A little late on an update but, here we go...
I received all my chips around Sept.28th, all neatly packed in their silver bags. Free shipping and it took about a week to get to my house.
Last night, I got the ATtiny84 to run the "blink" and "fade" examples using the MIT code and Arduino as ISP! The 84 is a neat little chip! Only extra components I used for the two sketches were a resistor and LED! Talk about minimal Arduino!
My other chips will need boards for them which, I hope to come up with for fall projects and experimentation.
Conclusion, Atmel made me very happy by providing me with the samples with a minimum amount of hassle.
Thank you Atmel!
Mark