Does anyone understand NetworkManager?

[David Abrahams <dave boost-consulting com>]

Last Thursday I posted citing a problem connecting to a WPA network,
offering complete syslog information that should describe what's going
on, and I have received no reply.  Granted, it's only been a few days,
but in the meantime I spent lots of time Googling for similar
problems.  I found lots of posts offering NetworkManager log entries,
and almost invariably, there was no reply.  So maybe I'm asking for
help in the wrong way, or maybe there's nobody out there who really
understands what NetworkManager logs mean, or maybe I just got unlucky
and found all the posts made while the NM devs were on vacation.  If
someone could help me understand my logs, maybe I'd have a shot at
fixing problems myself.

Since reinstalling my OS this weekend, I am back to having consistent
and serious problems making WPA connections (with hidden SSID).  Most
of the time, no connection is made at all, and on the rare occasions
when I can connect, it takes minutes.

How do wireless connection problems with network
manager/wpa_supplicant get solved?  Do they get solved, or do people
just give up?  Really, this is not meant to be a rant; I do deeply
appreciate that people work on and support this stuff for free.

I am using Ubuntu Dapper, on which there is seemingly no
wpa_supplicant.conf, which makes it pretty hard to relate any
documentation I read to actual diagnosis on my machine.

Thanks for listening,

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com