See this page:

http://www.phanderson.com/picaxe/rh_count.html

've unpluged the switch and plug ethernet shield directly to the computer and nothing happens.

If you connect the ethernet shield directly with the pc then you need to use a cross over cable.
I suggest to use an ethernet switch or ethernet hub.

It looks like you have a networking problem and not an arduino problem. >
Please try to connect a second computer to your network and then ping this computer. If it doesn't work you have to solve this networking problem first.

Generally it is pretty easy to run the ethernet shield on a working network. For the first test you should always use the sample sketches from the arduino website.

Did you open the serial monitor to see the result which is sent to the serial interface?

Please check on your network if you arduino board is available. Use the command "Ping". And also check with ping if the external server (google) ist reachable.

byte ip[] = { 89,68,33,125 }; // ip pc

This should be an unique ip address for the arduino and not the ip of you pc. Usually I use an internal, private ip address for the arduino board, i.e 10.0.0.10 or 192.168.1.10

Use the following tutorial with the Conrad Receiver.

http://www.rudiniemeijer.nl/wordpress/?p=516

The easiest way to read and extract the data from a gps modul is when you use a Arduino library, i.e TinyGPS (http://arduiniana.org/libraries/TinyGPS/)

That's a pretty cool project.  

I used 2 RBBB from Modern Device for the transmitter and the receiver.
The transmitter worked immediately. But my receiver coudn't read the data from the IR Receiver. I used a SFH5110.
After I checked the signal at the RX input I saw that the signal wasn't a clean digital signal.

Therefore I used a TTL IC 7400 and used 2 inverters to get a clear signal at the RX port (D0). After this small change I was able to receive the data.

The 2 inverters where connected between IR receiver output and rx port.

I'd actually go for the inductance method, simple cheap and safe

I would also suggest a solution with a current sensor.
Example: http://www.nuvotem.com/en/products/as.shtml

With this solution you only need to mount the sensor over the power cable. Safe an easy.

I don't have much electronics experience

and

I live in Canada, so it's 110 or 120V AC.

Be careful when you start with this project. Little experience and 120 VAC is dangerous.

As already mentionend there is a lot of information on the arduino website. Use the search function or open Google and search for "Relais".

The easy, but not so cool solution is to power the display from its own seperate powersupply.

I suggest to implement this solution with independent power supply. If you do not need the USB port for data transfer during normal operation I suggest to disconnect from USB.

Test with an external power supply the current you need to run the arduino and the LCD.

but if you have the Serial LCD's, you can still use both! With alot less pins. Same concept, create 2 serial connections on the Pins, then write the same way.
SoftwareSerial mySerial(2, 3);
SoftwareSerial mySerial2(4, 5);

@mathewjenkinson
Serial displays only need 2 pins for the communication with the arduino controller.
As the example shows it is very easy to implement a solution with 2 or more LCD's.

The output for the LM34 is simply 10mV/C Fahrenheit

Example:
50 C Fahrenheit = 50 * 10 mV = 500 mV

The minimum power supply voltage is 5 VDC. According the datasheet the sensor has a power supply range from 5 - 30 VDC.

I suggest that you first read the input voltage without a mathematical convertion.

Use the published scriptes from the arduino website to test your ethernet shield.

Use an internal IP addresses, ie. 192.168.x.x and the MAC address which is in the code sample.

see this thread: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1236679841

As a beginner alway start with sample sketches. Don't change code until you know that your little project works. After you can add or change the code.

Hope this helps.
Webmeister

@pixielex
See my comment in the second thread regarding the baud rate:

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1254863582/1#1

You are sending data with 9600 Baud and receiving with 57600

You can buy the mentioned book from the publishers website as a PDF- ebook.

http://apress.com/book/view/1430224770