Looks as if I'm all set (at least the big priorities are met). The frontend GUI comes up reliably, and my recordings now have sound including when I transfer them to the laptop.

Front end GUI fix - I believe the issue here was that the Nvidia driver was not present in the xorg.conf file. After I added those lines and rebooted the frontend came up everytime.

No sound present fix - I believe that the issue here is (and at the time it didnt seem like it but after a lot of research and replaying the events back in my head) alsaconf needs to be ran post installation. Cecil commented that he had to do this in another post and he couldnt explain why, and I believe I had to do this as well.

The only thing left that I would like to see working is that there is no sound when I stream a recording. I get video - but no sound. So off I go to search on that when I get some time.

Anyways - Thanks a ton to TJC - you are the man and your help is greatly admired and appreciated!