Man I'm totally frustrated at this point. I really thank you all for your input, but I'm tapped out. I can't seem to wrap my head around this concept.
Here's my dream:
I recently purchased a crappy USB web cam and I have some servos on the way via mail.
I'd like to build a web enabled pan/tilt camera like zoomkat has with my Arduino, Apache server and some sort of client-side programming language. My first instinct is to use PHP because I have some experience with it, and it's fairly simple and free.
If I'm able to get the pan/tilt camera working, the next iteration will be a web-enabled Etch-a-Sketch. I know others have done it, but not me... Not yet at least 
So, I'll get this working eventually, and when I do, I'll make sure to credit all of you in my blog post.
I just have to wonder, if my PortMon results show that I'm sending an 'a' to Arduino, why didn't my initial code work? It should have! Dang, I'm frustrated. Another round of beers my good man!
(p.s., if there are any Atlanta, GA folks here, I'll gladly meet you for a beer if you'll solve my issue, and I'll pay!)
Cheers