Well, it looks like Ubuntu 9.10 doesn't like the wired or wireless networking in my laptop. Spent a while poking at it, then decided to give it one last chance, a clean install instead of an upgrade install. Short answer, even with a clean install there was no sign this machine has networking anywhere but in the log files that reported neither part coming up.

Ah well, no money lost and 9.04 is working just fine. I'm planning on giving Nanowrimo a try this year, so I'm not going to spend the time to try and find a way around this until December at the earliest.