Well, I've got it figured out, and thankfully my USB ports are all in working condition. I tried my wireless card in another computer and it came up with the same problem. The wireless utility tells me I'm connected yet I can't load a page. Looks like the card is toast. I gave a friend's card another shot in my computer and I found it to work in all ports.
Netgear support has been useless. "Did you try reinstalling the driver?" "Yes, that didn't fix the problem." "Try using windows wireless configuration instead of the netgear program." "That doesn't help either." "Try reinstalling the driver." Um...yeah, I think I'll try taking my money somewhere else. Though, I realize tech support is probably just as bad anywhere. My thanks go out to the wonderful Netgear support staff who assembled in order to solve my problem: Meenakshi, Manas, Sumit, Debika and Daljeet.
Anyway, though I didn't get too much of a response here on this particular problem, it has been very helpful having a forum for sorting out my thoughts.
Thanks!