Networking :: Ubuntu Studio 9.10 And WG111v3 Won't Work / Solve This?

I'm a total NOOB and I just finished a dual boot Ubunutu Studio 9.10 64bit/Windows 7 x64 install on a brand new i7 PC using a WD10EARS hard drive (with the new Advanced Format) and I gave myself top marks for getting by the mammoth amount of obstacles to accomplish what I have so far.

Item of note: you can NOT do a complete install with Ubuntu Studio 9.10 using a wireless device. The installer ONLY recognizes motherboard ethernet ports. No worries, I moved it to the office and the LAN line and got a complete install. I am using this in my living room though as a Media PC with MythTV and the distance requires me to use WIRELESS.

After a successful install, I was unable to get my brand new, out of box Netgear WG111v3 to establish a successful connection and I need your help. Pardon the length of this post, I will try to organize it as best as I can but I have done a LOT of troubleshooting before posting here. Here's what I did so far:

1. Tested Wireless in Win7 on same PC. Works GREAT! Rebooted, went into Ubuntu Studio 9.10 and got no joy.
2. This page says the WG111v3 works out of box with Karmic and I can state with 100% certainty it does NOT.
3. Went to this page (which is THE best how to out there) and followed instructions. I discovered a bug in wpa_passphrase immediately. I use a very complex passphrase using !#$&@ characters in the mix. wpa_passphrase dies with various errors when it sees these characters because it thinks they're command items rather than part of the text in my key. Try it yourself. Create any long text string with those characters and input it to wpa_passphrase. It dies. Works fine with regular letters/numbers. I had to use this page to get the HEX value for my passphrase so I could complete my interfaces file. On a hunch, I changed my passphrase on the router to be a simple 10 letter word all in lower case. wpa_passphrase changed that to HEX fine, updated interfaces file, rebooted router and PC and got nothing. So it's NOT the passphrase.
4. Went to this page, which again states it works out of box but doesn't and tried all the help there. NO JOY.
5. Tried here too. The help there is good when combined with #2 above but still nothing.
6. Went to unsupported versions of Ubuntu to try some old school tricks. Got nothing.
7. Found this site and it has EXACTLY my problem! I always end up with "No working leases in persistent database - sleeping." when it tries to get an IP address from the router. As you can see, that user found no fix either.
8. I turned off ALL security on the router and left it wide open, updated my interfaces file appropriately, rebooted everything and it still couldn't connect?