Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. I've decided to totally abandon my current hosting company because I can't stand the parent company. But, I'm not going to host my web site myself -- I don't think I'm ready to take that plunge. I am going to switch companies. I've looked at a half dozen or so companies up close and I'm leaning heavily toward
bluehost.
I'm still planning on running a web server (and maybe some other server software, like cvs) on my spare box so that I can have a learning experience, but with a commercial company I'll have that security of not being able to ruin my public website(s).