscribe to the Chatter forum. In the Forums section of the account setup, you can do it.