Ok, after completely re-writing my app to display the various bytes being sent to me, and intelligently parsing them so i could visualize what i was working with, i was able to get my reading/writing to sockets code working. i was able to log in and have been coding to handle the huge influx of server messages that come in one you log in.
I thought i was stuck, but it just took an additional day.
Perhaps once i have a good base for a working bot, out of the box, then i'll create a project for it on one of the development sites to share with everyone else.
Thanks to the person who posted back to me, i appreciate the help.