That's it. I admit defeat. I can not for the life of me get Image-Magick or netPBM to work with my Movabletype(MT) install. I have banged away at it till 2:00 am (with little Rise of Nations breaks ;-) ) for over a week and have hit dead ends at every turn.
Image-Magick and netPBM are both Perl modules that will allow a MT user to upload a picture do a little bit of image manipulation and create a thumbnail. I guess all my fellow bloggers will have to be satisfied with just plain ol pictures.
You are being too hard on yourself. There is probably some little semi-colon that is out of place. Not that big a deal. We all have too many options and too many upgrades. Besides, not all upgrades are created equal.