]Ladyada has a Arduino section: http://forums.ladyada.net/
Thanks Lefty, I will check it out! 
Pay per hour mentoring? quite a concept, but being an open source community I bet you can get most any help or advice around here for free. Wink
I think people here may have given up trying to explain the basics to me......i have a habit of getting obsessed with doing a project that just far to advance for my epic fail coding skills 
Sure im not the only one who would whip out the paypal info for a Pay per hour code correcting service....if you ever need a few £ lefty 