Thanks everyone for responding so fast with such detailed help!! I am at work now but will give these things a shot when I get home, including reading through the docs you linked to.

One question to Steve (mister_e) though: I thought what I was doing with going high and low out on the pin was analog out, no? Or am I confused about what analog/digital means in this case? Does analog give me a potential range of values vs. digital giving me just two (high/low a.k.a. on/off a.k.a. 0/1) values? As I write it out it seems more and more obvious to me...